Tackling the Climate Emergency When You're a Small or Medium Sized Charity

I’m Judith Temple and the Office Manager at Connected Voice. 

At Connected Voice we have a working group of staff who discuss the climate emergency and what actions we can take in our own organisation and how we can influence decision makers. 

The first time we met we came up with a long list of actions.  Some achievable in the short term and others that would need some investment for the long term.  From the identified actions we developed them into an action plan with named people to take the lead and a timescale to deliver them.

As Office Manager it often falls on me to put into action some of the decisions and suggestions.  It’s not always easy to know if what I’m doing is the right course of action.

Not being an expert on environmental issues it’s easy to become overwhelmed and wonder if the steps you are taking are making a difference.

I would think that there are lots of people like me amongst our members; an Office Manager with lots of other roles and now having to think about climate emergency and how to start reducing the organisation’s carbon footprint.

I’m fortunate that on our board of trustees we have Hannah Owens who is the Sustainability Officer at Newcastle University and I can ask her for some advice and how to make this proportionate for the size of our organisation.  It’s clear that the organisation would need to focus on a few main areas where we could measure the success of reducing our carbon footprint. Staff would need to be encouraged to make changes and be made aware of how they can use resources carefully and thoughtfully.

In Connected Voice’s case these focus areas included:  energy, travel, reducing printing, recycling, reviewing the way we store and send emails and an influencing staff, organisations and our own building management to make changes.

One example of reducing our carbon footprint is in our advocacy service. We have already started to reduce the number of journeys our advocates make.  In the past an advocate would come into the office first and then travel out to meet a service user or attend a hospital visit.  Now our advocates can work at home before appointments and not drive into the city centre and finish their day working at home.  We can do a calculation of how many less miles advocates are doing to measure a reduction in our carbon footprint.

To encourage people to think of different ways to get to our events I include information about where the nearest metro station is, what public transport goes past the venue, how long it takes to walk to the venue from Newcastle or Gateshead and if there are bike racks nearby rather than saying where all the nearest car parks are located.

In the office we have been careful to turn off the lights on a sunny day and turning down heating so that we are use less energy.  We can look back at the number of units used compared to the previous year to work out if we are using less energy.  As Office Manager identifying a green energy supplier is also an option.

While staff have been working at home throughout the lockdown I have been circulating energy saving tips for them to reduce the energy they use in their own homes.

The building we work in was built in the 1960s and hasn’t got the best energy rating.  However as Office Manager when I attend tenant meetings I’ve asked them to put climate emergency onto the agenda.  I was pleased to find out that the building management had already switched to a green energy supplier, had changed to environmentally friendly cleaning products, made changes to the heating boiler and had installed LED lights throughout the communal areas. 

I would think that Office Managers throughout the region will find it challenging influencing landlords to make their buildings more energy efficient. However as an Office Manager or tenant you can get climate emergency on the agenda and highlight it when reviewing leases or looking for new accommodation.

At first it can appear that responding to the climate emergency can be a daunting task for an Office Manager within a small or medium charity.  However collectively we can all do small things that can make a difference and we can influence others to put climate emergency onto their agenda.