The business imperative of facing climate change for associations with Elizabeth Engel and Shelly Alcorn
5/6/2024
““I’ve been concerned about climate change for a number of years. Particularly in the last few years as we have seen accelerating changes globally...Coming to understand extreme weather events are real. They cause real damage. They cause property loss. They are a business imperative as well as a species imperative.””
In episode 97 of Nonprofit Mission: Impact, Carol Hamilton, Elizabeth Engel and Shelly Alcorn discuss:
Why addressing climate change has shifted from a moral imperative to a business imperative for associations and nonprofits
How climate change is impacting all sectors and industries now
how associations are uniquely positioned to address climate change by leveraging their influence
Why shifting away from the single points of failure built into the traditional ways association services have been delivered is important
Ways to reduce your organization’s carbon footprint
Episode highlights:
[00:08:25] Shift from Moral to Business Imperative
The shift of climate change from a moral to a business imperative, driven by observable impacts like extreme weather events causing significant property and economic losses.
[00:10:15] Association's Role at COP27
The proactive participation of associations like the American Psychological Association and the American Institute of Architects in COP27, bringing attention to industry-specific impacts of climate change.
[00:13:17] Climate Impact on Association Operations
The direct impacts of climate change on associations, such as disruptions from extreme weather events and the carbon footprint of large gatherings like annual meetings.
[00:28:23] Strategic Adaptations for Climate Resilience
The need for associations to develop resilience by adopting proactive strategies like no single point of failure in operations, reflecting a shift towards decentralized and adaptable operational models.
Guest Bios:
Shelly Alcorn
Shelly is a Principal in Michelle Alcorn and Associates and specializes in non-profit trade associations and professional societies. Shelly stands at the intersection of technology, the education-to-employment system, and the association of the future. She conducts strategic, leadership and staff retreats, and speaks on critical issues faced by the association community and society including existential risks such as the rise of artificial intelligence and the coming impacts of climate change.
Elizabeth Weaver Engel
Elizabeth Weaver Engel, M.A., CAE, is Chief Strategist at Spark Consulting. For more than 25 years, Elizabeth has helped associations grow in membership, marketing, communications, public presence, and especially revenue, which is what Spark is all about. She speaks and writes frequently on a variety of topics in association management. When she's not helping associations grow, Elizabeth loves to dance, listen to live music, cook, and garden.
Important Links and Resources:
Download the whitepaper at: http://ac3coalition.com
Join the Association Climate Action Coalition community at: https://ac3.breezio.com
Not too Late: Changing the Climate Story from despair to Possibility, editor - Rebecca Solnit
Crystal City example: https://ggwash.org/view/91781/take-note-downtowns-crystal-city-suffered-its-office-apocalypse-and-came-out-better
Related Episodes:
Episode 6: Uncertainty and Emergence
Episode 78: Renegotiating our relationship with work
Episode 87: Reimaging the workplace for remote/hybrid
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Carol: So welcome, Elizabeth. Welcome, Shelly. Welcome to Mission Impact.
Shelly: Thanks for having us.
Carol: Yeah, the two of you wrote a white paper last fall on climate change and associations. And I'm just curious, could you. Tell us a little bit about what was your motivation for working on the project together,
Elizabeth: Well, it's, I, I think there's sort of two questions there. One is the question of why did we decide to write about climate change in the first place and, and the other is why did we decide to work together? And I guess, in answer to the first question, one of the things that's become increasingly apparent is that climate change is not just a moral imperative.
It's also increasingly obviously a business imperative. As we see climate change. Affecting professions and industries in, in very, in ways that are very specific to those professions or industries. And also as we see climate change affecting association operations whether that is as in our own existence as businesses as, as small to mid, mid sized businesses or in our member facing programs, products and services.
And so, Shelly and I. both realized that this is something that associations are starting to pay attention to in a much more organized way as opposed to just we've got a board member or a committee or some staff members or whatever who are personally concerned about this.
