Prepare to Respond Spontaneously
Experiences at the Harvard Green Campus Initiative suggest that you must always be ready to think on your feet during turning-point funding meetings. Sometimes the conversation can head in unexpected directions, raising new concerns about your program concept. Always keep up with where the conversation is moving, calculating how it is affecting perceptions of risk. Whenever you sense these perceptions rise, move quickly and without appearing defensive to diffuse them with clear and confident responses. The best responses cite similar situations and illustrate effective approaches to dealing with the concern. If you have no such example to offer, the next best thing to do is to quickly identify a program adjustment that can minimize the risk. With experience you will become adept at responding spontaneously to such situations.
Protecting the Program’s Budget Needs
Be prepared for decision-makers to offer only partial funding. Do not accept it without carefully thinking about the consequences for your program. Sometimes it is better to take no funding than insufficient funding. If you attempt to establish a program without the proper resource base, you will doom it to failure, setting a negative precedent for your successors. The only times that you should consider accepting partial funding is when:
- You can reasonably scale the entire program down to ensure it will be adequately funded. If you think this is an option, you could say: "That level of funding might work if we scale back the program or bring in other partners. Can I take a few days to consider the possibilities and get back to you?" Be sure to create a follow-up appointment on the spot.
- You have a good chance of finding another funding partner to make up the shortfall. Sometimes having a partial funding commitment from one department can catalyze renewed interest from other departments that were unwilling to carry the program costs alone but would consider sharing them. Arrange meetings with the other departments as soon as possible to discuss this possibility. If appropriate, ask the new funding partner to assist in encouraging others to contribute.
If the partial funding is grossly inadequate and you can see no other avenues to make up the difference, you might be well-served to walk away saying something like: "With that amount of funding, we cannot employ enough students to achieve our goals. Thank you for the offer but we would rather let it go than have an underfunded, dysfunctional program that depletes resources elsewhere on campus." The best change agents will wait until they can get the resource base they need to succeed, rather than simply taking whatever is offered.
Stay Grounded in Your Fundamental Intention and Impetus
No matter where the meeting goes, it will help to stay grounded in your fundamental environmental impetus, intention and motivation. Be prepared to answer questions about these. You should be able to talk with ease and accuracy about the relationships between materials and energy consumption, greenhouse gas emissions and global climate change. Know the scientific evidence for climate change and be able to talk about mitigation strategies, such as energy conservation. Read up on current projections for consequences around the world and especially in your local area.
At the appropriate point in your meeting, it can be very helpful to state why you are working on this effort and why you hope that something can be done, whether it is through your proposed program or another one with similar goals. If it comes to it, be willing to have your program changed by potential funders into something completely different. As long as you can be confident that the new version remains true to the core purpose of reducing your institution’s contribution to climate change, then you can hopefully embrace it. The key is to be firm about your environmental goal but flexible in the approach.