Our Relevance Today?
Thirty years ago, Bill and Tachi had the foresight to embrace stakeholder engagement, pioneering methodologies that many dismissed as touchy-feely, believing that a corporate sustainability focus was not an aberration isolated to a select few upstart companies like Interface Carpet. Equally prescient, but more unfortunate, they correctly anticipated the rise of polarization and conflict. Corporate power grew, as did the business’s need to compete for influence with policymakers. Commensurately in response, the breadth and sophistication of philanthropic networks funding corporate campaign movements grew, aligning diverse grassroots community, shareholder, and associated political power to erect guardrails that guide corporate practices to address social and environmental problems.
Today, Future 500’s mission and theory of change are no longer woo-woo, but essential. Stakeholder engagement is now mainstream, integrated into numerous corporate accountability standards and frameworks, and terms like “stakeholder capitalism” are part of the mainstream lexicon. Likewise, corporate responsibility is integral to shareholder value rather than an aberration.
The two are complementary, and in completing a recent historical assessment of our impact, five key themes emerged.
• Culture Change: Educating corporate leaders to enable culture and process change within their companies, where they regularly seek out and integrate stakeholder feedback into their business planning.
• Sourcing Policies: Implementing supply chain policies that drive positive economic, social, and environmental progress.
• Policy Alignment: Companies and issue advocates aligning around local, state, or federal policies that drive positive returns for business and society.
• Avoided Campaigns: Agreements that help avert corporate or shareholder campaigns so those resources can be deployed elsewhere.
• Cultivating constructive, collaborative spaces that grow increasingly rare in a polarized world.
Looking Ahead
As corporate and civil society power has grown, so has philanthropy’s power. Until recently, funding to influence corporate practices was predominantly, though not exclusively, the domain of more progressive philanthropic networks. This manifested in a diversified strategy, pressuring companies to address financially material social and environmental issues as companies proved more nimble and innovative than governments in advancing positive marketplace change. In effect, companies were “first movers” in creatively addressing issues; governments then followed with investment and regulation to set standards for companies.
Beginning in 2010, following the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling, unlimited and often undisclosed outside spending on political causes was legalized. Funding for conservative causes was common before the ruling, but after, we saw a dramatic rise in overall funding and the emergence of conservative causes using tactics—brand boycotts, shareholder resolutions, and litigation—that progressive funders had successfully deployed to influence companies.
Companies now find themselves increasingly facing diametrically opposing stakeholder demands on social issues like DEI, and environmental issues like Energy Procurement and Advanced Recycling. Just as campaigns by groups like Engine No. 1 pushing companies to transition away from fossil fuels and the Human Rights Campaign encouraging increased corporate focus on DEI, we saw rising conservative counter campaigns from groups like Consumer Research against DEI and Americans for Prosperity opposing renewable energy development. Similarly, we saw progressive state attorneys general filing climate accountability lawsuits against fossil fuel companies, while conservative state attorneys general countered, filing lawsuits against those states seeking to overturn them.
As political scrutiny and associated legal risks increase for companies, they are also rising for a host of stakeholders, including civil society, academia, and the media. Interestingly, for the Future 500 team, this dynamic is creating new opportunities for companies and their stakeholders to find common cause. We proactively help seed these opportunities in our ongoing engagements with companies and civil society, such as in the diverse speakers we curate for our multistakeholder meetings, and via direct engagements we facilitate for our partners. Our efforts help counter polarization by getting companies and their stakeholders out of their echo chambers, engaging each other directly. By doing so, we foster the human connection essential for overcoming skepticism and moving toward solutions.
Thirty years ago, Future 500’s stakeholder engagement work was considered too touchy-feely. Today, it is essential, and with great humility, the Future 500 team seeks to honor and build upon Bill and Tachi’s legacy in pursuit of a vision where depolarizers are rarely, if ever, needed. Tachi now rests in peace, but if he’s watching, he will rest easier if we succeed in realizing this vision someday. Onward.
“The purpose of Propaganda is to make one set of people forget that other sets of people are humans.” – Aldous Huxley
Article from Future 500 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.
