Overview
The annual Net Impact Challenge recognizes and rewards outstanding Net Impact members who lead employee or student-driven projects with tangible positive social and/or environmental impacts on their campus, in their workplace, or in their community.
While other competitions reward efforts initiated by corporate heads or university administrators, the Net Impact Challenge focuses solely on grassroots efforts initiated by employees and students.
If you have led a project in your organization or on your campus that is above and beyond your traditional role as a student or professional, this is your chance to inspire the Net Impact network with your work and receive recognition for your efforts to create a more sustainable and just society through the power of business.
>> Download the entry form (.doc)
>> Submit the entry form
Both teams and individuals are eligible to enter.
Leaders of teams entered in the Challenge must be current graduate or professional Net Impact dues paying members.
Projects must be focused on using business and business skills to create positive social and/or environment impacts on campus where the project leaders attend school, in the company/organization where the project leaders work or in their communities.
The team or individual entering in the Challenge should play a leading role in creating the social or environmental outcome documented in the Challenge entry. Relative impact of the Net Impact member’s team will be weighted heavily in the judging process. Thus, projects initiated by the school or organization where the student/professional attends /works will be scored significantly lower than projects initiated by students/employees.
Examples of eligible entries include:
- Execution of workplace greening plans
- Development and implementation of environmental impact reduction plans for events on campus or at work
- Coordination of ongoing workplace volunteer programs
- Creation of the business case for green building programs on campus
- Implementation of public-private partnership with local nonprofit organization
- Results of a pro bono nonprofit consulting project
>> Read about the 2008 Challenge winners for more examples of eligible projects
Examples of ineligible entries include:
- Volunteer projects that do not involve an application of business-related skills sets
- New business ventures (i.e, business plans) or products
- Participation in organization-wide initiatives not started by the Net Impact member or team entering the contest
- Projects whose main impact occurs outside the time range specified below
Initiatives should occur in the period from June 1, 2008 – June 1, 2009. Ongoing projects started before June 1, 2008 are also eligible. For ongoing projects started before June 1, 2008, only impacts in the period from June 1, 2008 – June 1, 2009 will be evaluated in the Challenge.
Projects will be judged on the criteria above from June 1 – June 15, 2009. Finalists will have a chance to present to the panel of judges via webinar on Friday, July 3, 2009.
Final Challenge submissions are due to Net Impact (jcleveland@netimpact.org) by 5pm PT / 8pm ET on Monday, June 1, 2009.
During the difficult economic situation this year, we are focusing the Challenge on projects that demonstrate the value added to campuses and companies through social and environmental initiatives led by Net Impact members. By “value-added”, we mean initiatives that are closely connected to furthering the objectives of the organization/campus/community in which they operate. Such value is not limited to monetary gains, but also includes increased employee engagement, professional development gains, waste reduction, quantified gains from pro-bono consulting projects, and others. Projects that effectively measure impact will receive the top scores.
All eligible submissions/contributions will be tallied, ranked, and evaluated by our selected panel of judges, based on the following criteria:
- 40%: Measurable difference in key environmental or social area/ability to quantify value of initiative to the organization/campus/community
- 25% Qualitative impact of the project
- 20% Creativity of approach
- 15% Long-term sustainability of initiative
Adam Werbach,
Global CEO,
Saatchi & Saatchi S
|
Adam is regarded as one of the world’s premier experts in sustainability. At age 23, he was elected as the youngest president ever of the Sierra Club, the oldest and largest environmental organization in the United States. In 1998, he founded sustainability agency, Act Now, to engage the corporate and media world in social, environmental, cultural and economic change. After ten successful years, Act Now merged with global ideas company Saatchi & Saatchi to form Saatchi & Saatchi S, the world’s largest sustainability agency.
Adam has always been an advocate for change, as exemplified by his 2004 speech, "Is Environmentalism Dead?" which sent shockwaves through the environmental movement. He declared that he would no longer call himself an environmentalist, as the movement was unprepared to solve the underlying social and economic issues of climate change. Soon after, Wal-Mart engaged Act Now to lead the involvement of its 1.9 million Wal-Mart associates in the Personal Sustainability Project (“PSP”).
Adam returned to the Commonwealth Club in April 2008 to receive its 21st Century Visionary Award and deliver his follow-up address to “Is Environmentalism Dead?,” entitled “The Birth of Blue,” which envisions a billion-person strong, consumer-based movement for sustainability. Video and transcript can be found here: www.saatchis.com/birthofblue. |
David Yarnold,
Executive Director, The Environmental Defense Fund
|
As Executive Director, David Yarnold is responsible for all operations of Environmental Defense, a leading national nonprofit with 300 employees, 500,000 members and a $75 million budget.
Yarnold is a boundary-crosser, an NGO leader from the for-profit ranks, having joined Environmental Defense in 2005 after nearly 27 years at the San Jose Mercury News. He authored Environmental Defense's California strategy and was a key leader in the passage of the nation's most sweeping climate change legislation.
