In his mid-year update, our COO reflects on advancing business as a force for good in a year that hasn’t gone as anyone anticipated.

We reckoned 2020 would be a big year––but no-one could have anticipated the truly tectonic economic and cultural shifts we’ve witnessed in the past several months.

At Future 500, we teach that adaptability and resilience are essential tools for thriving in a disruptive world. I’m proud of the way our team’s growth mindset enabled them to respond swiftly, analyzing rapid shifts in funding and grassroots advocacy movements in response to the pandemic and subsequent racial injustice that changed societal expectations of companies overnight.

Our ability to pivot enabled us to help our partners engage their internal and external stakeholders to tackle this new reality, providing timely counsel on how to innovate to advance their purpose and relevance in the world amidst ongoing turmoil.

Here’s a brief recap of how our team has been advancing business as a force for good so far in 2020.

Through Our Corporate Affinity Network

When COVID-19 drastically changed the ground under our feet, we scheduled an impromptu meeting with our Corporate Affinity Network (CAN) members. Our team shared trends we were tracking in how corporations, advocates, investors, and philanthropists were responding to the pandemic and facilitated a candid conversation amongst our executive members on the challenges and opportunities they were experiencing at their firms. We hosted the conversation under Chatham House Rule, but we’ve made much of our presentation public.

Last month, we hosted As You Sow’s Senior Vice President, Conrad MacKerron. He offered our members a sneak peek of the shareholder advocacy organization’s Waste & Opportunity 2020: 50 Corporations Ranked on Plastic Packaging Pollution report.

We typically also host a CAN working group on the sidelines of our Future 500 Summit at EarthX (more on that below). In response to COVID-19, we organized an exclusive webinar series for our members to interact directly with A-list corporate, philanthropic, and advocate leaders. Participants tuned into:

• “Investor Approaches To ESG Following COVID-19,” with Derek Bingham, Vice President, Global Investment Research And Co-head Of GS SUSTAIN, Goldman Sachs.

• “Ask An Advocate Anything: Energy Foundation,” with Curtis Seymour, Vice President, Policy, States, & Regions, Energy Foundation.

• “Engaging & Mobilizing Employees on Corporate Sustainability Goals,” with Michelle Fitzpatrick, Global Sustainability Leader, The Chemours Company.

• “Philanthropic & Corporate Collaboration in Response to COVID-19,” with Kris Hermanns of the Seattle Foundation, and Irfan Hasan of the New York Community Trust.

Through Our Partnership with EarthX

We started the year preparing for the 50th anniversary of Earth Day in Dallas with EarthX––which was gearing up to be the organization’s most significant gathering to date. 

Instead, our team produced a suite of compelling, provocative webinars. As one corporate participant said, “It’s hard to transition in-person experiences to virtual, but Future 500 managed to compile a series of very well-organized and thoughtful discussions with just a couple weeks’ notice. The content offered new insights into emerging trends and access to a number of impressive sustainability leaders.”

If you missed any Future 500 Summit at EarthX webinars, you can watch the recordings here, and catch up on the speakers and sessions that EarthX facilitated here. You can also learn key takeaways from a handful of our sessions by reading:

• “A Force for Good Questions, Answered,” which highlights several of the interesting threads that emerged from the Q&A portion of our 2020 Force for Good Forecast trends review.

• “The Campaign That Wasn’t,” which captures lessons learned from our conversation with Mighty Earth and Halcyon Agri on moving from conflict to collaboration to improve the rubber industry.

• “For BP & Nestlé, Net Zero is Still the End Game,” which summarizes key takeaways from our discussion with BP and Nestlé on the opportunities and challenges of moving to net zero emissions amidst pandemic and political strife.

Through Our Current Projects

Amidst all these virtual events, our team was busy progressing several projects for our partners. Here’s a handful of examples:

• ESG transparency and disclosure benchmarking for an energy company, both within and beyond its sector.

• Facilitating an “external perspectives” session with a chemical company’s Corporate Responsibility executive leadership team.

• Mapping the stakeholder landscape for major food and chemical companies on material issues ranging from plastic circularity to regenerative agriculture and developing and implementing strategic engagement plans of key stakeholder influencers.

• Supporting a leading utility company in organizing and holding its annual stakeholder dialogue for the ninth year running––but this time, virtually.

• Organizing engagement between companies across the material value chain and zero-waste advocates and their funders on scaling circular economy business models.

• Finalizing a materiality assessment for an association representing a major global forest commodity value chain.

We’ve also had some exciting team updates in recent months––such as the addition of a junior member of the Future 500 family! In May, our Director Kellen Klein and his wife, Jane, welcomed baby Rhys into their family. Congratulations, Kellen and Jane! And on July 4th, our President and CEO Bill Shireman launched an exciting new book, “In This Together: How Republicans, Democrats, Capitalists, and Activists Are Uniting To Tackle Climate Change and More.” The book was co-authored by our board member Trammell S. Crow, whose recent op-ed in the Dallas Morning News describes their initiative “break the polarization cycle.”

Of course, I’d be remiss not to mention that this year is our 25th anniversary. The first half of 2020 certainly hasn’t unfolded how we––or anyone––anticipated. Nonetheless, we are grateful for our incredible team and board, our partners and funders who place their trust in us, and for all the individuals and organizations who have contributed to our success over the past quarter-century.

In a world with so much, no, too much, ongoing turmoil and polarization it is a privilege to focus on meaningful work that has an impact. We believe our work is more critical than ever and will remain focused on continuing to advance change and support resiliency for the remainder of 2020 and beyond.

May We Be of Service? Future 500’s Corporate Affinity Network is a member-based program designed to help companies thrive through change. Members enjoy direct access to Future 500’s expertise, plus exclusive insights on the latest trends in stakeholder engagement, campaigning, and advocacy. To learn more, ping ewohlgemuth@future500.org.

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