Sustainable nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) make essential contributions to the environment, society and the sustainability of the world at large. They’re responsible for important research, aid, consumer awareness, conservation and so much more, and it’s important for you, as a sustainability student, to be aware of the most influential organizations working in sustainability today. These NGOs often offer valuable resources to students, including research, hands-on internships and volunteer opportunities. Read on to find out how 14 of the most influential sustainability NGOs are making a difference, and identify which ones you should get involved with.

1. CERES: CERES promotes sustainable business practices and solutions by working with more than 80 companies, from auto companies to financial services providers (a third are Fortune 500 firms), as well as 130 member organizations. In 2003, Ceres launched the Investor Network on Climate Risk (INCR), which has grown to include 100 leading investors collectively managing more than $11 trillion in assets.
2. Conservation International (CI): CI works with scientists, local communities and practitioners in the field to protect nature, global biodiversity and human communities. It strives to protect natural wealth, promote sustainable business and foster effective governance. CI has supported the creation, expansion and improved management of nearly 50 million acres of marine and terrestrial protected areas, and its data collection has led to the discovery of more than 1,400 species new to science.
3. Doctors Without Borders: Doctors Without Borders provides emergency medical aid to people affected by conflict, epidemics, disasters or exclusion from health care. Since 1971, the organization has treated tens of millions of people in over 80 countries. In 1999, it received the Nobel Peace Prize.
4. Food and Water Watch: Food and Water Watch works to make food, fish and water safe, accessible and sustainable. They’ve raised consumer awareness of the environmental and economic costs of bottled water, and have helped dozens of communities — from Stockton, California to Trenton, New Jersey — fight the privatization of public water supplies.
5. Greenpeace: When you think of eco-protest, Greenpeace is likely to pop in your mind. Founded in 1971, it’s the largest nonviolent, direct action environmental organization in the world with 2.8 million members. Greenpeace’s work focuses on climate change, oceans, forests, toxics, nuclear energy and sustainable agriculture.
6. Heifer International: Heifer International has provided over 20.7 million families — that’s 105.1 million men, women and children — with animals and training in sustainable agriculture so that they can feed and care for themselves. Founded over 70 years ago by a U.S. farmer, the organization focuses on ending hunger and poverty.
7. Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC): NRDC’s more than 350 lawyers, scientists and other professionals work with businesses, elected officials and community groups in the U.S. and internationally on issues including curbing global warming, clean energy, reviving the world’s oceans, defending endangered wildlife and wild places, pollution prevention, ensuring safe and sufficient water and fostering sustainable communities.
8. The Nature Conservancy (TNC): Focused on conserving land and species around the world, TNC has protected more than 119 million acres of land and thousands of miles of rivers worldwide. It also operates more than 100 marine conservation projects worldwide.
9. Ocean Conservancy: Since 1972, the Ocean Conservancy has worked to protect the health and vitality of the world’s oceans, including the species that call it home and the humans whose livelihoods depend upon them. Through its International Coastal Cleanup program, the organization has removed 144,606,491 pounds of trash from the world’s beaches over the last 25 years.
10. Oxfam: An international confederation of 17 organizations, Oxfam fights poverty and injustice in more than 90 countries. They work on interconnected issues like human rights, emergency response and sustainable development.
11. Sierra Club: Founded in 1892 by conservationist John Muir, the Sierra Club is one of the oldest and largest environmental organizations in the U.S. It has protected millions of acres of wilderness and has helped to pass key environmental legislation, including the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act and the Endangered Species Act. It’s also leading efforts to move away from the use of fossil fuels.
12. Slow Food International: As its name implies, Slow Food stands for the opposite of fast food: clean, fair and healthy food for all, regional traditions, gastronomic pleasure and a slow pace of life. Begun in Italy in the 1980s, Slow Food has members in 160 countries and promotes the principles of its Slow Food Manifesto through local and international events, its University of Gastronomic Sciences and more.
13. World Resources Institute: WRI works with leaders to turn information into action, with a focus on issues like climate change, energy, food, forests, water, cities and transportation, governance, business and finance. WRI has over 450 experts and staff working around the globe.
14. World Wildlife Fund (WWF): The WWF works in 100 countries to conserve nature and protect biodiversity. Founded in 1961, it’s now supported by nearly 5 million members worldwide.

