Contributing to society & local communities

Why contributing to society and local communities is a material topic for ERM

As a global company with a long-standing commitment to contribute to the communities in which we live and work, ERM has a unique position and responsibility to build and leverage our technical expertise, societal understanding and business acumen to shape a more sustainable world. Our employees participate in environmental and social initiatives and actions to help address the needs of their local communities and others around the world. In addition, we contribute to broader initiatives, dialogues and action platforms in keeping with our purpose through our core business and the SustainAbility Institute by ERM.

For more than 25 years, we have collaborated with partners through the ERM Foundation to make a positive socio-economic and environmental impact. The ERM Foundation enables ERM and its employees to provide funding and professional support for nonprofit organizations and social enterprises that share our commitment to creating a more sustainable and equitable world.

ERM Foundation

Standing Together

To help some of our longer-term nonprofit partners navigate the pandemic and invest in research collaborations that contribute to thought leadership on ways to mitigate the impacts of the pandemic, we launched Standing Together, a $200,000 COVID-19 Recovery Fund. 

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More information about our collaborations with leading organizations and multistakeholder initiatives is available in the Impact through collaboration section of this report.

We set two targets for FY21 (see below), which we did not meet. During the pandemic, we prioritized unrestricted funding for some of our longer-term nonprofit partners. As a consequence, we were unable to meet all of our quantitative targets, although we exceeded our targets for Biodiversity and Livelihoods due to greater focus this year on forest-friendly livelihoods.