CASE STUDY

How IdeaScale Created an Effective Carbon Committee to Track Emissions

Sustainability committee drives action and transforms business practices

IdeaScale is an idea innovation management platform headquartered in San Francisco, CA, with around 100 employees. Their software solution acts as a hub for gathering ideas from various sources, identifying the most promising ones, and streamlining project management for faster results. The software is designed to meet the needs of large companies, government agencies, and nonprofits, providing tools to enhance their innovation initiatives.

To support Ideascale’s ambitious decarbonization targets, they partnered with RyeStrategy to manage their GHG inventory, carbon

footprint calculations, and reduction strategy advisory. Through mitigation strategies and a curated offset portfolio, Ideascale achieved carbon neutrality.

After the completion of the carbon neutrality process with RyeStrategy, including the implementation of 20 custom mitigation strategies, IdeaScale began incorporating relevant recommendations into its employee handbook, ensuring that the desired changes would be made company-wide.

Next, the company formally created an internal Carbon Committee. Founded with the goal of lowering corporate emissions year-over-year, IdeaScale’s Mission Carbon Committee quickly gained traction, including the involvement of CEO Rob Hoehn. During a subsequent town hall meeting, the Mission Carbon Committee was formally announced and opened up to all employees, leading to several new members, and a total team size of six. Covering a range of functions — from management to accounting to sales — the Committee decided that its most effective course of action would be to split up identified strategies based on individual interests and capabilities.

With monthly meetings, the Committee regularly tracks mitigation progress and continues to interact with the organization as a whole, presenting during town halls, sharing employee stories, and always leaving the door open to more involvement. A group such as IdeaScale’s Mission Carbon Committee is essential to effective corporate mitigation — the team not only ensures successful completion of identified goals, but also offers interested individuals a hands-on way to be involved in sustainable activity while simultaneously keeping the employee base as a whole informed. At its very core, the Mission Climate Committee has ingrained sustainability into IdeaScale’s DNA.

Establishing a Carbon Committee with Purpose and Goals

“Going carbon neutral gave our brand distinction in the marketplace. We know of at least one deal where a customer chose us over the competitors because we were carbon neutral.”

Jessica Day, Co-founder & CMO, IdeaScale

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