2024 SSIR Nonprofit Management Institute – Climate Change

Here are some of my notes for the panel discussion on nonprofits and climate change at the 2024 Nonprofit Management Institute – What’s Next for the Social Sector? – hosted by the Stanford Social Innovation Review (SSIR). I had the pleasure of joining Judith LeBlanc, executive director of Native Organizers Alliance; Keesha Gaskins-Nathan, director for the Democratic Practice–United States program and the Racial Justice Initiative at the Rockefeller Brothers Fund; and our moderator Barbara Wheeler-Bride, editor, digital at SSIR.

Session: Every Nonprofit Needs a Climate Plan: Learn How to Craft Yours

Climate change will impact everyone, so it’s important that forward thinking leaders prioritize climate action as part of their strategic plan now, even if climate is not their organization’s core mission. Climate-related extreme weather events are already directly affecting many organizations: impacting the vulnerable populations they serve, disrupting their important work, and posing threats to their physical locations.

Understanding Why Every Nonprofit Needs to Deal With Climate Change

  • Direct consequences of climate change: temperature extremes, wildfires, droughts, increased and stronger natural disasters, rise in sea level, heightened extinction rates, food shortages, air pollution, expanding diseases, population displacement
  • Resulting consequences for nonprofits:
    • Widespread impacts: health (including mental health), housing, water, food, poverty, accessibility.
    • Specific impacts: the need for the nonprofit’s services; its ability to deliver those services, including its ability to recruit and retain workers and board members; health and well-being of its intended beneficiaries, including future beneficiaries (consider Iroquois Constitution’s principle of factoring in the impact on the next seven generations); facilities; its investments.
    • Other specific impacts on the broader community in which the nonprofit operates (e.g., warmer weather is associated with higher violent crime rates, higher suicide rates, higher accident rates, lower studying and worker productivity rates).
  • These consequences are why addressing climate change proactively is in the best interests of a charitable nonprofit (generally, regardless of its mission), and, from a legal perspective, why board members have a duty to act with reasonable care, including reasonably investigating and inquiring for reliable information to determine how best to address the consequences we know are continuing to play out.

Climate Plan – Some Early Steps

  • Step One: organization-wide education and exercises on climate change, mission, future-thinking, and governance
  • Step Two: incorporation of values into the mission/purpose statements of the organization’s governing documents, which might include equity (including intergenerational equity or consideration of impact on future generations of beneficiaries and stakeholders) and respect for community/ecosystem (recognizing the relatedness and interdependence of the organization and its social and physical environment)
  • Step Three: identification of threats posed by the consequences of climate change and ways the organization might adapt and mitigate the threats, including regarding (1) an assessment of its power to advocate and mobilize its supporters, and (2) its internal policies and practices to help assure its credibility and authorized voice to advocate on behalf of its community
  • Step Four: deeper dive into the organization’s policies and practices to address its need to adapt, including an examination and possible restructuring of (1) its board and leadership composition, (2) employee recruitment and retention practices, (3) HR policies (including regarding remote and alternative work arrangements), (4) program design, (5) the incorporation of AI, (6) facilities and office locations, (7) mix of investments, (8) endowment fund spending policies (especially where the board has broad spending discretion as is generally the case with quasi-endowments), (9) data and privacy policies, and (10) collaborations and affiliations (possibly including those with 501(c)(4) organizations with broader latitude to lobby and engage in political campaign intervention)

Additional Resources on Our Blog

What’s Your Nonprofit Doing to Fight Climate Change?

Purpose-Driven Board Leadership and Climate Change

More on Nonprofits and Climate Change

Prudent Investments: UPMIFA and Climate Change

Resources on Purpose-Driven Board Leadership

Purpose-Driven Board Leadership (BoardSource)

The Four Principles of Purpose-Driven Board Leadership (Anne Wallestad, SSIR)

Purpose-Driven Board Leadership, Legally Speaking

NAAG/NASCO Charities Conference: Purpose-Driven Board Leadership

Highlights from some of the sessions held on day one of the 2024 Nonprofit Management Institute are available here.