Online Collaboration for Impact: Our Tips

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Recent months have brought challenges that most of us could never have imagined, but fortunately, NextGreen’s clients can continue to work as usual with the joint sustainable transitions that we are facilitating online. Especially now, it is important that we, as government bodies, companies and financial institutions, work together on a truly inclusive society and a sustainable economy that supports this.

Now that we can no longer brainstorm face to face, we were quick to try out various online working methods. We now feel at home in any combination of Teams, Zoom, Skype, online workshops, webinars, break-out sessions, polls, chats – of course supplemented with e-mail and telephone. We adapt to the tools that our clients and partners prefer to work with, and we are discovering some great new online working methods.

We would like to share a number of online experiences from the processes that we have been facilitating:

Webinar-series EU project Finance@Biodiversity Community

In March, an international workshop was planned with the EU Business @ Biodiversity Platform. Business and finance frontrunners, NGOs and scientists were supposed to meet to work together on ‘Science-Based Targets for Biodiversity’. The one-day workshop was converted into a webinar series with break-out sessions, which has now been successfully completed. The day after the planned workshop, the EU Finance @ Biodiversity Community was scheduled to discuss commitments to biodiversity. A combination of GoToMeeting and polls in Mentimeter meant that an efficient meeting could take place, in which everyone’s contribution was heard. It was a productive meeting and a good basis on which to build.

Online meetings Alliance Financial Incentives

The meetings of the Financial Incentives Alliance have also continued as usual, but online. The working group on decision support was already adept at online meetings before the coronavirus outbreak. For this project, we used Teams and the partners took turns in sharing their practical experiences and explaining what they are working on by sharing their screen. The chat function was used to answer short questions. We also converted the partner meeting on May 12th into an online variant. At this partner meeting, the interim results from current pilots were a central point of attention and we were introduced to the new pilots. More information on the Greening Taxes project page.

National Rooftop Plan

Together with more than 50 partners in the National Rooftop Plan (NDP in Dutch), we want to start working on the four focus points of the action plan for the National Rooftop Plan: broadening the mindset, embedding in policy, stimulating finance, and skilled professionals. For the kick-off, a partner meeting was scheduled in April. Working with NDP-partner Rooftop Revolution we organized this kick-off event online, followed by four in-depth virtual workshops two weeks later.

Our tips?
  1. Online, too, choose working methods that suit the desired results. Organize the agenda, questions, polls and other online tools well in advance, and if possible share your slides with the participants in advance. When choosing your online tools, consider how you can record the results in an effective way. For example, Mentimeter allows you to download the results afterwards as a shareable PDF.
  2. Make it personal: for example, start off with a ‘check-in’ round in which everyone’s voice and name are briefly heard. You can make this an introduction round and include a specific opening question. In this way, everyone is conscious of entering the shared virtual space of the meeting (this works with up to about 20 participants);
  3. Involve participants, for example by asking one of the participants to chair (in part) and guide the conversation, or by involving a colleague to handle the online tools or make a report.

Do you need help with online meetings for a sustainable impact? Let us know, we will be happy to engage for positive change – also online!