Engagement

Getting everyone aware, involved and accountable for taking better actions for our planet is one of the most important things we can do to drive change.

Steps you can take

Engage your team - staff, volunteers and trustees

It's so important to engage and involve your staff, volunteers and trustees in what you are doing.

Add sustainability/ environmental actions to your team/ board/ volunteer meetings, encourage staff and volunteers to becoming green champions and collectively discuss and agree the changes you could make to reduce your carbon emissions.

Encourage your team to come up with and action ideas, eco-activities and challenges. Some ideas to get you started:

  • hold an ethical bake off
  • organise an office book/ clothes/unwanted gifts swap shop
  • create monthly green challenges for employees and volunteers e.g. wear the same clothes week/ veggie or vegan no waste lunch/ no car day/week.

Share the steps you're taking and inspire others

Follow the Share link and share any actions you've been taking to inspire other similar organisations.

Include information about the steps you've been taking on your website, in e-newsletters and on social media.

Shout about what you've done and why, what you have learnt and what benefits it has brought you.

Ask for help and support

Ask your local council about what they can do to support you. They might have schemes to help improve energy efficiency of buildings, or to carry out energy audits.

You don't know if you don't ask.

Have a conversation with your funders and/or corporate partners/ supporters about your ambitions/ plans to be more environmental sustainable and see how they might also be able to help and support you.

If enough organisations ask for help, they're more likely to respond with action.

Useful links:

Encourage staff & volunteer learning and involvement

Include sustainability as a core part of your staff and volunteer training and development processes, encouraging staff and volunteers to take up learning in this area.

Ensure you cover environmental sustainability in your staff induction process. It is important that sustainability is ingrained in the organisation so by making sure new staff and volunteers are aware of it at the beginning, they know how important it is to consider in every aspect of work.

Write a blog and share on social media

Open working is a great way to share what you've been doing.

It helps others to understand your challenges and how you've overcome them and encourages others to make progress.

Why not write a blog sharing what climate action you've taken, why and what you've learnt, and share it via social media.

Resources

  • Environmental risk assessment
  • Having conversations about climate change
  • Groups that can help
  • Climate Key Words Glossary
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Case Studies

Actions from the North East and Cumbria

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We've made a public promise on our website to stop climate change. This includes the action plan for 2022 so we can be accountable for doing what we say we are going to do.
Karen Parry
Inclusion North
10-49 employees
We've gone through the actions on the Going Green Together web tool and used them to develop a climate action plan for our organisation
Richard Haigh
The Key
10-49 employees
Newcastle-upon-Tyne
We’ve set up an internal climate action group to look at what we can change in the way we run, who we can influence and how we can make sure people with a learning disability and autistic people are involved in the climate action conversation
Karen Parry
Inclusion North
10-49 employees

Have you taken action?

If you're a VCSE based in the North East or Cumbria and you've done something about the climate crisis, please share your action with us. We'd love to share it on this website, to inspire others.

Share your action →