Growing Greener Coalition
About GGC
The mission of the Growing Greener Coalition is to ensure the health, prosperity, and security of people everywhere in the Commonwealth by advocating for public investment in cost-effective, nature-based solutions for safeguarding our drinking water, cleaning up our rivers and streams, and reducing floods; conserving the lands necessary for protecting wildlife, sustaining farm economies, and supporting other community needs; and providing for outdoor recreation.
Learn More About the Coalition
Review the goals, guiding principles, and rules of engagement for partner organizations.
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Make a contribution to the Growing Greener Coalition and help ensure strong investments for conservation and outdoor recreation.
Coalition Partners
GGC Charter Table of Contents
Growing Greener Coalition Charter
Vision
The Growing Greener Coalition envisions our present generation committing to make the financial investments that, when coupled with appropriate regulation, will:
- restore our rivers and streams to the healthy, life-serving, job-creating, economy-supporting natural resources that they all once were;
- conserve the lands needed to safeguard our drinking water, reduce flooding, support wildlife, secure food supplies, provide recreation, preserve scenic beauty, and strengthen communities; and
- provide ample opportunities to the public for outdoor recreation and connection to our natural heritage.
Mission
The mission of the Growing Greener Coalition is to ensure the health, prosperity, and security of people everywhere in the Commonwealth by advocating for public investment in cost-effective, nature-based solutions for safeguarding our drinking water, cleaning up our rivers and streams, and reducing flooding; conserving the lands necessary for protecting wildlife, sustaining farm economies, and supporting other community needs; and providing for outdoor recreation.
Goals
- Persuade decision-makers to greatly boost the state’s investments in cost-effective, nature-based solutions for safeguarding our drinking water, cleaning up our rivers and streams, and preventing floods; conserving the lands necessary for protecting wildlife, sustaining farm economies, and supporting other community needs; and providing for outdoor recreation.
- Ensure no diminution of the funding streams dedicated by the General Assembly to the Environmental Stewardship Fund, the Keystone Recreation, Park and Conservation Fund, farmland preservation, and the Marcellus Shale Legacy Fund, or reductions in state funds that leverage federal, environmental investments in Pennsylvania.
- Ensure that state agencies efficiently, appropriately, and effectively utilize the dedicated funding streams for making grants and implementing projects and programs.
Guiding Principles
- The GGC will not pursue legislative strategies and will not support legislative proposals that link expanded state investments with proposals that GGC partners believe to be harmful to the environment.
- As a coalition built for protecting and expanding state investments, the GGC directs its attention and energies to this purpose. The GGC will not take positions or advocate on other public policy matters unless the coalition’s partners are unanimous in agreeing to such actions.
- The GGC will not participate or intervene in any political campaign on behalf of or in opposition to any candidate for public office or any political party.
Who is the GGC?
The GGC is an unincorporated association of organizations—partners—that have come together to better leverage their collective resources to advance the vision, mission, and goals of the coalition.
Partner Qualifications
GGC partner organizations must be not-for-profit organizations guided by missions to advance nature-based solutions for safeguarding our drinking water, cleaning up our rivers and streams, and preventing floods; conserve the lands necessary for protecting wildlife, sustaining farm economies, and supporting other community needs; or provide for outdoor recreation.
(The Coalition may work in collaboration with non-qualifying organizations but such alliances do not make those organizations eligible for partner status.)
Partnership Obligations
GGC partner organizations must do all of the following:
- Financially support the coalition. This can include raising money from third parties and in-kind support from the organization but must also include direct cash support per the policy of the coalition.
- Lobby public officials—directly and through grasstops and grassroots contacts—for GGC legislative initiatives.
- Report back to the GGC on lobbying actions and results.
- Disseminate and amplify GGC messages using social media, emails, websites, newsletters, and other outreach tools as appropriate to the organization.
- Participate in meetings of the partners.
Partners also, as appropriate to the organization, must do at least one of the following:
- Help get people to GGC-sponsored events and activities.
- Connect legislators to projects supported by state investments via site visits.
- Promote GGC agenda to the media (e.g., reaching out to press contacts when a GGC-supported bill drops, submitting letters to the editor and op-eds, and discussing GGC priorities at editorial board meetings).
- Use the Conservation Voters of PA list-enhancement process to better understand and tap the potential of their contacts to affect public policy.
Other Forms of Association with the Coalition
The GGC may establish pathways for other organizations and individuals to assist and otherwise engage in the Coalition’s work. Initially these pathways and labels for those engaged in those pathways are as follows:
- Supporting organizations: NGOs, businesses, and governments that financially support the work of the Coalition but are not partners.
- Endorsing organizations: NGOs, businesses, and governments that endorse the Coalition’s goals.
- Individual associates: Individuals who financially support the work of the Coalition.
- Agency liaisons: Representatives of state government designated by their respective agencies and who the GGC seeks guidance from in shaping its efforts.
Philosophy Underpinning the Coalition
The partners do not intend that the coalition become an institution—a self-perpetuating entity seeking permanence for itself. Rather, it is a tool of the partners for advancing a particular agenda and may be dismantled or modified by the partners to address changing circumstances.
To the extent coalition partners see themselves as separate from the coalition—if they distinguish between us (a partner organization) and them (the coalition)—this runs counter to the goal of working in partnership.
The coalition, recognizes that its main strength will be in its partners, each with issues and constituents more directly tied to decision makers and the media than the coalition as a whole. As such it seeks to have its partners and allies speak individually and loudly with mutually reinforcing messages unified in purpose regarding coalition concerns.
The coalition serves an important part in serving as a platform for creating and disseminating common messages for its partners and allies, but its direct delivery of these messages to legislators, the media, and other interests should generally be complementary of the multitude of voices and, even if sometimes the leading voice, should not unduly dominate the work of the coalition.
Rules of Engagement for Partners
- The GGC strives for consensus in its decision-making, meaning its partners’ representatives will seek to find solutions that everyone actively supports, or, if not, at least can accept for the sake of group cohesion. (Per the GGC’s guiding principles, certain decisions require unanimity.)
- Partners will keep their policies and actions generally consistent with those of the coalition. If a partner holds a position or intends to act at cross-purposes to the coalition’s work, the partner will disclose this difference and offer to explore reconciliation, and if irreconcilable, offer its resignation from the coalition.
- Partners will keep any GGC disputes civil and internal.
- Partners will be discrete in discussing GGC deliberations outside of GGC settings.
