We envision a world that couples economic growth with sustainability by using market-based approaches to addressing social and environmental externalities.

We live in a world where government is increasingly incapable of advancing systemic solutions to society’s urgent problems. By combining the forces of corporations, with their innovative thinking and financial power, and NGOs, with their long-term passion and subject matter expertise, we have the best chance to effectuate the solutions we all wish to see.

Across the Globe, At the Forefront.

Future 500′s main office is in San Francisco with affiliate offices in Portland, Beijing and Tokyo. We are supported by an extensive network of correspondents, advisers, and senior fellows worldwide.

We are privileged and honored for the trust corporations and NGOs place in us to do this important work.

History

From its inception in 1995 in Aspen, Colorado, Future 500 has been fostering the capacity for corporations and NGOs to engage one another in unique and meaningful ways. By strategically leveraging corporate-NGO engagement to advance systemic solutions, we are positioned to address the most challenging sustainability issues.  Here are just a few of our successes to date:

• We built a corporate-NGO coalition that crafted California’s innovative “Bottle Bill” – arguably the most cost-effective in the world – using economic incentives to drive the recycling of more than 100 billion beverage containers and a host of packaging materials and products.

• We forged a partnership between Mitsubishi companies and Rainforest Action Network, developing simple, practical procurement specifications, now adopted by over 400 companies, to save over four million acres of Old Growth forest.

• Since 2009, we have been building support for a price on carbon.  Through our engagement with industry, NGOs, SRIs, climatologists and policy makers we have crafted two core policy principles.  We believe that they encompass the necessary ingredients to garner bipartisan support.  We currently have over 200 signatories, including James Hansen and Lester Brown to name a few.

• From 2011-2012, Future 500 led a four part multi-stakeholder “Dialogue” series to address what Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) policy might mean for the United States.  As a result of these discussions, new momentum was injected into the waste issue, leading to efforts across the country around voluntary and regulatory approaches from industry and recycling  advocates alike.

Values

In all our work, we strive to adhere to the following values and practices:

• Integrity: To act in the interests of the whole – our partners, stakeholders, and society at large

• Respect: To behave as equals in all relationships – with partners and stakeholders.

• Expertise: To be the pre-eminent experts in stakeholder engagement on controversial, complex issues.

• Feedback: To share mutual feedback with our partners and stakeholders, even if disagreeable.

• Self-improvement: To constantly seek to improve our skills and systems.

• Reliability: To under-promise and over-deliver, meeting our commitments on-time and within organizational budget

• Value: To deliver more in value than our partners and stakeholders provide in support

• Adaptability: 
To change course instantly, as needed to better serve our mission and the social need.

• Embedment: To transfer our skills and systems to our partners and stakeholders, so that they can do our work without us.

• Systemic: To seek to solve problems and meet needs at their root.