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Before I blast the NGO community, let me say I consider them as a good friend. Friends tell each other when their collar is twisted, when kale is stuck in their front teeth. This is the spirit of this column.

Last week I wrote about my favorite sustainability experience: the Amazon soy moratorium. Now, I write about my least favorite and most frustrating endeavor: the quest for sustainable palm oil. It’s a case study of how NOT to create transformational change.

This is not about finger-pointing and blaming. I believe the NGOs involved with this are very well intended. However, they need a wake-up call because they are unwittingly suffering four common sins that stymie sustainability progress.

Just 10 percent of palm is purchased as certified sustainable today — 14 years since the Roundtable for Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) formally was initiated in 2002.

Sure, companies can do more, yet many have made commitments for zero deforestation and set specific sustainable palm oil goals. They need NGO help to get there.

Certainly, governments play a big role, too. Suffice to say, they are imperfect. Yes, economic development is winning over environmental preservation. Eighty-five percent of palm oil comes from Indonesia and Malaysia, where citizens see palm production as their pathway from tin shacks to modern homes with tiles and toilets. NGOs need to guide them in this delicate environmental/economic balance.

The most tangible and fixable part is the proliferation of NGOs not practicing what they preach to companies. The palm NGOs are not aligned, not working collaboratively and not showing flexibility. This creates havoc and paralysis in the marketplace.

Let’s look at the five common ways of NGOs gone astray:

1. Demonization

You’d think from following the common NGO narrative that palm oil is one of the most environmentally destructive crops of all time. In fact, its ecological impacts are the cream of the crop versus others oils. According to the CI report on Palm Oil (PDF) (a great, pragmatic guide for companies):

“Oil palm trees are incredibly efficient, yielding more oil on the same amount of land than any other leading oil crop — four to 10 times more than soy, rapeseed (canola) or sunflower.”

According to an outstanding Guardian in-depth journalistic report, alternatives to palm oil use two to eight times more fertilizers and five to 10 times more pesticides.

OK, this doesn’t mean we ignore the impacts on orangutans, climate change and deforestation. But don’t demonize a product that has so many positive attributes. Don’t you realize you’ll infuriate the people that grow and produce this stuff? Then they stiffen up and resist.

2. Perfectionism

RSPO has been picked apart as imperfect. It is.

But it’s a good, legitimate, inclusive effort that NGOs should support and build upon. NGOs should use the “slippery slope” principle more. Get something started, and see it improve over time.

All would benefit from digesting and implementing Dr. Cialdini’s Six Principles of Persuasion.

His fourth principle, “Consistency,” describes how asking for a small commitment can lead to a bigger one. When homeowners are asked to put a small postcard in their window promoting safe driving in the neighborhood, they are 400 percent more willing to put larger signs on their lawn a few weeks later. Consider the RSPO a postcard and let it grow from there.

3. Complexism

Perfectionism produces “complexism” as well. I made the word up, because there is no term for how relentless, detailed-oriented, scientific and exhaustive NGOs sometimes can be when it comes to developing sustainability standards, principles and metrics. Businesses say the simpler the better. NGOs say the thicker the better. The RSPO tries to make them happy by producing a set of standards that only an expert can comprehend.

Go see the RSPO Principles and Criteria (PDF), all 71 pages of it. I can see the corporate purchasing manager relishing this.

