The Charity Village® Sustainability Series covers the practical aspects of embedding sustainability within your charity. The last two month’s articles covered some general principles on sustainability and charities along with some insights on how to set up a core team. This month we dive deeper into the issue of setting your sustainability goals.
Deciding what you will focus on and attempt to achieve is a key step in the journey towards organizational sustainability. Ideally your goals will be a combination of factors including the charity?s mission, personal interests and supporters’ concerns (Figure 1).
Strategically it makes sense to align sustainability goals with the charity’s mission, as this not only builds capacity in core areas, but also allows core skills (organizational strengths) to be harnessed for internal benefit. It helps to ensure that the charity is “walking the talk” and focusing its efforts on issues that are core to its existence. Alignment with personal interests is quite functional, largely because without the interest of those on your core team, it is difficult to maintain momentum. Lastly, it is important to factor in your supporters’ concerns, as these represent risks that a sustainability effort can help to minimize (e.g., carbon emissions, labour practices, or fiscal management practices). In addition to these alignment concerns, the following outlines some key steps in the development of robust goals:
A. Do your homework: Having thought about your goal areas, some charities are quite likely to be able to dive into the thick of things. For others, they may not really know where the problems lie, and may need to do additional research. For example, The Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, as part of their effort to reduce pollution (and thereby improve health, which links to their ultimate mission), conducted a pollution prevention assessment in which a firm ran a series of tests to determine key environmental issues. This sort of analysis can be helpful for those organizations who aren’t sure where to begin. The process below complements such research, and in fact can be used in an adaptive manner, whereby the process does not necessarily go from A to D.
B. Establish a Sustainability Framework: One practice that is commonly used is to create some sort of sustainability framework. Often “pillars” are used to represent 3-4 key goal areas. Such frameworks are useful as they ensure a logical organization of your goals, and can help to easily communicate your goals by broad areas. They can be used to divide up your work, or aggregate your work, and several are provided in the tips and tricks box. Often they will be as simple as environment, social, and economic, but can be much more focused as well, perhaps relating to the components of your charity’s mission. Work with your sustainability team and even your organization as a whole via surveys. Bear in mind the factors from Figure 1 in developing your broad framework and identifying those areas that are most critical for change.
C. Create Draft Goal Statements (with Top Management): Drafting goal statements can be a simple and quick team exercise, or it can be a long, multi-stakeholder process – both of which have their merits. Much of this decision will lie in how your charity operates and how deeply you need broad uptake. The more resistance there is to a sustainability initiative, the greater the engagement and the longer the process should be. In essence, creation builds ownership, and if those who are either resistant or indifferent have no stake in the goals, they will be less likely to adopt them.
Gaining the interest and attention of senior management within an organization (especially large charities) is important, albeit often challenging. Signals indicated through actions are powerful influencers of the success of any internal sustainability effort. Research suggests that supervisor support for sustainability initiatives raises employee involvement by 25% (Ramus & Steger, 2000). Therefore, the joint development of goals by senior management can be a very useful tactic.
D. Use the goals as the basis for strategy development & monitoring: These goals, along with the framework in which they lie, should be the bedrock to your efforts. The combination of the goals and the committee?s terms of reference (see last month’s article) are your key navigational tools as you chart your course and encounter distractions. The development of a strategy to achieve these goals is another key undertaking that can be either short or long, and is an issue that could be covered in great depth. Monitoring these goals is equally important and will be the subject of next month’s Sustainability Series article.
Goal setting is a key step in the sustainability journey for an organization. It is one that can often require time and consideration as it has large implications for organizational uptake and culture change. While the context of each organization is different, strong SMART goals will be immensely valuable for prioritizing your efforts, and then being able to demonstrate change to a more sustainable charity that is both effective and efficient.
CASE STUDY: Sustainability Frameworks and Goals in a Small Social Charity
Many of the case studies presented to date are from large organizations (for many reasons). This month, I wanted to speak to a smaller organization. Given the lack of examples, I felt it might be useful to speak to a theoretical example using a real charity.
CoDev is a small, 7 person, nonprofit agency that works for social change in Latin America and global education here in Canada. Specifically, their four program areas relate to: education, protecting worker’s rights, empowering communities, and raising awareness amongst Canadians.
Using these as a basis, and given the small nature of their organization, CoDev could align its internal sustainability framework along similar socially- focused programmatic lines: education/awareness, workplace, and community. Within this framework, goals could be developed. For example (EDUCATION): By December 2011, 100% of staff will have attended at least 3 public lectures (considered work hours). CoDevs’ workers are already unionized (a good example of alignment between internal practice and external programmatic emphasis), and no doubt opportunities exist to create and put in place additional progressive workplace policies that empower workers.
Being a small charity does not mean that you cannot have a sustainability effort with strong goals. In fact, small charities are often nimble and innovative and can undertake wonderful efforts in rapid order. With senior management support, staff interest, supporter willingness and programmatic/mission alignment, these sorts of goals can help improve sustainability even in the smallest of charities.
Tips and Tricks: SMART Goals
Goal statements should be SMART:
- Specific: Addresses one broadly understood issue.
- Measurable: Able to be quantified (even via qualitative metrics).
- Attainable: Achievable within the timeframe given resources.
- Relevant: Relates to frameworks and other factors (e.g., Fig. 1).
- Time-Bounded: A clear date for the expected completion.
It is helpful to describe goals using an active voice in simple sentences. For example, “By the end of 2012, 100% of the coffee purchased by our organization is fair-trade”.
Tips & Tricks: Sample Frameworks
| Framework | “Pillars” Within |
| Canadian Index of Wellbeing | Community, Democratic Engagement, Education, Environment, Health, Leisure/Culture, Living Standards, Time-Use |
| Community Capital | Natural capital, Cultural capital, Human capital, Social capital, Political capital, Financial capital, Built capital |
| Gallup’s Wellbeing Index | Career, Social, Financial, Physical, Community |
| One Planet Living Principles | Zero Carbon, Zero Waste, Sustainable Transport, Local and Sustainable Materials, Local and Sustainable Food, Sustainable Water, Natural Habitats and Wildlife, Culture and Heritage, Equity and Fair Trade, Health and Happiness |
| Interface | Eliminate Waste, Benign Emissions, Renewable Energy, Closing the Loop, Resource-Efficient Transportation, Sensitizing Stakeholders, Redesign Commerce |
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
Ramus, Catherine, & Steger, Ulrich. (2000). The Roles of Supervisory Support Behaviours and Environmental Policy in Employee `Ecoinitiatives? at Leading-Edge European Companies. Academy of Management Journal, 43(4): 605-626.
Alexis Morgan is a consultant who has spent much of his life working in, or with, charities ranging from small nonprofits, to large, international, non-governmental organizations. He has an MBA from the Schulich School of Business at York University, which focused on sustainability and nonprofit management. He has also spent over a decade actually doing sustainability with both charities and for-profit companies.
