Next Tuesday at GreenBiz 22, Chris Haasen of our long-standing partner S&Z and I will be conducting a workshop to shed light on:

• The ABCs of ESG. What you need to know about the terminology and standards, the reporting frameworks and the ratings agency game.
• The watch-outs. What gaps must be filled and which commitments must be made to appease ratings agencies and investors as well as employees and consumers.
• Bake in. Level out. How to bake sustainability into a brand platform and frame an ESG story at different levels, so you can speak to different audiences in a way they can each understand while staying consistent, including via your ESG reporting.

We’ll have the folks in attendance work together to nail down several key takeaways — like which ESG ratings agencies matter most for each attendee’s company, the most important watch-outs and story elements for each attendee’s situation, and what their lead messages should be.

So, if you’re heading to GreenBiz, join us!

If you’re not heading to GreenBiz, here are a few of the things we’ll be covering so you can at least get some of the benefit of our session:

• Americans are increasingly putting companies onto a “good list” and a “bad list,” and 26% are taking real action based on that. We’ll dig into who these folks are and what motivates them. You can learn more by clicking here and here.
• We’ll also dig into what these folks want companies to be doing — and saying — for people and the planet.
• We’ll do a primer on sustainable finance — following the money that’s driving a lot of ESG action these days — and the alphabet soup of raters and the frameworks investors are using to try and de-risk their investments.
• Going deeper, we’ll dive into exact actions and messages consumers want to see from companies and what commitments, information, metrics and reporting investors are looking for.
• Lastly, we’ll lay out how to go about creating the right communications that work at multiple levels — more generalized for mainstream buyers and super-detailed for investors and NGOs.

You’ll get the most out of the session if you attend live and in person, but if you’d like the deck, just reach out to us at [email protected] and request a copy. I hope to see you next week!

ESG reporting: deciphering the alphabet soup
— Chief Executive

ESG is becoming an expectation for businesses, but knowing where to start is tough. This Chief Executive piece walks through the importance of ESG reporting for transparency and risk assessment and provides a basic understanding of the ESG alphabet soup.
Read more…

As investors demand climate data, sustainability software is booming
— Protocol

Long gone are the days of simply calling your business sustainable — now you have to prove it. The truth is in the numbers and investors are looking at ESG to determine investment risk. This Protocol article discusses how the need for numbers has led to a boom in tracking software.
Read more…