Where we're approaching it more from a, an industry way, a business way at the same time as I was looking for a good topic for the annual white paper for that year and, and thought, hey, this is the one and I knew, Shelley was both an expert on this and passionate about it and also the two of us have worked together before.
So all of those things came together in a good way and right, right person, right place, right time, right topic and that was, that was sort of what led to the, led to the development of the white paper.
Carol: Shelley, how about for you?
Shelly: Yeah, there's no one I'd rather write a white paper with than Elizabeth. We've done three of them and we did one on blockchain, did one on the education post secondary system in the U. S., and associations, and this seemed like a natural next step. I've been concerned about climate change for a number of years particularly in the last few years as we have seen accelerating changes globally. and under, coming to understand extreme weather events are real, they cause real damage, they cause property loss and they are a business imperative as well as a species imperative. So this was a natural, natural effort to get involved in and I was just very happy to have had the chance to work with Elizabeth on it.
Carol: So say more about how you feel like it shifted from being that moral imperative to a business imperative.
Shelly: Sure. Well, a number of things happened during the pandemic that weren't pandemic related. The pandemic blinders off particularly on manufacturing.
Elizabeth: Another thing that's happening related to all this specifically in the association space is the U. N. Has had these the cop meetings, the conference of parties for related climate change for many, many years. I mean, 2024 is going to be cop 28 if I recall correctly. And last year, cop 27 was As far as I'm aware, the first time that associations have gone to participate in a, in an intentional way, we are the association industry sort of way.
So after, shortly after that happened, ASAE did a webinar focused on ESG, specifically about association participation. at COP 27 and that featured the American Psychological Association, the American the Architects, it was the Psychological Association, the Architects and Geophysical AGU yeah, the American Institute of Architects and Geophysical Union.
And so they were sort of bringing Those perspectives, but sort of very interesting perspectives of the association industry to that conversation one being the, the the scientific perspective and of course, a number of scientific associations have been heavily involved in what's going on with climate change for a number of years, but, but AGU very much was able to represent that perspective.
The American Institute of Architects was able to represent the perspective of the built environment. And of course, one of their key talking points is that buildings, whether they're commercial buildings, residential buildings, industrial buildings contribute 40 percent of carbon emissions.
So they were able to sort of bring that perspective to it. And then the American Psychological Association was able to bring the perspective of what is the impact that this is having on people's mental health. So, that was a, to me, a bellwether moment in two ways. One is demonstrating the whole, like there's an association for everything, but in fact, there is an association for everything.
And so we have associations that are intimately involved with all aspects of this wicked problem. And also we are. A, we are deserving of a place at the table. We need to have a place at the table. We are a key partner in trying to address this wicked problem that we are facing, not just as a city or a state or a country or a region, but globally.
Carol: So you brought in two, two different aspects, the, the, the association as the group that brings together a particular industry or profession and the impacts that particularly particular professions are seeing within the work that they do. there, there are going to be many, you talked about the insurers, you talked about, the, the. The fact that buildings contribute so much to carbon the, the buildup of carbon and how that can, and how, I, I would think like the most obvious thing would be to, for every place to just say every new every new building that's built from now on needs to be lead served. Also on the association side of, what are some of the specific impacts that the climate crisis is having on associations themselves?
Elizabeth: Oh, I think, I think it's significant. The sort of the most obvious one that jumps to mind for people naturally is anytime we're trying to gather people in person. So pretty much every association has an annual meeting where you're gathering anywhere from hundreds to hundreds of thousands of people all in one place. There's a significant carbon burn impact of doing that and so there's, there's sort of that piece of it.