Yarnold has sharpened and strengthened the unique Environmental Defense approach of harmonizing corporate profitability and environmental benefits. In 2006, he announced Environmental Defense would be the first environmental advocacy group to open an office in Bentonville, Arkansas, to influence Wal-Mart’s environmental practices.
A Pulitzer Prize-winning editor, Yarnold helped make the Mercury News one of the nation's most acclaimed publications, ranked among the 10 best papers nationally and called by one international organization "America's boldest newspaper." As Executive Editor, he managed a global newsroom of more than 400 people while chronicling the rise of Silicon Valley.
He has appeared on CNN, MSNBC, BBC, the PBS News Hour and elsewhere. He has spoken at numerous conferences on diversity in the environmental movement and served as a guest instructor at the nation’s leading journalism training institutes on topics ranging from diversity to building a high-performance culture. He is on the board of directors of the American Leadership Forum Silicon Valley, EcoAmerica and the Stanford University Graduate School of Businesses' Center for Social Innovation. |
Nick Aster,
Founder, TriplePundit.com
|
Nick Aster is founder of TriplePundit.com, an innovative new-media company that fuels the evolution of sustainable business by bringing intelligent, passionate and balanced perspectives to our ongoing dialog. He has also worked with companies like Nike, SAP, Gawker Media, Offermatica, and many others on internal and external strategies for communication. With a great deal of interest in environmental matters he also helped start TreeHugger.com, the most popular environmental website in the world, and recently re-launched Mother Jones Magazine's online presence.
Nick holds an MBA in sustainable management from the Presidio Graduate School and graduated with a BA in History from Washington University in St. Louis. |
Lisa Neuberger,
Senior Manager of Strategy, Accenture
|
Lisa Neuberger-Fernandez is the Strategy and Policy Lead on Accenture’s Global Corporate Citizenship team. She leads a team responsible for the company's non-financial reporting as well as developing Accenture's environmental policy and engaging with over 180,000 employees to help achieve the company's environmental reduction goals. Prior to this, she was a Sustainability Business Development Director driving top and bottom-line value for Accenture’s Communications & High Tech clients through green data centers, sustainable supply chains, green product innovation and cleantech strategies. In 2007, Lisa launched and led a seventy-five person team of Accenture volunteers to win first place in the 2007 Net Impact Green Challenge competition. As a result, she became the Environment Lead on Accenture’s US Corporate Citizenship team to drive adoption of green practices across the company’s over 30,000 US employees.
In her ten years with Accenture, she has developed and implemented business strategies and performance management frameworks with clients in diverse sectors including government, nonprofit, communications & high tech, and financial services. She has played entrepreneurial roles managing teams that launched a nonprofit consulting organization spun out of Accenture (www.newsector.org), Accenture’s Public Service Value ROI model and consulting practice area, and Accenture’s US Eco Program. She spent one year as a founding research fellow in Accenture’s Public Service Value Institute (www.accenture.com/publicservicevalue).
Lisa has direct public sector experience from working at the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development, the White House and the U.S. Senate. She graduated cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania. She has an MBA degree from Wharton Business School and a master's degree from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. She is active on the advisory boards of several nonprofit organizations – including the Fletcher School Development Committee, Education Pioneers, and Net Impact – and has served as a judge for the Global Social Venture Competition, Echoing Green Social Innovation Fellowships, the San Francisco Public Managerial Excellence awards, and the Net Impact Green Challenge.
|
Brie Johnson,
Marketing Communications Manager,
Strauss Family Creamery
|
Brie has 11 years of environmental experience in the realms of sustainable business, government and law. Her experience includes designing and implementing general and specialized sustainability projects for global corporations including Whole Foods Market, Williams-Sonoma, ICF International, and organizations including the NRDC and the US EPA. The projects have ranged from how to increase knowledge about sustainability among employees at Whole Foods and Williams-Sonoma to how efficiently sourcing fair trade, organic chocolate for TCHO Chocolate in San Francisco. Currently, Brie manages internal and external communications, at Straus Family Creamery in Marshall, California. At Straus, Brie also works with the management team to define, implement, and maintain the Company's sustainability strategy.
Brie has an MBA in Sustainable Management from the Presidio School of Management and a BA in Environmental Studies from the University of California, Santa Barbara. Brie is a long time Net Impact member and former Chapter Leader for the Presidio School of Management. In 2008, Brie led the green team entry for the Net Impact Challenge for ICF International which took second place in the professional category.
|
Each winning team will receive three free passes to the 2009 Net Impact Conference at the Johnson School at Cornell University. The total value of these passes can be distributed amongst members of the winning teams in the form of conference discounts.
In addition, select winners will receive an annual subscription to the Stanford Social Innovation Review (SSIR). SSIR is written for social change leaders – people of all ages who care about innovative solutions to social problems around the world. SSIR bridges academic theory and practice with new and useful cross-sector (business, nonprofit, and government) ideas about achieving social change. Published quarterly by the Center for Social Innovation at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, SSIR is considered to be the preeminent magazine in the field. To learn more, please visit http://www.ssireview.org
Email Josh Cleveland at jcleveland@netimpact.org
|
