Working with “Leadership” Companies

Businesses, like most other organizations, pay closest attention to what their peers – and especially their competitors – are doing. Hence, the potential for a cross-sector partnership to have impact is much greater if a major industry player is an early adopter and advocate of change. In the corporate social responsibility movement, a small but growing number of such companies – particularly global corporations and companies based in western Europe – are playing leadership roles.

In the words of a grantee active in the social responsibility movement: "You start meeting with an industry leader and you actually create the potential for systemic change as a result of that. That doesn’t work everywhere, but it does work more and more. Sometimes, you actually hear businesses start to say, ‘We’ll leapfrog over this question. We want to be the market leader on this.'"

As the banner example, she notes the conversion of the do-it-yourself home improvement giant Home Depot, Inc., to environmentally-friendly wood products. Under intense pressure from sustainable forestry advocates, the company first created a single line of “green” products. As more and more customers called to ask about it, the grantmaker says, “they woke up and realized, well, if we’re selling one line of wood that’s sustainably harvested, we’re basically saying ‘We’ve got one good product and the rest of our products are killing the planet.’ That’s tough to brand, isn’t it?”

Home Depot has publicly committed itself to being an environmental leader and is increasingly using wood products certified by the Forest Stewardship Council — making a huge impact on the forestry industry.