Although it’s not his ‘real’ job, Allen White has spent most of the last two years working on a master plan that will radically reshape the Global Reporting Initiative in the coming months
Operating under the title of GRI transition director on a sabbatical from his usual role as vice president of the US-based Tellus Institute social research centre, White is currently overseeing the GRI’s transformation from an ad hoc organization into a permanent body with a new structure, more staff and a much larger budget.
While the changes will not affect the GRI’s central role of helping companies to report their social and environmental impacts through its Sustainability Reporting Guidelines, they will turn the Boston-based body into a different animal.
The GRI has been run by a steering committee of volunteers since it was set up in 1997 by the US-based Coalition for Environmentally Responsible Economies, a non-governmental organization that is made up of investors, environmentalists, trade unions and community advocates. But from early next year it will have a new board of directors, an expanded permanent secretariat and an elected ‘stakeholder council’ overseeing the whole operation.
A nomination committee is currently selecting candidates to serve as unpaid members of the 15-strong board, which will be set up in January, and the secretariat of eight full-time equivalent staff will triple in size by mid-2002.
White has set the new, permanent organization’s budget at $4.5million (£3.1m) a year from its current level of $1.5m and expects that in three years it will have risen to $7.5m.
By then the total number of GRI staff, including small regional offices in South America, Asia and elsewhere, could be as high as 50 or 60.
As the current budget comes almost entirely from institutions such as the Ford Foundation and the United Nations, White is vigorously campaigning to raise extra cash from other sources.
‘The game plan is to create a $30m capital fund from a range of sources – from corporations to governments and foundations,’ he says. ‘I’m guardedly optimistic we will come up with that money.’
White admits the plan involves ‘a lot of growth’ but claims it will be within tightly defined parameters, and he rejects any charge of empire-building.
‘The numbers are quite modest,’ he argues. ‘A body with a yearly budget of $5m and 50 people worldwide is hardly going to achieve global dominance. But at the same time we want to be big enough to influence the course of corporate disclosure as best we can.’
The key to doing that, he says, will be the creation of two categories of stakeholders in the GRI, a process that will start in 2002. Non-governmental organizations, consultancies and companies will be recruited as ‘registered’ stakeholders. They will be required to state their commitment to the GRI, will receive information updates and, in the case of companies, will have to undertake to use the GRI guidelines. A second category of ‘associate’ stakeholders will consist of individuals, who will also be kept informed of the GRI’s progress. As stakeholders, neither group will be required to pay fees.
The registered stakeholders will be able to vote for members of a 60-strong stakeholder council as their representatives. Anyone working for a registered stakeholder organization can stand. Although the stakeholder council will have only an advisory role on policy, White says its members will have ‘huge weight and muscle’ and that the board, which ultimately will make the decisions, is unlikely to go against their wishes.
‘The strength of the organization will be in those who serve on the stakeholder council, because they will drive it forward democratically,’ he adds.
White will be involved full time for at least the next year, but a chief executive will be appointed in early 2002 to allow him to reduce his participation to that of a senior advisor.
In the meantime he also has to pilot through ‘potentially wholesale’ changes to the GRI guidelines, which are currently being reviewed (EP3, issue 5).
The voluntary guidelines, which were launched in June 2000 and are already used by 84 organizations, mostly large companies, as the basis for their reporting, are being looked at by a GRI temporary working group that will present its conclusions to the new board in January. A further working group will then revise the wording of the guidelines. After board approval, the update will appear in mid-2002. ‘In three or four years I think the need for further across-the-board revisions will diminish,’ says White. ‘By then the GRI should be on a firm footing.’