We often look at business from a 10,000 foot level, like staring down at the streets of city from an observation deck. From there, spotting risk is like seeing a storm coming – only the biggest black cloud is truly visible. Risks in environment, social and governance factors are often hiding behind that cloud. In today’s ever-changing ESG landscape, it is imperative you turn the dial to clear your vision of these growing risks.

For Fortune 500 or S&P 500 companies, good corporate responsibility practices are table stakes. For major investors, a focus on ESG (environment, social and governance factors) is more than just a passing fad. For small and medium sized enterprises, ESG and CSR are what you might be missing on your road to being a large or public enterprise. And for nonprofits, strategic sustainability goes beyond fundraising and strategic planning to true organizational resilience.

In short, the world of sustainability, responsibility and sustainable investment is growing rapidly. And today’s institutional and individual investors in every industry or business classification are broadly considering ESG factors in their decision-making.

In today’s ever-changing ESG landscape, considering the vast stakeholder expectations surrounding these issues, we ask the key question: What are you missing?

Investors with an ESG lens are using positive screens for ESG responsibility, a checklist of good behavior. A CSR department? Check. Women on your board? Check. A sustainability report? Check. This checklist is important, necessary even. But inherent problems exist in its structure. Just a few include:

• We are inherently ignoring ESG risks in companies outside the Fortune/S&P landscape
• Venture Capital and Private Equity are missing potential ESG risks that could deeply affect their portfolio’s return
• Individual investors and consumers aren’t reading 180 page sustainability reports
• Big corporations are resting too easy on checking the boxes we listed above, and ignoring major ESG risk as a result
• The current ESG landscape all but ignores the nonprofit sector in its evaluation, even though the sector generates over $1 billion in economic value in the U.S. alone

With our clients, we craft plans to bring your programs, initiatives and business values to a place where you know and understand the environmental, social and governance risks in your work, how to mitigate those risks in a minimally invasive and cost-conscious way, and communicate your foresight and subsequent action to investors and consumers.

Learn more below about the types of businesses and organizations we work with, and the projects most closely aligned with our expertise.