Newly Empowered Chapters Help USGBC Accept Trade Associations

On August 9, 2005, the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) announced that it has amended its bylaws to accept trade associations as full members. This decision reverses an action taken in the spring of 2004 (see EBN Vol. 13, No. 6), when the board of directors voted to retain the exclusion of trade associations. It opens the door for the Council to become formally accredited by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) as a standards-setting body. Behind this change, however, is another story—about how the Council’s national office has a new understanding of the power, and value, of its chapters. “The last time that this agenda went forward, I’m not sure that anyone recognized the sophistication and intelligence of our chapter organizations,” says CEO Rick Fedrizzi.


The trade association action was necessary, according to Fedrizzi, to remove ammunition from critics who challenged the Council’s process in developing LEED® standards. “I kept hearing this murmuring that USGBC is not an open, consensus-based organization and that it’s because they don’t allow trade associations into the Council,” says Fedrizzi. “It was time to take away the lightning rod argument that they’ve been using,” concurs Don Simon, cofounder of USGBC’s Northern California Chapter, who led the opposition to including trade associations in 2004. 
Including trade associations, and the ANSI-accreditation that USGBC hopes will follow, is especially important to potential users of LEED in the public sector. According to an influential directive from the Office of Management and Budget, OMB Circular A-119, federal agencies are encouraged to use accepted industry standards instead of developing their own. Federal agencies using LEED, however, were encountering resistance from the trade associations, some of which are well-connected politically.
Simon remains leery of trade associations but feels that the Council is now strong enough to engage with them constructively. “Industry trade associations are the single greatest obstacle to sustainability on a local-to-global scale,” says Simon, adding: “With green building, they claim support but actively oppose progressive policies. Now is their big chance: Do the industry trade associations want to be partners in transforming the built environment for society’s benefit, or do they want to continue to be obstructionists, bent on maintaining the status quo?”
Support from Simon and other chapter leaders was essential to the Council, according to Fedrizzi. Through this issue, the Council leadership is undergoing a paradigm shift. “There was a sea change with this issue,” agrees Simon. Fedrizzi goes on to say that “chapters are becoming the front door of the organization,” adding: “There’s no doubt in my mind that in ten years chapters will be the predominant organization, and USGBC national will be a support to those organizations.” Fedrizzi travels the country visiting chapters regularly and says that he now sees, at the chapter level, the same passion and energy that led to the formation of the Council in the early 1990s. 
Along with the increasing focus on chapters, the Council as a whole is adopting a philosophy of “Dynamic Governance” that aims to replace top-down decision-making with a decentralized, neural-network model. This model of decision-making, known also as

sociocracy, was developed in the 1970s in the Netherlands by Kees Boeke and Gerard Endenburg. “Chapters are now getting a more central role in terms of governance and overall decision-making—they are looked at now as partners in this process,” says Alan Traugott, former USGBC board member and former chair of the Chapters Steering Committee. USGBC recently provided six $50,000 challenge grants to help some of the larger chapters hire staff. These funds were awarded to six of the eight full chapters: Chicago, Colorado, Delaware Valley, Los Angeles, New York, and Northern California. As of July 2005, the Council also has 40 provisional chapters and six affiliates—regional organizations that predated the Council’s chapter structure.