4. Lack of marketplace reality

You can’t treat every product, crop or material the same way. Coffee, beef and diamonds are different from palm oil, mostly because palm could be the most invisible, far-removed ingredient in existence. Check out any label for your favorite bakery or personal care item. Palm is far down the list, and much of palm is converted to more than 100 derivatives and oleo chemicals, confusing purchasers even more. Here are just the “As”:

• Alcohol Ether Sulfates
• Alcohol Ethoxylates
• Alcohol Sulfates
• Alkylpolyglycoside (APG)
• Alpha-linolenic Acid
• Ascorbic Acid

You can’t pressure Western companies who are only 15 percent of the palm oil marketplace and expect systemic change. Most of palm is used in Asia.

You can’t just go after big brands and expect them to manage a supply chain that has them seven stages removed, starting with the smallholders, to mills, then plantations, to storage facilities, refineries, ingredient manufacturers and then product manufacturers, then into a final product a retailer sells, such as ice cream, a granola bar or shampoo — with palm as a minute ingredient.

5. Disjointed direction

The last thing we need is competition over the rules of the game, and then to change the rules. That’s what this 14-year sustainable palm oil journey often feels like.

NGOs have promulgated various sustainable palm alternatives. They are using too many sticks and not enough carrots.

Imagine a world in which the top 15 NGOs working on sustainable palm oil agree on the approach, principles and measures. This would instill corporate and governmental confidence on a unified direction for all to move forward together.

On the bright side, the table is set for a sustainable palm tipping point. Traders and processors, representing 80 percent of the trade for palm, have made commitments, so the challenge is to implement these commitments with a positive, collaborative and market-friendly support from the NGO community. Allow for more flexibility on how to get there. Encourage innovation, too.

Palm is not the enemy. It is how it is grown and managed that counts.

If you keep beating up Western companies trying to make this work, they eventually will walk away. Or companies will clean up their supply chains, exit bad relationships and go with a few big players. This will not solve the problem and it will just create a niche, premium market.

Sustainable palm should be the norm, the default, not a niche.

OK, my friends. I’ve let you know your fly is open. Now is the time to shift to a positive approach, steeped in market practicality, with an aligned view of the future.

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1. What is Sustainability?

A sustainable organisation is one that can continue its activities into the future.

Before any activity is started, the NGO has to ask “How long can we continue?” Not how long we would like to continue, but how long we definitely can continue – to provide, supervise, motivate, train or do what the project needs.

Once you are clear about the lifespan that you can guarantee, then you can fit your activities to the time you have. There may be pressure to plan long-term projects even when the money is not around: your colleagues will be optimistic and assume that funding will appear; and they hope that their jobs and salaries will continue into the future. But it is not that easy.

2. Sustainability for projects

If you have projects which help your beneficiaries, then:

• either these activities should have a limited life, for example a one-off heath promotion action;

• or they should be able to survive on their own if and when you stop your financial and supervising support.

  So you should have built a degree of community participation and/or contribution in cash and kind in order to guarantee a minimum level of ownership. Income-generating activities should be making a real income for the target groups and therefore be more than just social schemes. The management of the money involved should follow the same rules as money management within your NGO.

Example: In Puntland, a Health Centre had been set up by a European NGO and had provided health care. But after six months the NGO lost it source of funding and withdrew. A Micro credit programme, recently started with a remit to help women, decided to keep funding the Health Centre out of its own profits to continue a minimum package of vaccinations and family planning.

3. Sustainability and people

There are important issues of sustainability if you train people to do a job at village level. Be very careful of, for example, training people in health matters, unless the Ministry of Health or someone else are going to take over responsibility for the trainees and supervise them.

Why? Look at Water and Sanitation projects, where projects need a Hygiene Education component and often train village people in health matters. Then the project ends; the trainees have a certificate, little training and no supervision. They may buy a white coat, start giving injections – perhaps knocking out the teeth of children with diarrhoea or branding them with red-hot bicycle spokes. They can do harm. The same thing happens when NGOs start so-called Primary Health Care projects, train community health workers but disappear after a year. So:

! Be careful of creating a group of workers. Either they should have a future, can be rewarded and supervised; or their task should be self-limiting

4. Financial sustainability

It is possible to ensure financial sustainability but for most NGOs it demands a lot of work. You funding can come from:

• many tiny donations from community supporters;

• fewer but larger donations or legacies;

• one or more National or International funders;

• income from savings;

• income-generating projects.
  EXAMPLE: In west Kenya, where HIV/AIDS is endemic, one NGO has a hearse that is hired out to carry bodies to the graveyard – a small but regular income.
• If you have one or more donors, remember that the building of a relationship of trust with your donor(s) is just as important as the amount of money you ask or receive.

