Government officials and businesses. 

The program will also need support from local elected officials, government staff, or the business community so that certified businesses can be recognized by the local government. Sometimes you can find an elected official who is also a business owner who is interested in championing the program.

Government Partnerships.
A green business program can be set up as a partnership among government agencies or special districts where each may benefit from it. Different agencies may contribute funding, checklist design advice, web development, or staff for audits. Also, city or county governments can be included in the partnership so that they will publicly recognize the certified businesses. Some communities sign a Memorandums of Understanding to formalize the partnership. Others operate through collaborative meetings and informal agreements.

Typical Program Partners:

• County and City Government Agencies – Environmental Health, Public Works, Economic Development, Waste Reduction
• Special Districts and Utilities – air, wastewater, water, power company, local waste hauler
• Regional planning entity
• Non-profits (NGOs) – small business development centers
• Consultants - may work with the program under contract to government agencies
• Community colleges – most have training programs and can be a source of interns
• State agencies with oversight authority – licensing, permitting, or other environmental legislative mandates
• Other allies – chambers of commerce, business associations, individual business champions, economic development agencies

Partner roles:

• Compliance inspections
• Onsite audits – water, energy, pollution prevention, solid waste
• Help make policy decisions
• Help develop and update standards and checklists
• Provide business referrals
• Provide funding
• Getting certified themselves as a green business

After inviting key agencies, organizations, and community members to be stakeholders in your program, the next step is to invite them to a stakeholder meeting. The purpose of the meeting will be to further describe the program, start to develop the program based on stakeholder input, elicit any stakeholder concerns, enhance stakeholder support/buy-in, and identify champions among the stakeholders.

Sample First Meeting Agenda and Presentation.

• Description of program (benefits to stakeholders and community and assistance requested from stakeholders)
• Funding expectations (amount and where it would come from)
• Potential auditor and compliance inspector involvement
• Identification of lead public agencies
• Defining program type (for example, certification program vs. challenge program)
• Getting board or city council approval

• Consulting services/contractor: if you need to hire a consultant to do the 3rd party verification and/or program coordination.
• Design and production of materials, website if needed
• Database use fee: waived when funded by the State. If not, then it costs $10,080 first year, and $3000-$5000 per year thereafter depending on jurisdiction size, as of 2016.
• Promotions and advertising
• Events

Potential sources of funding:

• One organization may serve as the “home” for the program and may be the primary source of funding
• Ongoing partners who will contribute funding such as environmental agencies, special districts and governmental entities that benefit from the program such as those with a conservation mandate
• Grants for start-up and special projects
• Utilities, business service organizations, and community groups
• Fees from certifying businesses: see below.

One strategy is to put together enough funding to cover a small, limited pilot program, without a lot of material expenses. Use this initial program to demonstrate success, and gather metrics to measure your success. Then go back to your original sources to request additional funding for an expanded program, and/or identify new funding sources.

While some green business programs remain free to businesses, many charge fees.

The fees can range from a few hundred dollars for a few years, to several thousand dollars annually. The fees offset some or all of the program costs, such as staffing, database development and maintenance, and marketing. Since such a range in fees exists, it is important for businesses applying for green certification to consider what benefits they will get from a particular program. New programs must consider how much income they want to receive in fees vs. how much businesses may be willing to pay.

Currently, the least expensive programs are often run by local jurisdictions which benefit from them.

Checklist measures.

 Consider which checklist measures you would like to include for each business sector. Here, you will not have to reinvent the wheel! The CAGBN has created a “bare bones” checklist of what the program partners have identified as the essential criteria for any green business. This can be used as a starting point in developing your checklist. It is highly recommended that you get signed up and receive training on creating checklists on the CAGBN database before doing this task.

Compliance Inspectors.

 Decide which areas of environmental compliance, and for which sectors, your program will check. For example, you may or may not decide to check on office or retail businesses, but for restaurants, you may decide to check wastewater, storm water, and food safety. Once you’ve decided which areas you want to check, speak with supervisors at the appropriate agencies to ask if their inspectors will look up businesses for you when needed. Invite them to the next stakeholder meeting if they are not already included.

Auditors.

 Decide how your program will audit the checklist measures. Will program staff go to a site and verify all the measures? Or would it help to have third party auditors for some areas, for example, energy, water, solid waste, or pollution prevention. Factors affecting this decision include the areas in which your staff has expertise, whether local agencies are willing to provide auditors, and the potential to partner with other organizations (e.g., community colleges) for interns. Also, the organization of agencies in the area can affect the ease or difficulty of working with outside auditors: for example, if there are multiple water districts whose boundaries do not correspond to the those of the local towns, simply managing the auditors may add significant time and money.

Pilot group. 

Before kicking off the full program, pilot your process to find out what works and what doesn’t. This is a key step to ensuring that your program succeeds!

• Shadow a neighboring, existing and seasoned Green Business Program coordinator and gain mentorship.
• Choose a business sector, with a small group of businesses, that are important to your local area and partners.
• Research the industry, to ensure that the checklist addresses the key pollution and resource conservation concerns.
• Conduct an outreach workshop to targeted businesses to explain the process
• Use experts from partner agencies.
• Provide any incentive information to businesses.
• Solicit champions among the businesses, based on referrals from agencies or volunteers from workshop.
• Kick-off Workshop.
• After the businesses complete the certification process, evaluate, and make necessary changes.

Note: leverage existing community programs – coordinate with partners if they already have existing auditing, assistance or rebate programs.

A Successful Marketing Plan.

 Marketing has two functions – to promote the program to the community and businesses to recruit, and to promote the businesses once they become certified. Effective promotion is key to creating one of the great potentials of a green business program – a “green marketplace”, where green businesses and consumers support each other. It also rewards businesses that have made a great effort to go green! Successful marketing will bring more customers to the certified businesses, and in some cases will make the difference of whether or not a business will stay in the program.

Possible avenues to recruit businesses and promote the program:

• Websites: local website for the program, as well as all partner websites
• Social media
• Radio, television, local newspapers
• Presentations to local chambers of commerce, and other business groups
• Events to celebrate program kickoff and milestones
• Press releases, newspaper articles to promote events
• Giveaway items (e.g., reusable shopping bags)
• Ask businesses to enlist other businesses
• Door to door canvassing (most successful!)

Possible avenues to promote individual businesses:

• Board of Supervisors, or City Council, celebrates new green businesses in annual ceremony
• Certificates for wall display, signed by local government officials
• Window decals with Green Business logo

Possible avenues to promote individual businesses:

There is a California Facebook Page here: https://www.facebook.com/greenbusinessca/ And a National Green Business Engagement National Network Facebook Page here: https://www.facebook.com/GBENN/

Green Business Academies

Green business academies have been extremely successful in recent years. This is a structure in which businesses are led through the process in a series of workshops as a cohort. Businesses are encouraged to communicate with each other and with technical assistance providers through a list-serve or online community, as well as meet in person for workshops. Focus groups and surveys indicate that businesses prefer this method since they feel part of a community. Additionally, there is a much higher completion rate for businesses that go through an Academy rather than doing it by themselves.

New members benefit from a well-established network of state and national programs. Joining is like receiving a “green business program in a box”. New users can learn from the tried and true practices of other programs, receive training in establishing their own programs, copy existing checklists, receive statewide marketing, and become part of and use the GreenBizTracker database to track businesses on their path to sustaiability. Funding GreenBizTracker is provided by the member green business programs, the Federal Environmental Protection Agency’s Exchange Network, CalEPA, and EPA Region 9 Pollution Prevention Grants.