Unlike carbon offsetting, SCFs do not attempt to match anyone’s total emissions to a specific level of ‘carbon saving’. It is instead an attempt to encourage donating and/or spending in a way that has the most useful impact for the environment right now.
Calculating how much to spend on SCFs will depend on what type of organisation you are and your preferred method of formulating a total. For simplicity we have divided this into:
- Commercial Organisations
- Non-Profit Organisations & Individual Professionals
Commercial Organisations
Option One: ‘Percentage of Revenue’
Simply set aside a small percentage of annual revenue to finance your fund. This should be high enough to provide a meaningful pot money to finance effective climate action, whilst also be managable for your budget.
This should be a commitment by your organisation for the foreseeable future and as such should be considered as a duty of care for the planet. This action is separate from the amount of emissions that are produced and any decarbonisation activities you are engaged in.
For example: If a GCC member’s revenue for 2022 was £650,000 and they chose to donate 2% annually they would have a Strategic Climate Fund of £13,000. Or if an organisations revenue was $15,850,000 and they chose to donate 0.4% the fund total would be $63,400.
Option Two: ‘Internal Carbon Tax’
Alternatively, members could use their annual carbon emissions figures as a guideline for how much they should contribute – as a kind of annual ‘Internal Carbon Tax’. Depending on the type of organisation, the calculated totals are likely to be higher compared to percentage of revenue but a benefit of this approach would be that it also acts as an extra incentive to reduce emissions faster and in theory, the amounts to be donated would reduce inline with emissions.
Based on figures in the Julie’s Bicycle offsetting report (pages 16 – 17), a reasonable mid-range price for conventional offsets seems to be between £50 and £100 per tonne. We can therefore use this as a guideline to the amount you might have spent on carbon offsets. We’d recommend choosing a figure within this range based on what seems manageable within your budgets, while also being high enough to act as a useful spur to reduce your emissions. If you can, choose a figure on the higher end of this scale.
For example: If a GCC member’s emissions for 2022 were 85 tonnes CO2e and the organisation chose a price of $65 per tonne they would have a Strategic Climate Fund of $5,525. Or if another with a 350 tonnes CO2e footprint chose a price of $85 per tonne they would have a Strategic Climate Fund of $29,750.
For Non-Profit Organisation & Individual Professionals
Some GCC members - particularly individual artists or non-profit arts spaces who are facing a very tough funding environment right now - have much less capacity to spend money in this way, let alone support external initiatives through an SCF. For these individuals and organisations, we would make the following suggestions for how they can use the SCF concept to create carbon reductions, even on a tight budget:
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Calculate how much you would need to set aside per year into an SCF following either the ‘Percentage of Revenue’ or ‘Internal Carbon Tax’ methods.
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Work out if you can feasibly set aside that amount per year. If you *can* set this money aside, then rather than spending it on external projects it might make more sense to use it to create operational carbon/energy savings that you would otherwise be unable to afford - see section x for some suggestions.
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If you genuinely can’t afford to pay into an SCF from your existing budgets, the next question is: can you instead use the SCF concept as a fundraising opportunity? If there are improvements to your buildings or operations that would reduce your running costs AND carbon footprint, but that are difficult to implement due to cost, could this be funded by a patron, specific grant application or a crowdfunding campaign? Asking supporters for help with specific, costed sustainability measures (that would also reduce your energy or fuel bills) could be a more successful approach than just asking supporters for general donations towards running costs at a difficult time. In this scenario, you’d be setting a fundraising target based on the costs of the measures you need to put in place to make a significant dent in your energy costs*.
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Individual professionals / freelancers that wish to set up a personal SCF, independent of their employer, could follow the same steps of calculating an Internal Carbon Tax or by setting aside 1-2% of their annual income.
*If you are thinking about taking this approach, please let us know. It might be possible to link up different GCC members and help share/promote these kinds of public fundraising initiatives. This could also be a way for individual artists and smaller organisations with relatively low carbon footprints to help use their public platforms to leverage larger carbon reductions elsewhere in the arts sector, while also supporting non-profit and community arts at this crucial time.
Summary
GCC recommends members pay into their SCF by either:
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Allocating a percentage of their annual revenue
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Multiplying their annual CO2e emissions by a figure between £50 - £100 per tonne to find their total
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Or by fundraising specifically for their SCF at a level parallel to either of these calculations
Higher earning/higher polluting organisations should choose a figure towards the top ends of these ranges.
