By Molly Coghlan, Verdis Group
Cultural institutions are well aware of their roles as trusted community messengers and their responsibility as education-focused organizations. With that in mind, many institutions are seeking to showcase sustainability leadership to their communities.
Exhibiting this leadership places cultural institutions in a unique position to expand the impact of their actions by facilitating learning and action among their visitors. However, this also means that their communities are expecting them to walk the talk on their own sustainability efforts.
Often, organizational sustainability initiatives take a top-down approach. Executive leadership sets goals and implements policies, expecting results, but often fails to see any traction gained. Why? They don’t prioritize engaging frontline staff with meaningful participation.
Policies only work when all staff engage with them. And staff only engage in ways that drive meaningful change when they understand the why, the how, and the expected result. People participate in what they help create.
The mission alignment advantage
The key for cultural institutions to make these connections with staff and get them to be aware, engaged, and participating in new initiatives is through the critical alignment between sustainability and organizational mission.
Millennials and Generation Z, projected to make up 74% of the workforce by 2030, are overwhelmingly looking for purpose-driven work. Using sustainability to fulfill the organization’s mission contributes to employee retention. It fosters an authentic commitment that transforms environmental initiatives from mandates into a personal purpose.
Cultural institutions benefit from staff who are uniquely mission-driven compared with other types of organizations. Museum curators, librarians, educators, and cultural program coordinators typically choose these careers because they’re passionate about conservation, education, and community service.
The most effective sustainability programs are fully integrated into an organization’s culture by connecting with existing passions.
Mission-driven sustainability: collective ownership
Consider how sustainability naturally aligns with the core missions of cultural institutions.
- Species conservation: Sustainability and conservation are inherently linked. Human activities are leading causes of species extinction. We can’t effectively address the climate crisis without simultaneously tackling the biodiversity crisis. Staff dedicated to a conservation organization easily understand the importance of responsible resource use.
- Preservation and legacy work: Whether conserving artifacts, maintaining historic buildings, or archiving community stories, this shares the same long-term thinking and intergenerational responsibility that drives environmental stewardship. Staff who dedicate their careers to preserving culture for future generations understand intuitively why preserving the planet matters.
- Education and public service: Missions focused here extend seamlessly to environmental education and community sustainability leadership—caring for our common home for generations to come.
- Community stewardship: The responsibilities that cultural institutions already embrace make local environmental impact deeply relevant and personally meaningful to their staff.
Mission alignment fosters resilient sustainability efforts that can withstand leadership changes and economic pressures. They’re driven by internal conviction rather than external mandates. When sustainability becomes part of how staff express their professional and organizational values, it persists through budget constraints and organizational transitions.
Perhaps most importantly, integrating sustainability with organizational mission breeds accountability for all employees to participate.
When sustainability becomes synonymous with fulfilling the institutional mission, it’s no longer optional or relegated to facilities management. It becomes the responsibility of every employee.
This shared accountability fosters collective ownership. Staff hold each other accountable for driving sustainability efforts because they understand it as fundamental to their professional identity and the institution’s purpose.
See also: Future-proofing attractions: climate resilience starts now
Building staff capacity
Simply integrating sustainability into an organizational mission is not enough to fully transition staff into sustainability leaders. Institutions must provide staff with the necessary tools and resources to embody the ideals expected of them.
Organize, coordinate, or champion education opportunities for staff to learn more about sustainability in ways that connect to their professional development and mission fulfillment. When sustainability education enhances job and leadership skills while deepening understanding of how sustainability expresses institutional values, it becomes both professionally valuable and personally meaningful.
Consider creating a dedicated space for early adopters and those with influence to lead the charge by working together in a green team that operates as mission ambassadors. These sustainability champions can bridge the gap between organizational goals and daily practice. They serve as peer mentors who understand both the institutional mission and the practical challenges of implementing environmental initiatives.
