Changing Climate Change!
Posted by Mike on 16 Feb 2009 at 9:40 am | Tagged as: Social Responsibility
Big announcement for us today – we are issuing a Request for Proposals from organizations working on climate change with a focus on 4 specific areas:
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Transportation-related emissions
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Threats to coffee-growing communities
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Building political will
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Empowering individual action
We’re making four separate grants – each is $200,000, payable over 5 years – one in each area. This is good news in general and a great example of our commitment to environmental responsibility. But there are three aspects of this program that I think are particularly cool:
First, this RFP is part of a larger Changing Climate Change program we are rolling out this year to help address the growing threat of climate change. The whole program is anchored by a new enterprise statement on climate change and will encompass operational initiatives, employee programs, and carbon offsets, in addition to this RFP.
Second, not only are we trying to support organizations doing good work in these areas, we are also inviting them to come and help us do better on understanding and reducing our own carbon footprint. As part of the grant, the winners will commit to meeting with us and each other twice a year to jointly share experiences and expertise and help us figure out how to better on our own greenhouse gas footprint. This is in addition to the work they’ll be doing on one of the four core focus areas we’ve outlined. Good stuff!
Third, we are diving into the web 2.0 world headfirst, promoting this RFP on JustMeans.com and via Twitter. Through a collaboration with JustMeans.com, we’ve created a micro-site where you can read about the proposals that we’re getting and help us think about them – you can comment or express your support for a particular proposal. And we’ve created a new Twitter account so you can follow our progress with this initiative specifically and our work around Brewing A Better World in general – follow us at http://twitter.com/BrewBetterWorld.
Click here for the details on this RFP and here to learn more about our efforts to date around reducing and mitigating our carbon footprint.
Please let us know what you think.
Do you believe that people who work at for profit organizations are not as smart?
What is this nonsense with nonprofit organizations? If a nonprofit organization where the CEO’s base salary is $400k gets $200k how much of that money will go to mitigating the climate change and how much to boss’es salary?
Do you really want to reduce your carbon footprint, or you want to play greenwashing game and get tax deduction doing it?
Green Mountain to fund climate change projects…
Green Mountain Coffee Roasters will award four grants of $200,000 each to organizations with ideas to combat climate change in four core areas: transportation-related emissions (including GMCR’s product shipping), threats to coffee-growing communities…
Hi decarbonator –
Thanks for your message.
If you have a suggestion for a productive potential working relationship with a for-profit company, we are all ears.
As described in the materials accompanying the RFP announcement, this grantmaking program is one component of our overall Changing Climate Change initiative; it also includes operational initiatives, employee benefits, and offset purchases.
Relationships with for-profits are, and will be, part of our overall approach to reducing our carbon footprint. For example, NativeEnergy is the organization through which we purchase our carbon offsets – they are a for-profit company. Last week, we announced that we are installing a 100 kW solar array on the roof of our distribution center in Waterbury in partnership with GroSolar and Green Mountain Power, both for-profits.
In contrast to your opinion about the grant amounts, we received very positive feedback from our stakeholders through the research we conducted in designing this RFP. Feedback since the announcement has also been positive.
I encourage you to follow our progress with this RFP and judge us on our results. Follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/BrewBetterWorld.
Best,
Mike
You’re making me think that I should find another place to buy coffee. If you’re so misguided that you think you can effect “climate change”, you don’t inspire me with confidence in any respect.
Mike,
I applaud what you are doing. Using your exposure and dollars to influence the conversation and encourage social entrepreneurs to take action is a great way to leverage the value you create for social good. Partering with JustMeans seems like a good way to make this happen without having to develop their skills internally. I have steered my coffee buying your way since I found out about your commitment. I hope word of what you are doing gets a lot of attention.
Scott
Hi Mike, I have a question. I’m not a non-profit. My business is a year old. I get 3,800+ hits a month on my site at this point, and i have almost 500 subscribers to my daily e-mail. Please see the comments on the JustMeans site.
I’m realizing I’m not eligible for the Challenge because I’m not a non-profit and I’m wondering if I could become eligible if I found a fiduciary agent.
Thanks for checking me out and letting me know. If you could e-mail me about it that would be great.
Oh, and did you realize the GMCR homepage doesn’t completely work in Firefox 3? I had to open it in IE in order to see the contents of the “from our blog” box.
Thanks again.
Chris
I commend you for these grants. They are much needed and will hopefully result in good projects. However, I think the public voting on the proposals is more about PR for your company than it is about getting meaningful input from the public. I’m getting bombarded by non-profits that have submitted proposals to vote for them. None of them have provided links to review all the proposals and vote for the one I think is best. All of them have provided a link to where I can vote for their proposal without viewing the competition. The net result is this “vote” is going to be more about which organizations can get the most people to mindlessly plug their idea. I would encourage you to ignore the popularity contest and choose the best proposals that will have the biggest impact.
Hi Dan –
Thanks for the comment. I received a similar email the other day, scolding us for making this RFP into American Idol!
As we explain on the JustMeans.com site, voting does not determine the results of this RFP initiative. We agree with you (and the other emailer) that the American Idol model is totally inappropriate as a decision-making tool for serious issues. Applicants must also fill out a longer application, submit it to us, and then we will assess each application across a matrix of important attributes, including: Core Proposal Quality: goal, execution plan, initiative scalability, strength of metrics, and communications plan; Quality of Resources available to help GMCR improve its carbon footprint; Evidence of Prior Success and Achievement; and Organizational Strength and Readiness
We are using the voting process to help us get a sense of the size of an applicant organization’s constituency and the motivation of that constituency to get involved. We will take those two factors into account, as we feel they are relevant to understanding which candidates might make the best partners – a larger, more motivated constituency will be more helpful in creating scaleable solutions. Moreover, the voting process itself helps people get involved and it raises awareness of the issue more broadly. At the end of the day, however, voting is not determinative.
Hope that helps!
Best,
Mike
[...] About a month back, we announced a new grantmaking program as part of our Changing Climate Change Initiative. [...]