There's also the piece of it that is extreme weather disruptions. So what if you have scheduled your annual conference and there's a hurricane, there's a wildfire, there's, some sort of other extreme weather event, even, something as non long term damaging as what happened in Phoenix a couple of summers ago, where it got so hard, so hot that they couldn't they couldn't take, have planes take off from Sky Harbor International Airport because it, it was too hot and the lift that is necessary to get those big, heavy planes off the runway wasn't working properly.
so there's, There's, there's kind of, that's the most, the most obvious piece of what's the association on the, the impact on associations, qua associations, but there's tons of other ones as well. Everything from what we are doing, by way of investing our reserves, how we are choosing to invest our.
Our advocacy resources, and what are we choosing to advocate about what about our physical offices, and the need to get our staff back and forth from those physical offices, and the, and the carbon impact of their commutes. Staff mental health is a huge issue. I, I mean, there's, it's just, it's, it's, climate change is impacting associations directly in myriad ways.
And I was just, I didn't have to do that.
Carol: Well, interesting that you talked about just, the first one, I think that's the most obvious or conference and, and all the, the travel that's associated with those or at least in person conferences. And I was just, I did have to do some business travel. I went on some business trips last week and was on Amtrak and it had been a while since I'd been on a train. But this was the first time that I heard them, as part of their normal announcement, telling everybody how much you save in carbon by taking the train instead of flying or instead of driving. And I thought that was, that was an interesting and I felt like there was this disruption that happened that, where you’re working remotely and doing things remotely and doing things virtually people saw that it was possible, but I feel like there's been a little bit of a regression of that was horrible, that was, I didn't enjoy it, I don't want to do it that way, I want it to go back to the way it was. And so, folks are getting back in the swing of things and on a plane.
Elizabeth: Interestingly, one of the stories that we tell in the white paper is to your point during the pandemic, there was actually a measurable reduction in carbon emissions. Unfortunately, in 2021, they jumped back up.
One of the stories that we relate in the white paper is the American Association of Geographers. And that this was entirely member originated, member led, started in, I want to say 2018 or 2019 where, a group of members came to the organization and said, look, we really want to Investigate the carbon impact of the carbon, the carbon emissions impact of things the association does.
We're going to start with our conference because that's a big obvious thing that we want to look at, but we want to look more broadly at it as well. And they set themselves a specific goal of 40 percent carbon reduction for the association by 2030. Great. So, they said, look, we're going to, we're going to start with the annual meeting and then, of course, obviously, 2020 rolled around and, well, the annual meeting was, was virtual.
But interestingly enough, the 2021, 2022, annual meeting was also virtual. 2023, they decided we do want to be back in person because there are certain things that we feel, as a group of scientists, we can only do. achieve by way of sort of scientific collaboration by being physically together.
However, does that mean that we all have to go to Denver, which was there, had been there at the location they'd picked for 2020. So of course they went there in 2023. Do we all actually have to go to Denver? No, we don't. And the thing that they came up with is this idea of having conference nodes where it's, it's basically a hub and spoke thing. you might still travel a bit, but you have the opportunity to go in a group, to go by train to something that's more local to you, that's more your region, reduces the impact both of your travel and then also the impact of. Everything that happens on site with the conference itself around the facility, around food and Bev, all that thing.
And it was, the story is told in more detail in the white paper. They did quite a bit of prior work and post work with members and attendees to make sure that this was meeting expectations and all that. But that issue became even more pressing for them for 2024.
Because their conference is going to be in Hawaii. And so they are, the nodes experiment worked well. They are going to expand it. They are going to actually have additional sites. Not only sort of being able to view the content. And participate with the people who are at your site with you.
They are going to have additional primary sites of content generation. Yeah, so they've, they've done tremendous work on that, but they're also looking at other things like, for instance, you mentioned, Carol, one of the things you mentioned is. If it were up to you, every new building that was built would have to be LEED certified.
