The Global Reporting Initiative is to adopt a more self-sufficient
business policy of generating money from training and educational
services that will reduce its dependence on grants.
GRI chief executive Ernst Ligteringen says the idea is to ‘shift
reliance away from a philanthropy-based model toward a self-sufficient
model’ by finding different funding sources.
As a result, the GRI will begin to develop and charge for ‘new services
and products’ to support its sustainability reporting guidelines, which
are going through their third revision (EP7, issue 4, p12). It will
advise companies on writing and evaluating sustainability reports and
offer training on how to use the guidelines. It will also produce a
system for registering reports, under which it will verify the extent
to which its guidelines have been used by reporters and ‘officially
recognize’ those that conform to them.
The GRI board will discuss the new business model at a meeting next month.
Ligteringen said the change towards paid-for services is needed ‘to further assure the sustainability of GRI’.
