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.’