EXAMPLE: A WORKSHOP ON FUNDRAISING FOR A HUMAN RIGHTS NGO IN LESOTHO

This NGO (CLRAC) organised a Workshop on Fund-raising for both staff and Board Members. Together, over three days, the participants worked through the following:

• a brief evaluation of fund-raising by CLRAC in the past years: conclusions;
• how to plan the funding needs for CLRAC and set realistic objectives for the period 2000-2002;
• development of a fund-raising strategy, including: planning/timing of projects and CLRAC organisational costs in need of funding;
• capacity assessment in CLRAC to conduct fund-raising; how to build in fund-raising capacity: human resources development and organisational development;
• how to target donors, local and international – and what their requirements are;
• how to write a proposal for project funding;
• an outline for financial reporting;
• a plan to write a Strategic Planning document for implementation of fund-raising by CLRAC;
• a meeting with a Maseru-based donor representative.

Because the Board members and staff followed the Workshop together, a feeling of commitment and co-working also developed; the Strategic Planning Document got written and some money has been raised.

Accepting the mind-set that will help you succeed:

Non-profit organisations in the South are steadily becoming more professional. For NGOs seeking grants, one of the most important steps is a mental one. They accept that there are no quick fixes, no magic shortcuts. The steady, regular work of your organisation – your board members, your staff responsible for funding – all this will develop an effective strategy through many small steps.

Part of the process is to be clear about what you are – each of you, each a very special NGO – and to make that clear in the documents that go to the possible funder. A Mission Statement that is enthusiastic, imaginative and creative will help a lot.

Can you answer the following questions clearly and directly?

1. What is the unique purpose of your organisation?
2. What are the basic needs that this organisation fills? (the target group it serves and how this organisation meets the needs of the beneficiaries)

» For more in-depth guidance, download folder A Guide to Fundraising

5. Organisational and Institutional Sustainability

Organisational sustainability:

An organisation is like a plant. There is a part of it that is above ground – stem, leaves, fruit. These are the organisational aspects that an outsider can see – the projects, the administration, the capacity building. But there is also the part below the ground – the roots, or institutional aspects of the organisation. This part is strong if the NGO is serious about its purpose, has strong objectives and convictions. If the boss and staff have lost their vision, the roots are weak but may still be rescue-able and a guarantee that the NGO can survive. If the roots have been eaten by pests, no matter how well the office is run, the NGO will die.

Institutional sustainability:

An NGO which is concerned about long life might choose to do a SWOT – Strengths, Opportunities, Weaknesses, Threats. For details see The purpose of doing a Swot is twofold; firstly it enables the NGO to find the issues which everyone agrees are strengths, weaknesses etc. The next step is to work with these issues, establish the relationship between them, select the ones which are priority and then transform them into policy issues or Things-to-be-Done.

EXAMPLE: A PROBLEM OF INSTITUTIONAL SUSTAINABILITY

An Asian NGO had the stated aim of improving the skills of farmers throughout the country. However there was also an unwritten aim, held by the boss and most of the Board; that was to spread the culture of the majority ethnic group into minority areas. This aim had changed the nature of services for the worse. There was no serious decentralisation and all training was in the majority language even where the farmers could not understand it. Project workers were becoming increasingly demoralised.

This kind of Institutional problem is fundamental, is corrupting and would probably sabotage any attempt to build a good strong NGO. To bring the problem into the open and make the organisation an honest one would be very difficult – but it could be done in the future.

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