Impact of climate change on charitable purposes

The Baring Foundation is building on previous work around environmental audits for voluntary organisations to explore the wider impacts of climate change on voluntary organisations and their beneficiaries.

They have published a report from a round-table meeting on the links between climate change and the charitable purposes of non-environmental organisations and are also inviting tenders for a project on this. It will connect up experts in climate change with experts in non-environmental areas of the voluntary sector to generate new perspectives on the urgency for action.

News item with tender link at http://www.baringfoundation.org.uk/News.htm, meeting report (pdf, 23KB) with some examples of action, at http://www.baringfoundation.org.uk/Primarypurposemeeting.pdf.

Meanwhile, Charity Finance Directors' Group has made public commitments to sustainability with a web page detailing their approach, declaring that "the threat of climate change is a real and present concern to every individual and every organisation". This could well give some practical inspiration to other organisations, and CFDG is also working on sustainability reporting guidance for charity finance directors, hopefully to be available spring 2009, http://www.cfdg.org.uk/cfdg/influencing_sustainability.asp.

And don't forget the green office guide from Every Action Counts (actual title 'Changing the Way We Work') downloadable at http://www.everyactioncounts.org.uk/en/fe/page.asp?n1=230&n2=281 (reminder courtesy of bassac).