Future 500 in Action: Workshopping Environmental Justice
Phoebe Fu, Manager and Erik Wohlgemuth, CEO at Future 500
Published April, 2024
Future 500 in Action: Workshopping Environmental Justice
At Future 500, our team envisions a world where we are no longer needed. We are depolarizers, building bridges between business and civil society to work as partners and responsible stewards of a clean, just, and prosperous world. We initiate and nurture strategic connections between corporate and civil society change agents so they learn to develop and maintain enduring trust-based relationships. Our ethos and mission is to find common ground and create multi-sectoral partnerships in surprising ways, pushing the right social acupuncture points for systems change
How do we do it?
Recently, we helped facilitate an environmental justice (EJ) workshop with a Fortune 500 company’s cross-functional leaders (including strategy, operations, and site leaders) with a leading EJ advocate and grantmaker, and other Fortune 500 executive leaders who are taking thoughtful and substantive approaches to operationalizing EJ within their companies. Through discussions, exercises, and a community visit, we sought to cultivate an open learning environment where participants considered complex yet crucial questions of how to embed EJ within a company and support EJ communities more effectively.
From initial feedback, the company leaders deepened their understanding of the historical challenges experienced by communities from business and regulatory practices. They also gained a greater appreciation for the industry's opportunity, responsibility, and capabilities to share the burdens and benefits of their relationship with the communities where they operate.
In turn, the philanthropic leader left with a deepened understanding of how seriously some industry leaders are supporting EJ communities, their desire to learn and continually improve, and how much of what companies are doing can be “invisible” to philanthropic donors and their grantees. This person found such new knowledge critical to inform their strategies on how to hold companies accountable for helping accelerate the energy transition.
Because of this connection, the companies’ and the foundation program officer’s practices may substantively change to produce complementary efforts and greater collaboration. Without such “uncommon” connections between philanthropy and industry, each side will more likely miss and continue mistrusting one another and miss opportunities to collaborate—fueling the cycle of non-communication and demonization. Our team looks forward to nurturing and progressing these relationships so they can endure without us.
To catalyze trust-building that can lead to systems change, it is critical to challenge groupthink, breaking down silos between companies, philanthropy, and civil society and creating safe forums for hard conversations to unfold. While we live in increasingly polarized times where people’s views should and will undoubtedly differ, there is always an opportunity to build mutual understanding and partnership that leads to meaningful change.
Want to join the conversation? Reach out to: info@future500.org
Future 500 is a non-profit consultancy that builds trust between companies, advocates, investors, and philanthropists to advance business as a force for good. We specialize in stakeholder engagement, sustainability strategy, and responsible communication. From stakeholder mapping to materiality assessments, partnership development to activist engagement, target setting to CSR reporting strategy, we empower our partners with the skills and relationships needed to systemically tackle today's most pressing environmental, social, and governance (ESG) challenges.
Want to learn more? Reach out any time.
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