Sustainability December 17, 2006

Folks:

For all of us involved in solving the hurts of this world, the concept of sustainability is hardly new.  No matter what our nonprofit mission...from saving trees to repairing limbs to soothing a child's pain...the task of keeping operations solvent necessarily was central to any activity.  The task of acquiring the resources to address our missions was never far from the surface, even if we chose to hide our head in the sand.

And now, for some of us, sustainability has taken on a much larger venue...life on this planet.  I was reminded of this in two ways this weekend.  First, I heard a scientist claim that we haven had this much carbon (today) in our atmosphere for over 20 million years.  Must have been a bad spate of calamities to trigger that non-industrial carbon spike.  Then I caught Jon Ritter's Lancaster Sunday News Article "Tracking Your Carbon Footprint".  In it, the story's protagonist buys off her share of her vacation airflight's carbon dioxide "culpability".  I was intrigued, and impressed, by the willingness of individuals to take responsibility for what they do in this world.

Is it time for us, as nonprofit managers and supporters, to consider that we act accordingly?  Of course, each of us must wrestle with the personal responsibilities we own.  But perhaps we should think seriously about how we might conduct our mission in ways that formally respect the environment and tread softly on resources. 

Often, the things we do that respect the environment work out to respect our budgets as well.  I encourage you to consider how your work processes and policies can be nudged to honor leaving a viable, even healthier, world to our children and to theirs.

We try to do that every day at Mission Research.  It's the very right thing to do.

Sustainability...two concepts, now linked.  For all our sakes.

Thank you!