Environmental Audit for Homeless Charities

There are many ways a non-profit organization can decrease its expenses and increase its efficiency that helps both the homeless and the environment. Being more environmentally friendly can also fit with the need to be more cost-effective and more efficient. It's just another framework from which to look at your mission of helping the homeless.

Realistically, my heart is only big enough for issues that face the homeless. I know I'm supposed to be passionate about things like climate change and animal rights . But, to be perfectly honest, I only pretended to care about these things when I was dating a really gorgeous girl who was into all that stuff.

If you work in the homeless sector like me, you would have made decisions that were bad for the environment simply because your focus is on your homeless clients and nothing will stand in your way. I've always been one eyed and aggressive in that regard; I care so much about the homeless people I serve that I don't care how many trees have to be cut down or cute little baby lambs must be butchered.

When it comes to environmental issues, usually the reality for me is cost. If someone mentions a more environmentally friendly way of doing what we do, I always ask ‘so what is that going to cost me?' If not; it's about efficiency and I ask ‘how will that different way of doing things affect our efficiency?'

All charities no matter the area of focus have a starving hunger for the most cost effective and efficient way of doing things. Rarely do considerations about the impact on the environment ever come into serious consideration.

One way I've found that decreased expenses substantially and improved efficiency was to change our paper based management to a website management model. Everything I would have printed out and stood in front of the photo copier for hours preparing is now done online at negligible expense and with greater efficiency.

If you are still using a photocopier, a binding machine, or anything to do with paper (including contracting a printing company), then your whole office needs an environmental audit, and an efficiency audit for that matter also. So much can be done online these days.

I'm old fashioned in many ways, hard-headed and stubborn. But moving a lot of organizational management activites online has saved our non-profit a pretty penny.

Review how your internal reporting is done, how your training materials are made available, how your rosters are distributed, what else? What can you do online? I use to spend thousands of dollars on paper based communication, now I do it online for a very small fraction of the cost.

Today is Blog Action Day, a time when the world focuses on Climate Change. There are already over 7,000 blogs involved with a readership of over 12 million people. The campaign is focused on today, the 15th of October. If you have a blog, please post about Climate Change today, and if you miss the date, please post about it anyway. It's about the conversation, not the date.