by Ron Daly
It's June, 2009 - do you know where YOUR capital is?

Odds are you've been coping with your minimized budget and your overall losses for these last eight months and you've had to forgo talks of better things - more hiring, membership drives, company functions, employee appreciation, raises, etc. Maybe one of the things you've minimized is your "Green" initiatives. It's easy to move away from an initiative that's mostly voluntary when you have imperative financial issues to tackle.

I think it's time to kill two birds with one stone..not literally, of course. Part of saving the environment is not throwing rocks at birds. I'm talking about using your green initiatives as a means of saving money.

Green-vangelist Andrew Winston wrote on the Harvard Business blog:

Not only should companies not put their green efforts on hold, they should accelerate them in targeted ways to save money quickly and prepare for the future. Those who navigate these tricky waters the best will emerge from the downturn in better shape than their competitors.

And furthermore:

Getting lean, particularly on energy and resources, will save money and reduce carbon impacts (as well as making you more competitive when energy prices inevitably rise again). Thinking through your value chain and getting creative about how you can help your customers manage their environmental impacts and lower their costs will help you grab market share in tough times. And it will likely do much more to address environmental challenges than focusing only on your own environmental impacts. Getting your people engaged around a dual mission — save the company money and preserve our collective bounty and assets — will help boost morale in tough times and keep your company going strong. ("Why This Is the Right Time to Go Green", blogs.harvardbusiness.org, June 2009)

I had this information tucked away in an e-mail and thought I'd share it here on the site. Apparently, trees can be assigned a dollar value based on the amount of carbon dioxide they absorb, the amount of run-off they filter, the amount of oxygen they make, etc. Your average Red Cedar is worth about $120,000/year, considering the price of oxygen it produces (numbers/values from the Kooragang Wetland Rehabilitation institute). That's plenty of money, and that's just one tree.

Planting trees is a great way to drive up member participation and enrollment. Let members contribute a small amount of money from their share accounts and contribute to a tree planting day that you've organized. Or offer it as an incentive for signing up for eStatements, a la "sign up for eStatements today and we'll plant a tree in your name!"

Speaking of eStatements, DigitalMailer has plenty of ready-to-go "Go Green" campaigns to get you started driving up your enrollment numbers. Click here to learn about it in Budget Stretching Ideas, a free webinar from DigitalMailer.

Bottom Line - the economic downturn has tested our structures. If ever there was a time to start changing the game, it's now. Why not implement measures that will save you money overtime, such as optimizing your lighting and power and reducing water flow in your facilities? Why not encourage employee carpooling and create Green-themed giveaways? Make the changes now and enjoy the benefits long after you do.

Labels: Credit Union Tech, Credit Unions, e-Statements, electronic statements, green, green technology

Click Here to Read the Full Version of "Living With (and Without) Green"