A few weeks ago, a former staff member of The Women’s Foundation wrote us a thoughtful note in response to our annual report, wherein we’d explained that part of our reasoning for a shorter, more streamlined report was environmental concerns. She rightly pointed out that our terminology regarding "going green" could be interpreted as misleading, unless The Women’s Foundation had truly adopted a full green strategy.
We were grateful that a member of our community had taken the time to point out the potential miscommunication in terms of environmental terminology, as The Women’s Foundation is not yet fully green. On the other hand, we have made tremendous strides in aligning our business practices and work with environmental sustainability, which I thought I would share.
When I joined The Women’s Foundation, there was little attention to green. Given our focus on building a movement of women’s philanthropy over the past 10 years, and addressing the serious challenges facing women and girls in our region, we had little time or resources to focus on our environmental practices.
However, with the celebration of our 10 year anniversary this year, we took the opportunity to step back and reflect on what we wanted The Women’s Foundation to look like over the next 10 years, and determined that trying to be more green would be one of our internal priorities where possible. As a staff, we set out to examine our practices in comparison, and to change those that we could.
Even still, admittedly, The Women’s Foundation’s last annual report and recent collateral have not been as green as they could be. This is partly due to cost and partly due to our reliance on in-kind communications vendors who will comp services but not all the way up to the added expense of recycled paper or soy ink. Candidly, given the economic conditions, we couldn’t come out of pocket for the difference.
However, here is a sense of the Top Five “green” moves The Women’s Foundation has adopted over the last year. While not where some would like to see us, it has been a major shift in our day-to-day business operations:
- Recycling in the office – We negotiated with the building management to get desk side paper recycling boxes for each employee and a large box in the kitchen. We added glass and bottle can recycling in the office for staff and meetings;
- Recycled paper – We use recycled paper for all internal printing and correspondence on plain paper. For cost reasons, we have not moved that way for our letterhead in terms of cycling and ink content but hope to. We would welcome a donor that wanted to make a donation to expedite some of the transition.
- Electronic banking/check scanning – We scan and remote deposit checks and keep electronic records. We still have some paper backup, but are moving to an electronic payments environment. Donating online is very simple. I encourage you to try it and experience the quick email acknowledgement;
- Annual report – This year’s annual report was done in a shortened format, with additional information available in an online version. While the print version still wasn’t perfect in terms of going green, it was certainly produced within the spirit of the real changes that occurred in the office during the fiscal year; and,
- Elimination of the luncheon program guide – The 2008 Leadership Luncheon had the sponsors on the screen with the program booklet intended to be a 10th anniversary takeaway that could be reused. It wasn’t on recycled paper for the cost/in-kind reasons above, but it was content that had a shelf life beyond the luncheon. 2009 Leadership Luncheon leave behinds will be even smaller.
While many of these things could be viewed as cost saving measures–and in some way they are–rather, these changes are part of how I lead in general and, like all things with The Women’s Foundation, change is slower than one would sometimes like.
Phyllis Caldwell is President of The Women’s Foundation.