And we do tend to think of LEED certification with regards to new construction. However, LEED certification can also be sought and granted for renovations and build outs on existing buildings. And so when AAG was looking to move office space, that was one of the things that they decided. They decided they were going to do a LEED certification build out of existing space. They did move locations, but they did not go to a new building. And they chose to pursue LEED certification for that. Another thing that they've done is they have completely divested their reserves from fossil fuels. probably, I mean, like it's, you can, you can look at it, like it, it would have been thinking about your reserves and, like Philip Morris 50 or 60 years ago,
Carol: Right.
Elizabeth: Or later, you bet, like sooner, sooner or later, this is no longer a wise investment decision. Well, this is, it's sooner now. It's not later.
Carol: It's not
Elizabeth: And yeah, yeah, and so that, they've chosen to completely divest from fossil fuels. They're 100 percent fossil fuel free.
These are all things that are accessible to every association.
Carol: Yeah, it was interesting. I actually went to a. What did you call that? It's spoke and hub conference. I guess it was first coming back for the organization coming back to something in person. It was really wonderful to just have the people that are local to you right there in the room with you. And, thinking about, well, what was my travel impact? The Metro and a, and a, bike share to get there. That was easy. And I didn't have to pay. It was, so it was also a lot less expensive to participate. So there are a lot, there were a lot of benefits to it. And it could be, it would be, it was, it was seen as like, well, this is going to be our compromise, but I, I actually really enjoyed the format.
And what if, what, what would have made it even better would have had, would be to have a little bit more time to actually talk to the people in the room. But that's conference design that so often doesn't actually but that's a different topic.
Elizabeth: But, but, but you, but you also keyed on something else there that's very important, which was, mentioning not only did participation in that spoke have a lower carbon burn impact, it also had a lower cost impact for you. That's an equity issue in terms of where, when you have to travel, only what you're paying for, you're also paying for the day out of the, out of the office or work or, and you're, there's lost time there. And so I didn't have any of that with that more local event. And those are all, those are all equity issues that a lot of associations got alerted to during the pandemic when we all woke up and realized, hey, the group of people that are coming to our virtual conference are radically different from the group of people that usually attend our in person event.
And what does that mean whether it's, whether it's a cost issue, whether it's a time away from family issue, whether it's a, I lack the seniority in my job to be able to get them to let me go, I mean, there's all kinds of equity issues wrapped up in that as well.
Carol: Right.
Elizabeth: and one of the things that Shelley's brought up in her comments here that very much relates to this idea within the white paper that we've got off, about associations needing to develop resilience, which is that something bad has happened and we have to figure out how to bounce back.
And Associations need to adapt. Adaptation is about, we're going to make some fundamental changes in the way we work, the way we operate, etc. So, resilience is backward looking, reactionary. Adaptation is forward looking and proactive. One of the key things that Shelley keyed on there Or, or, or touched on there is this idea of no single point of failure.
So this is very much a concept in IT. people are familiar with. It's also very much a concept in any emergency planning that you don't want to have any single point of failure. That's a resilience thing, right? Systems that are resilient do not have, have few or no single points of failure.
And when we think about things like. A hub and spoke system, like figuring out how to devolve authority, figuring out how to empower lower level staff, figuring out how to empower, whether they're formal chapters or more informal local regional state groups. That's all about building redundancy into our systems.
So that if one of the nodes in the system gets taken out, the whole thing doesn't collapse.