Create advancement opportunities that recognize sustainability leadership as a form of mission leadership. Include sustainability in job descriptions, performance evaluations, and promotion criteria. Not as separate requirements, but as evidence of a commitment to the institutional purpose.
Develop specialist roles that combine sustainability expertise with cultural programming, facilities management, or community engagement, positioning these roles as advanced expressions of the organization’s core mission.
When staff see that environmental leadership can advance their careers while allowing them to more fully live out their professional values, they’re motivated to develop and demonstrate sustainability expertise as part of their mission-driven work.
Crafting communication that resonates
Effective sustainability communication in cultural institutions goes far beyond policy announcements and compliance reminders. It requires understanding what motivates cultural institution workers and speaking to those motivations authentically, while reinforcing how environmental action aligns with the institutional mission.
Storytelling and staff recognition
Storytelling and staff recognition prove especially effective in cultural institutions where staff are naturally drawn to narrative and meaning-making. Share personal stories of environmental impact that connect to mission fulfillment through regular “sustainability spotlight” features highlighting staff contributions.
Feature the facilities manager who discovered that switching to LED lighting not only reduced energy costs but also better protects the collection, fulfilling the preservation mission while advancing sustainability goals. Highlight the education coordinator who integrated sustainability themes into programming and saw increased community engagement, demonstrating how environmental leadership enhances the institution’s educational mission.
These stories help staff see that sustainability isn’t separate from their professional calling but integral to it. It also builds momentum by celebrating innovation and honestly acknowledging shortcomings.
Integration into existing communication channels
Integration into existing communication channels, rather than separate “green” messaging, ensures that sustainability becomes part of the regular organizational conversation about mission and values.
Add sustainability updates to weekly team meetings by connecting them to departmental goals. Include sustainability achievements in quarterly reports, and weave environmental themes into existing training or onboarding programs as examples of living institutional values.
When sustainability becomes an integral part of how the organization communicates its purpose and impact, it signals that environmental responsibility is an essential component of its institutional identity.
Two-way communication
Two-way communication through regular forums for questions, concerns, and suggestions creates the feedback loops necessary for authentic engagement. This also reinforces that sustainability efforts are everyone’s responsibility for fulfilling the institutional mission.
Create suggestion systems with designated staff responsible for taking ideas and moving them forward when applicable, always connecting improvements to the mission’s impact. When employees see that their concerns and innovations are heard, acted upon, and valued as mission-critical contributions, they become invested in the institution’s sustainability leadership.
Mission-driven sustainability: the transformation promise
The organizations that achieve transformative change are those that recognize sustainability goals as fundamentally human challenges requiring human solutions rooted in personal purpose.
Technology and policy provide the framework, but mission alignment provides the power. When employees see sustainability not as something they have to do for the company, but as something they get to do for themselves, their families, and their communities, sustainability becomes as natural and consistent as any other deeply held value.
This is the difference between compliance and commitment, between temporary behavior change and lasting transformation. Cultural institutions are in a unique position to achieve this transformation. Their staff are already mission-driven and their organizational purposes naturally align with their sustainability efforts, enhancing their identity.
By connecting sustainability to conservation, education, preservation, art, and community service missions, and by communicating in ways that honor staff expertise and invite genuine participation, cultural institutions can become models of how organizations create authentic, lasting change.
The result is not just reduced environmental impact. It also leads to stronger institutional culture, more engaged employees, and deeper community trust in the organization’s leadership on issues that matter for the future.
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Molly Coghlan (she/her) is passionate about exploring the intricate connections between people and their environment, working to develop sustainable solutions that address the challenges emerging from these relationships.
As a sustainability associate at Verdis Group, she promotes organizational change through facilitating participatory planning processes and creating data-driven solutions. Coghlan has a rich, interdisciplinary background that includes experience in developing and implementing sustainability engagement and education opportunities at all levels of an organization, as well as facilitating collaborative processes that drive meaningful environmental action.
