Achieving Impact Via Bold Collaboration

It’s been a great summer with some good fun and planning at our annual team and board retreat. We reviewed findings from our impact evaluation process and discussed how to apply the recommendations to impact the priority issues for our corporate partners and stakeholders, such as Rising Political Risk, Biodiversity, ESG politicization, and Permit Reform.

We’re gearing up for our corporate working group meeting in Austin Texas in late September. And, we’re looking forward to completing a big stakeholder research project on issues of circularity, global ESG disclosures, chemicals of concern, and environmental justice. Lastly, we are also tracking evolving transparency in the philanthropic sector that has implications for all sides regarding various ESG issues.  Read on for more details and our fun pop culture fact!

Our Annual Retreat

We wrapped up our team/board planning retreat connecting in the lush green PNW last month. We met in a relaxed setting, outlining personal and organization goals for the coming year. Some notable highlights included:

  • Implementing recommendations from our impact evaluation process to achieve greater impact for our corporate and civil society project partners.

  • Elevating our social media content (see blogs below) and refreshing our nearly decade-old website to hone our brand and own our niche.

  • Outlining individual goals for personal development and continual learning to enhance our team’s collective effectiveness.GreenBiz

Our Recent Insights (read the blogs)

Navigating Rising Political Risk: July has been a turbulent month for politics, with violence already surfacing ahead of this year’s U.S. election. As political risks rise globally, the stakes for businesses are mounting, requiring strategic insights and adaptability. Our team is helping corporate leaders understand and respond to these challenges, recently outlining several resources as potential guideposts.

Proxy Season: Shareholder voting season this year highlighted some emerging issues, such as deep-sea mining. Meanwhile, as the political war around ESG continues, an examination of rising anti-ESG proposals reveals initial low support amidst rising proposals overall. Read more about this year’s record breaking shareholder voting season.

Integrity of Offsets: Earlier this year, Nathan Truitt, VP of Climate Funding at American Forest Foundation, spoke to our Corporate Affinity Network (CAN). He shared many insights, including a comprehensive framework to assist companies in selecting robust nature-based carbon offsets and credits to ensure carbon market integrity. Read up here.

Evolving Philanthropic Transparency

At Future 500, we appreciate funders as critical stakeholders in our work. Funding networks comprised of big philanthropists and foundations progress theories of change that can transform industries and their bottomline. So, we work to understand funder priorities to help corporate and philanthropic leaders proactively engage one another in pursuit of positive ESG performance that benefits business bottomline.

In the past several years, we’ve witnessed rapid growth in billionaire philanthropists across the partisan spectrum, such as libertarian Peter Thiel to the progressive Mackenzie Scott. But, big donors’ giving priorities can be obscured when they use donor advised funds (DAFs) as pass-throughs, which has been dubbed giving by “Black Box Billionaires.”

DAFs are not required to disclose their grants recipients, obscuring a funders’ theories of change and issue priorities. This lack of transparency can contribute to deepening mistrust, causing unintended and often unnecessary conflict that retards rather than advances progress.

Big donors often understandably seek anonymity motivated by a need for private altruism. But given the enormous level of giving and associated power to influence people and business at scale, we expect advocates across the political spectrum to call for more transparency to foster more open engagement on issues to achieve stronger collective outcomes. Interestingly, recent and proposed changes to U.S. philanthropic rules are requiring disclosure of foreign donors investing in the U.S.

While some might decry these new rules as xenophobic, such transparency may set a precedent for implementing similar rules for domestic funders, imbuing greater trust in the integrity of philanthropy and its influence on bringing all sides together to tackle ESG challenges.

Upcoming Events

Our team will be facilitating our next Corporate Affinity Network (CAN) in-person Corporate Working Group in Austin, Texas, this September 26-27. We’ll convene in a lovely setting, hosting thoughtful discussions on climate philanthropy, Environmental Justice (EJ), and bold collaboration between companies and NGOs. We will hear from a major environmental donor, a savvy NGO campaigner, and a corporate EJ leader, to learn how NGO campaigns on several issues may evolve after the US Presidential election.

We host our Corporate Working Groups under the Chatham House Rule and facilitate towards frank, interactive dialogue. We cap attendance at 25 to ensure intimate discussion where everyone can contribute. This event is free to Future 500’s corporate partners.

Note:  Registration is limited to corporate responsibility leaders and practitioners within companies. This typically includes executives leading sustainability initiatives, public and government affairs, and investor relations.

Sustainability USA 2024 I October 7-8 I NYC

Please join our team at Reuters Events: Sustainability USA as we learn about actionable ideas and insights to accelerate climate action, deliver on transparency, and engage investors. Learn from 750+ industry leaders implementing data-driven sustainability strategies and discover emerging technology solutions that can help streamline data collection, analysis, and reporting.

MOVE America 2024: Mobility Re-Imagined Sept. 24-25 I Austin, TX

Our CEO, Erik Wohlgemuth and VP, Brendon Steele will be moderating panels at this year’s Move: America conference in Austin, TX. MOVE America connects the entire mobility ecosystem, focused on technology, business models and sustainable futures. Leaders and visionaries from across the mobility value chain will gather to learn, innovate, partner and do business.

Recent Media that Grabbed Our Attention

BlogJessica Hammett