By Alliance President Terry Gips
While we continue to need your support for our upcoming Giving Tuesday (December 2) and Year-End Fundraising Campaign, we want to share our hopes for some exciting, and hopefully game-changing, possibilities for funding the Alliance.
The Alliance is working as hard as possible on several completely new breakthrough ways of funding our work to create the promise of our becoming self-funding, allowing you to support other aligned nonprofits.
With your support today, we hope we can move from our paltry $40K budget that accomplishes so much using every dollar you contribute, to become an innovative, self-funded nonprofit model.
If we can achieve this, we’ll be able to actually help fund our partners. Even better, we could create a 501(c)4 lobbying arm and political action committee for Sustainability, Health, Equity and Kindness (S.H.E. Kindness), providing badly-needed funds to political candidates who share our values and are committed to S.H.E. Kindness.
The Alliance: From Powerful Pipe Dreams to Actual Realization
Have we lost our minds? Are we thinking too big? Are we just dreamers? Those are questions we’ve long lived with since we first created the Alliance 42 years ago.
People thought we were crazy to even imagine we could convince the world to undertake this new word “sustainability” that we helped invent and define. But we have succeeded.
Who would have thought in the wake of the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil disaster that we could convince hundreds of companies to commit to the CERES Principles for Corporate Environmental Responsibility?
Who could have imagined that it could be expanded to encompass all aspects of the new term “sustainability” into the Global Reporting Initiative having thousands of the world’s largest corporations implement and document their environment, social and governance (ESG) standards?
And finally, who could believe that we could work in partnership with more than 100 NGOs to get all 178 countries attending the 1992 UN Earth Summit to adopt sustainable agriculture as a goal? But we did.
Our New Big Vision: Self-Funding
We are now taking our biggest steps forward to truly fulfill our vision of co-creating a healthy, just, equitable, thriving, kind and peaceful world that works for everyone, fulfills their fundamental needs and realizes our greatest dreams of sustainability.
Don’t worry – we aren’t expecting you to drink the Koolaid. But if you trust us and provide our needed support now, it could become one of the best investments you’ve ever made. You will truly be playing a key role in co-creating the kind of world you’ve always dreamed of for yourself, your children and generations to come.
We want to become a predominant source of good, even great, in a world that is presently mired in threats and darkness. We may be going into winter, but for us, with our exciting transformative partnerships, it’s already beginning to feel a lot like Spring.
Okay, we’re not ignoring Christmas, Hanukkah or Kwanza – we hope you’ll enjoy them – but we’re focused on new beginnings and transformation. As Hall of Fame Boston Bruin Wayne Gretzky often said, he skates to where the puck is going to be, not to where it is. And while Wayne is a GOAT, we believe the time has come to create a new game.
This game will allow the resurgence and regeneration of all nonprofits committed to fundamental systems change and our shared vision, along with our partners in the public, private, nonprofit and academic sectors. We are closer than ever to fulfilling our vision.
Unveiling a First Possible Breakthrough Initiative, But We Need Your Help
In addition to our four major partnership initiatives, we will be unveiling several cutting-edge programs that will allow us to fulfill our promise.
We’ll begin by sharing one where we could really use your help connecting us with businesses you know.
We’re exploring an innovative passive-fundraising approach in which businesses that conduct a significant number of online payments through non-Visa/AMEX credit cards, bank payments and other processing will be able to effortlessly support the Alliance at no cost to them. It’s like a free lunch with a lot more benefits for everyone.
It’s a clear win-win-win-win for every partner business, their customers, the Alliance and the planet. Businesses will benefit from reduced processing fees and positive PR. Their customers will pay nothing extra, but know they’re supporting a worthy cause.
The Alliance will receive a significant amount of ongoing general support revenue every month, thus allowing us to focus our energy on implementing our groundbreaking programs. And finally, the planet will benefit from increased partnerships and efforts to protect it.
To make this possible, we are asking two things from you. First, do you have a business or connection with one that does a significant amount of e-commerce or other types of online payment systems? If you do, please let us know at info@afors.org. Your simply sharing the name of the business and making the connection could literally be world-changing.
Second, to implement this we need your support today to provide the needed funding for our hard-working staff and diverse, energetic college interns.
There is light at the end of the tunnel and it doesn’t have to be an oncoming train. We are committed to being the change we seek in the world. Please let me know if you have any questions and if you would like to be part of co-creating this or the other initiatives we’ll soon be sharing.
Have a wonderful Thanksgiving.