Carol: Yeah, I mean, actually there are a couple of the, the old way of doing things of the one big conference and, one headquarters wherever, where all the staff are, that's, by definition, you've got multiple single points of failure there. There's a failure built into the [system]. There is a big push right now to get people back. Part of the thing that they're talking about is out of emptying out of downtowns. But I just read an article recently, in the Washington Post about how Crystal City had that happen because of a decision around a decision on a federal government agency moving, and so suddenly there was a lot of empty space, and rather than just try to get more people to fill those offices, they switched to a much more office and residential mix. To have moved to a walkable neighborhood where it isn't just the office. You drive to the office and then you're there, and then you drive home, or get on the, so they're, they're now, they adapted, and now are other places that have had all of those kinds of, we do, we do this in this place, and we do that in that place mentality. Right, exactly. Exactly. Over the associations that I'm involved in. I've really acted in my local area since 2017. Yeah. I mean, I think about the, as we've been talking, I've been thinking about all the different ways in which I've become more locally focused over the last, I don't know, five, 10 years. And, from the associations that I'm involved in. To, wanting to really get more connected in my local community. And then I've been working from home since 2017 and, and was the first person at my association, the last association that I worked for, to ask whether it might be possible for me to work at home on Fridays in 2006. And by the time I left, two or three of our leadership team or remotely half or from full time places. So it is possible. So, it is. Yes, it's all coming and it's not coming. It's here, right? And I guess some of the other things that you talked about, you talked about shifting reserves out of fossil fuels, but then also using advocacy power. What are you advocating for? Are you advocating for an economy that works for everybody and enables us to actually live?
Elizabeth: And in fact, you can, you can make a persuasive argument to your board, to your members, to your government relations team and your government relations committee and all that thing that That advocating for climate friendly policies is in fact to the good of your association because all these professions and industries are currently being affected by climate change and are about to be affected even more and it's and.
The impacts are differential, right? Like, let's, let's be honest here. If you're in solar power or you're in wind power or you're in battery technology, right? Everything, this is groovy, but still, you want to advocate for your industry to continue to do even better, in the mean, but there are others.
Industries where it's not going quite so well for them, right? where, or where, you even look at things like healthcare, where, we're going to see increased burdens on healthcare from things like zoonotic pandemics, but also from disaster scenarios of increased extreme weather events, which not only impacts the, the.
The people who have to be cared for who themselves are victims of hurricanes, wildfires, et cetera, all that stuff, but also the health care professionals themselves who they are being impacted as individuals. Their ability to deliver health care in the setting is being impacted by all those things, right?
Name your profession, we can talk about, or name your industry, we can talk about how it's going to, how it's going to impact, how climate change is going to impact that profession or industry. You think you're not affected? Two words for you. Supply chain. right, so there, there's an enormous opportunity here to look at that and look at what you are advocating for and bring those two things together. The U. S. Department of Defense considers climate change to be a national, major national security threat. So there you go.
Carol: I appreciated how much you framed it in terms of business risks and mitigating risks because it really pulls it out of the ideological Debate and so just as we round out here what's, what would you say if, if an organization hasn't really started talking about this, hasn't been paying attention, maybe they've been thinking about it on an individual level, but they haven't bought it at the organizational level. What are some of the things, what are, what are one or two things that you would recommend for them to get started?
Elizabeth: Well, for one, it's, it's totally okay to start with that group of individuals, whether it's staff, whether it's members, whether it's, volunteers, whether it's your board, but it's, it's totally okay to start with that, that group that is already intrinsically interested in this because, one of the things that persuades people to try more stuff is seeing success.
So if, and if you look at the case studies, that's where things got going for these organizations. There was some internal group, whether it be staff, whether it be members, whether it be volunteers, who was like, wait a second, we need to start paying attention to this. And they were the ones who got the flywheel moving and started the momentum for change, the other thing that I, the other two pieces of advice I would have would relate to number one.
Associations really do need to look at what's going on and coming at them, qua their professions and industries, because seriously, every single profession or industry is currently or is about to be radically affected by this. And, if you want to claim that you are there as a leader of, thought leader for, an advocate for your profession or industry, you cannot be caught.
with your pants down not paying attention to what's happening. you are, you are doing a disservice to your profession or industry if you are not starting to pay attention to this. The other thing that I would advise in a, in a slightly less, warning of doom perspective, I guess, is that the reason that people associate in the first place is to solve big problems.
So, and when we think about climate change, we tend to be very focused on the extremes of it. And what do I mean by that? I mean, it's either, oh, well, the UN is going to have to come in and fix everything, or I have to immediately go out and install solar panels and get an electric car, right? And I'm not saying that the UN doesn't have a role or that you shouldn't get solar panels and electric cars.
