What We Offer
Most leaders pursuing sustainable strategies recognize “you can’t do it alone.” Working collaboratively in networks is critical to advance change, for example to:
- Learn from people and organizations adopting sustainable practices in a similar context, such as the many cities adopting climate action plans that are pursuing changes in energy practices, buildings, and fleets.
- Avoid "re-inventing the wheel" by understanding where other parts of your organization have developed good practices and tools that can be shared
- Collaborate with many organizations to advocate for changes in policies to enable faster progress towards goals, such as overcoming systemic cost and operational barriers to install renewable energy.
New Directions Collaborative helps associations that convene sustainability leaders, such as socially-responsible business networks, foundations, or environmental non-profits/coalitions, to foster mutually-beneficial relationships among members and catalyze collaboration on joint projects. We also help organizations to partner with other groups to advance sustainability initiatives, such as a business that wants to partner with its customers and suppliers to improve the recyclability of its products.
We use innovative techniques of social network analysis to make collaboration within networks visible and encourage network members to self-organize to find new connections and work together to make progress on goals. We combine these network assessment techniques with facilitation and event design services to create the contexts where networks of people can come together to advance change.
Click here for case studies of some of our network-related projects.
Click here to read our blog posts about networks.