San Francisco, CA April 18, 2003 In a recently published briefing guide for environmental and sustainability-focused foundations, The Natural Step is heralded, along with six other US based NGOs, as an organization “well-suited” to significantly shift companies toward more sustainable practices and to create cutting edge models and tools.

The Natural Step appears with Alliance for Environmental Innovation, Sustainable Cotton Project, Organic Exchange, World Resources Institute, Global Reporting Initiative and Factor 10 Institute in the sustainable business practice chapter of the guide, “Sustainable Consumption and Production: Strategies for Accelerating Positive Change, A Briefing Guide for Funders.” The Funders Working Group on Sustainable Consumption and Production (SCP), a working group of the Environmental Grantmakers Association (EGA), recently released the annual briefing book to be used primarily by foundations and individual philanthropists to guide their strategic grantmaking choices toward this new priority area.

“This book provides a platform for donors to begin thinking about sustainable consumption and production as a sector of grantmaking,” states Jennie McCann, a member of the SCP Steering Committee and Executive Director of the Garfield Foundation.

The briefing book covers a wide spectrum of economic, environmental and social issues. Its primary purpose is to help grantmakers understand the complexity of the sustainable consumption and production field and to “highlight why sustainable consumption and production is relevant to every foundation’s grantmaking activities.” This is done by providing an overview of actions and strategies that the SCP believes can accelerate change, making suggestions for foundation action, and highlighting leading NGOs that are putting these strategies into practice.

In the chapter on “Encouraging sustainable business practices,” the SCP claims that, “Some people think that sustainability is about going backwards economically, suppressing innovation, and undermining prosperity. But there are business leaders and NGOs demonstrating that sustainable business practices can be win-win strategies that bolster economic performance and job creation while conserving resources.”

The Natural Step is one.

Daniel R. Katz, executive at the Overbrook Foundation, stated that “The Natural Step is a great example of an organization that is working as far upstream as an NGO can go, with the largest resource users on the planet, all the while collaborating with other organizations that have direct contact with the consumers.”

SCP lists eight “promising strategies” for working with the corporate sector to foster a shift toward sustainability. They have witnessed these as beginning to work for their seven showcase groups:

• educating businesses
• offering awards and recognitions
• building business-NGO partnerships
• encouraging sustainable design
• encouraging radical resource productivity
• mentoring businesses
• using corporate reporting mechanisms
• prioritizing supply chain management

They also list six “foundation actions” that grantmakers can consider when choosing prospective grantees. They encourage supporting groups that:

• develop programs to help small, sustainability-focused businesses emerge and thrive
• engage in business education
• work on the creation of a design database
• collaborate and coordinate approaches
• educate and communicate with supply chains
• work with high-tech companies

SCP also clearly lays out the barriers and challenges NGOs face when working with business. These include: resistance to change in the corporate sector, very few companies substantively committing to the process, many corporate-NGO alliances shunned by others in the environmental field, and most businesses not providing the resources or technical assistance to their suppliers to make the necessary changes.

It is stressed, however, that the greatest challenge of all is that businesses will not pay for sustainability and that foundations often ask, “Why should we fund work that businesses should be paying for?” Yet, NGOs working with the private sector are clear that they need to maintain their integrity and neutrality in order to develop open-source tools and resources. Therefore they cannot have complete financial dependence on the businesses with whom they work, but must struggle to convince foundations that they, the environmental grantmakers, must help fund this effort.

Certainly, this is quite a quandary.

With the momentum The Natural Step and its six colleagues have gained in the last few years, the field is at a critical point in its development. Today these organizations have an unprecedented opportunity to advance sustainability in the greater global economy and influence the consumption and production flows of some of the largest resource users on the planet. But until a well-networked group of stakeholders pools their resources to make that happen, these NGOs are continually caught in the funding tennis match of “You do it. No you do it. No you do it.”

SCP posits that whether we like it or not, big corporations are a fact of modern life and what they need is “broader educational, mentoring and technical assistance, along with new initiatives that more substantively transform company practices.” SCP believes that in order for NGOs working with businesses to maintain their independent nonprofit status and to develop replicable, open source tools that can be applied across many industries, foundations need to pony up. “Foundations can help these organizations leverage their work and extend their reach, while helping companies break through market barriers and make major shifts together that can be difficult or impossible for them to do alone.”

The briefing book is being distributed widely amongst private foundations and individual philanthropists across the United States. The SCP “invites participation whether you are directly involved with these issues or not.” In addition, they “challenge all grantmakers, environmental or otherwise, to think systemically and to consider the links between their own priorities and the pressing need to dramatically shift current production and consumption patterns.”

For more information on the, “Sustainable Consumption and Production: Strategies for Accelerating Positive Change, A Briefing Guide for Funders,” contact Ann Ducmanis, EGA, aducmanis@ega.org.

About the Funders Working Group on Sustainable Consumption and Production (SCP) / Environmental Grantmakers Association (EGA)
The SCP grew out of a concern that our economic practices and policies are increasingly in direct conflict with sustainable development. In particular, US consumption and production patterns are the root cause of many major global environmental problems. Through meetings, conference calls, briefings, reports, and the briefing books, the SCP collaborates with grantmakers to examine the links between economic prosperity, environmental sustainability, and social justice.

The Environmental Grantmakers Association (EGA) grew out of, and is still a part of, the Environmental Grantmakers Affinity Group of the Council on Foundations (COF). In 1987, a group of environmental grantmakers met in Washington, D.C. to discuss common interests and to learn about each other's specific programs. As a result of the enthusiasm generated at this meeting, plans were made for future meetings, grants lists exchanged, and a "directory" of foundation program interests was published. Subsequent meetings have reaffirmed this interest for increased communication among grantmakers through the EGA.

SCP Steering Committee Members:

Catherine Cameron, Wallace Global Fund
Annie Ducmanis, EGA
Alicia Gomer, Park Foundation
Daniel Katz, Overbrook Foundation
Peggy Lauer, Fred Gellert Foundation
Jennie McCann, Garfield Foundation
Jenny Russell, Merck Family Fund
James Sheldon, Weeden Foundation
Christine Shelton, Town Creek Foundation
Betsy Taylor, Town Creek Foundation
Don Weeden, Weeden Foundation

For more information: www.ega.org

About the Natural Step
Since 1989, The Natural Step has been guiding companies and local governments onto an ecologically, socially and economically sustainable path. An international advisory and research organization, we work together with some of the largest resource users on the planet to create new models and tools designed to accelerate global sustainability.