Last week, we hosted an intimate lunch at the Fortune Brainstorm Green conference in Laguna Niguel to get the perspective of Fortune 500 firms on the future of Corporate-NGO Partnerships.
Our Vice President of Corporate Partnerships, Gwen Ruta, kicked off the lunchtime conversation with an interesting insight: “20 years ago [when we partnered with McDonald’s], it was heresy t
hat an NGO would partner with a company. Nowadays, nearly every large business has an NGO engagement strategy. Could it be that tomorrow’s heresy is that companies share environmental innovations and best practices with each other to solve environmental problems?”
This probing question elicited some really astute ideas from the lunch attendees, and was too rich to include every detail here, but here’s a snapshot of some great comments that emerged on ways that Environmental Defense Fund might scale its impact:
- “The key is to determine which areas of sustainability are truly competitive and which can be shared openly amongst companies. For example, if key green technologies are expensive, it’s to the benefit of all companies to work together to bring down those costs.”
- “EDF can play a role in helping business-to-business collaborations (different from trade associations) set high level environmental goals.”
- “Could EDF create an employee swap program where companies and NGOs trade employees for a year to embed sustainability thinking?”
- “EDF needs to focus efforts on asking companies to do things that are really radical” (noting that at the time, asking McDonalds to phase out polystyrene containers was radical).
- It was noted that Google’s employees may spend 20% of their time pursuing projects not directly related to their core job. “Could we replicate this at other companies and have that time directed to solving sustainability challenges?”
As EDF evaluates its successes from the last two decades and makes plans for the future, we’ll be taking many of these ideas and thoughts to heart – and to the table for implementation.
As one company noted, the central question is “When EDF looks back 10 years from now, what will it wish it had done?” What do you think the answer will be?
Last week, we hosted an intimate lunch at the Fortune Brainstorm Green Conference in Laguna Niguel to get the perspective of Fortune 500 firms on the future of Corporate-NGO Partnerships.
Our VP of Corporate Partnerships, Gwen Ruta, kicked off the lunchtime conversation with an interesting insight: “20 years ago [when we partnered with McDonald’s], it was heresy that an NGO would partner with a company. Nowadays, nearly every large business has an NGO engagement strategy. Could it be that tomorrow’s heresy is that companies share environmental innovations and best practices with each other to solve environmental problems?”
This probing question elicited some really astute ideas from the lunch attendees, and was too rich to include every detail here, but here’s a snapshot of some great comments that emerged on ways that EDF might scale its impact:
· “The key is to determine which areas of sustainability are truly competitive and which can be shared openly amongst companies. For example, if key green technologies are expensive, it’s to the benefit of all companies to work together to bring down those costs.”
· “EDF can play a role in helping business-to-business collaborations (different from trade associations) set high level environmental goals.”
· “Could EDF create an employee swap program where companies and NGOs trade employees for a year to embed sustainability thinking?”
· “EDF needs to focus efforts on asking companies to do things that are really radical” (noting that at the time, asking McDonalds to phase out polystyrene containers was radical).
· It was noted that Google’s employees may spend 20% of their time pursuing projects not directly related to their core job. “Could we replicate this at other companies and have that time directed to solving sustainability challenges?”
As EDF evaluates its successes from the last two decades and makes plans for the future, we’ll be taking many of these ideas and thoughts to heart – and to the table for implementation.
As one company noted, the central question is “When EDF looks back 10 years from now, what will it wish it had done?” What do you think the answer will be?