Those are all good things. But the vast majority of the work that's going to have to take place here is going to have to take place in between those two extremes, associations are a key player in that middle. And so like, let's go folks. We've, we've got people, we've got expertise, we've got resources, we've got energy, we've got interest, we've got attention.
We can bring all these things to bear on this and be a key contributor to addressing this problem.
Read the white paper.
I have a very wise friend who I met through the association community, although he's not much in the association community anymore, but DC folks who've been around for a while may remember Vinay Kumar and he is very fond of saying, just do the next right thing. And I, I think that's genius because, to Shelley's point, this can all look and feel extremely overwhelming, right?
This is the very definition of a wicked problem. if we can focus on just doing the next right thing, then you do the next right thing after that, then you do the next thing, right thing after that, then before it, you've made some really significant changes to have a significant impact, made significant progress.
And I just one more time wanted to reiterate for folks, if they are interested in all this. and want to grab the white paper, which you absolutely should, and read it and share it and check out the resources we have. You can get it at ac3coalition.com. So that's the letter A, the letter C, the number three, coalition.
com. We are also in the process of getting a community up and running on the Breezio platform thanks to the generosity of the nice folks who run Breezio. And for both sharing resources about this, but also, one of the great things about associations is we love to share ideas with each other because we mostly don't compete with each other.
This is your opportunity to go and share what your association is doing to address climate change. What questions you have, problems you're running into, things you'd like to try and get advice. That's also AC3, the letter A, the letter C, the number three dot Breezio. com. So come join us. To take care of and work, things that I, I end with, Wow. We don't have to be martyrs.
Carol: one point of the conversation, we were talking about, wellbeing and living, living a life where you can do all the different things, take care of the people you need to take care of and work and not destroy the planet in the, in the, in the But one of the things that I, I end with, with every episode is asking each guest, what permission slip or invitation would you give to nonprofit leaders so that they don't have to be a martyr to the cause?
So what invitation or permission slip would you give nonprofit leaders for that?
Elizabeth: Oh, at the end of the white paper we reference a recent anthology that was edited by a historian and, and writer named Rebecca Solnit the, the anthology is Not Too Late, Changing the Climate Story from Despair to Possibility. And she has a question in there that I just think is genius and I think helps with that.
one of the things that I think a lot of people worry about. The, the whole concept of addressing climate change is, we're going to have to somehow devolve to a, no electricity, subsistence level. Back to a way of living where, exactly where you're like, we don't have modern medicine and if you get a paper cut and it gets infected, we're going to have to cut off your arm and then that's probably going to go septic and you're going to die, right?
And so, that's, and that's the fear that, that we're heading, heading back to that place. encourages us to think a little differently. And, the question that she posits is, what if austerity is how we live now and abundance could be what is to come? So we have some of us right now in 2024 in, in the world we have a lot of material abundance that's based on fossil fuels, but those resources are unequally distributed.
And even people who have a lot of stuff tend to lack. Well being, that's beyond stuff and that, that's not what true richness is. Nobody at the end of their life is like, gee, I wish I had more stuff, right? It's all about connection with other people. It's all about having meaningful work.
It's all about having an impact on the world around us. It's all about connecting with nature. All that stuff. It's the possibility of the future that we can achieve together if we can envision it, if we can keep that in our minds and if we can work towards it.
Carol: And take that – what is it that just, just the next good step
Elizabeth: Just, just, just do the next right thing.
Carol: Yep. All right. Well, thank you so much. This has been awesome. I will definitely be putting a link to the white paper in the show notes so everybody can, and can grab that, but really appreciate the two of you, all the work that you do and, and this really significant resource that you've contributed to the sector.
Elizabeth: It was entirely our pleasure. Thank you so much for having us.
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