Net Zero: The reality for charities and not-for-profits
05/10/2023
Working towards net zero will require every individual and organisation to take steps to understand and reduce their carbon impact. The charity and voluntary sector can play an important role in the net zero agenda.
Alix Bedford, Risk Proposition Manager, Zurich Municipal said:
“If you are going to have to change how you operate in order to reduce your carbon impact, that could benefit you in other ways, be it saving money in the long-term, empowering and engaging your people, or attracting the next generation of employees who are looking to work for organisations with strong sustainability stories.
“There’s a really positive opportunity for organisations to future-proof and to take their people with them on this sustainability journey.”
What is net zero?
Achieving net zero means reducing greenhouse gas emissions, including carbon dioxide emissions, as much as possible and then balancing out any that remain by removing an equivalent amount from the atmosphere. Despite improved awareness of the issue, and despite developments in sustainable technology, carbon emissions are continuing to increase, making achieving net zero one of the most difficult challenges faced by policymakers worldwide.
Your charity or voluntary organisation could be experienced in tackling the net zero agenda, or just starting to think about it, but either way, you’ll no doubt face some unique challenges and potentially tensions as you try to balance different sustainability goals and your charitable purpose.
Embedding sustainable practices
Before organisations can reduce their carbon impact, it is important to first have an understanding of how their current operations and activities contribute to it.
You might feel confident in assessing your own carbon impact, or find it helpful to work with external experts to help baseline your carbon impact and understand what kind of changes would make the biggest difference.
Once you’ve got a baseline, the next stage is to embed sustainability targets into organisational strategy and frameworks. this might include adding sustainability targets to performance management metrics, so that individuals and teams are asked to reflect on their own contributions towards net zero. Other approaches could include making sustainability an organisational value and including it in job descriptions.
This is where employee engagement is critical, so organisations should think about ways to empower and motivate employees to support sustainability goals. One approach may be to set up employee-led sustainability groups, green teams or green squads. These can be operationally focussed with representatives from different functions across the organisation, to discuss improvement across the way the organisation operates. For some smaller organisations, these roles are taken on by individual sustainability champions.
Green teams can perform a number of important roles, such as:
- Sharing sustainability tips (e.g. via newsletters and intranet pages)
- Directing people to sources of help and advice
- Sourcing ideas and suggestions from staff and volunteers
- Scrutinising the organisation’s sustainability plans to ensure they go far enough and are achievable.
Competitions to generate sustainability ideas may be a mechanism to generate actionable ideas.
Upskilling your people
While developing a culture where people feel motivated to support sustainability efforts is crucial, organisations must also ensure their staff and volunteers are equipped with the skills and knowledge to understand sustainability.
Green teams and sustainability champions can play an important role in sourcing and promoting appropriate training. One example could include the sector-specific training toolkits provided by the Carbon Literacy Project. The Carbon Literacy Project also provides resources to help organisations design their own sustainability training materials.
Not only can training give individuals a better understanding of how their own actions and behaviours have a carbon impact, it can also give them greater confidence and authority when addressing these issues with end-users. Some organisations in the public and voluntary sectors, for example Great Places Housing, have gone as far as to make carbon literacy training mandatory for all employees. You can read more about carbon literacy training in our white paper ‘The Sustainability Shift’
Tensions, challenges and opportunities
Organisations may face tensions when working towards net zero. Challenges may include resistance from staff and volunteers, who may be concerned that taking action to reduce the organisation’s carbon impact could hinder their ability to deliver on its charitable purpose. At one end of the scale, this can include charities who are concerned about how they can reduce their carbon footprint from air travel while still being able to operate globally. At the other, a smaller charity may struggle with the cost of changing supplier or moving to more sustainable packaging.
You may face challenges from your supply chain or support base. Sustainable investment and divestment may prove difficult as organisations rely on returns from their investments to deliver on their charitable purpose, but the safest investments from a financial perspective are not always the most sustainable.
No matter what challenges you face, when you’ve overcome them, and potentially reached compromises, you’ll likely find that the positives of making a difference make the difficulties worthwhile.
