In this series of case studies, sector leaders outline some of the steps they have taken to drive climate action in their organisations. This doesn’t mean they have completed everything, but that they have picked a place to start, which unblocks fear and drives action in other areas. We hope this series gives you lots of ideas for climate action in your own organisation. If you would like to submit a case study to keep this series going, please email heloisa.righetto@acevo.org.uk.
This week, we hear from Groundwork, a federation of charities with a mission to promote local sustainable development.
Area of focus: climate/sustainability strategies and action plans
Can you describe the actions you have taken? How did you identify the problem and implement a process?
Groundwork is a federation of charities with a mission to promote local sustainable development. In practice, this means delivering a broad range of projects, programmes and services to address the connected social, environmental and economic issues faced by local communities. Although environmental action is a core aspect of our delivery, we recognised that, to retain our credibility, we needed to be clearer about the steps we were taking as a federation to reduce our own carbon footprint. Each of the 15 members of the Groundwork federation has an environmental policy and is responsible for ensuring their organisation is managed in line with our collective values and mission. However, we recognised an opportunity to move further and faster by acting together – sharing ideas and good practice and potentially collaborating on common solutions, such as procurement.
The steps we took were to agree on a collaborative approach among all 15 CEOs and then take a proposal to our federation board. This resulted in a high-level collective commitment and a target of achieving net-zero at a federation level by 2030. The first step was to establish a baseline and we agreed to collectively invest in a process to ensure this was measured in a consistent way – with the support of expert practitioners in one of our member trusts. This involved pooling budget and investing resources to ensure the data used was as consistent as possible. The results of this process have been shared with our federation and will provide the foundation for further collective discussions and action planning.
We are now moving into collective action planning mode and have identified a lead in each of our 15 organisations to take part in workshops aimed at identifying:
- What skills and knowledge we have in house
- What priorities everybody has individually and how these are being addressed and
- What areas should be the focus for more collective action.
Our aim is then to consider how we embed this work in our wider approach to business management. This is likely to see carbon reporting built into our internal federation quality standards and becoming part of our ‘rulebook’, embedded in the way Groundwork does business.
What has been successful? What would you most like to celebrate from the action you took?
Agreeing on a collective approach, and pooling resources to support that approach, in a federated structure is an achievement in itself. It has also been great to see this being pushed and led by staff teams who drive the conversation with enthusiasm within our separate organisations.
What has been most challenging? Have you had to change your approach in any areas?
In any process like this, deciding what to count and why is tremendously challenging. There are many different approaches to footprinting and we decided to base our work on methodologies promoted by government. We’ve had to limit our initial assessment to our core management processes: our own buildings, energy use, transport, waste etc. Establishing a baseline for our project delivery activities is currently beyond us, not least because some of that project activity aims to reduce carbon emissions so we may have some internal offsetting to take into account. However, this needs to be the challenge we address next.
The other key challenge is cost. Getting good data costs time and money and we need to build the capacity and knowledge within the organisation to reduce reliance on consultancy support, even if we can source some of that internally. Looking ahead we know finances will be the biggest barrier to making progress – switching to electric vehicles is a significant outlay, upgrading or disposing of energy-inefficient properties will take time and money etc. We know we have some tough nuts to crack – but this should be where the power of collective action becomes most obvious.
What did you learn from starting work in this area? What learning points would you most like to share with other leaders?
One of our key lessons has been that it’s not only external stakeholders who expect to be able to hold us to account but also our employees who want to know the organisation they’re working for is truly walking the walk, not just talking the talk, in terms of its values. Not doing this will impact both our income generation activity and also our recruitment and retention.
How could the sector more effectively collaborate or share knowledge in this space? Can ACEVO or other membership bodies support this work in ways which would have helped you?
The capacity-building challenge here is significant. Groundwork has a lot of internal expertise, but this is focused on delivering services and support to third parties. Diverting that capacity away from delivery and towards internal consultancy is a cost to the organisation. To be able to drive carbon reduction across our federation we need to upskill more people and create room for them to manoeuvre – which drives up overhead costs. We have been able to access some funding, such as part of a funded programme in which we’re training someone in each of our organisations in carbon literacy training so that this can be cascaded across staff teams.
We need recognition that charities operating on small margins will need additional technical assistance to make informed choices about buildings, vehicles, systems etc. This is something that membership bodies can lobby for, and help to shape. There will also be efficiencies to be gained through collective purchasing arrangements. This is something we can benefit from as a federation but may be even more powerful if there were national ‘group deals’ for charities that could be accessed in the way that some public sector bodies can.
