The Paper Diet

The Paper Diet A new way to (not) think about paper In 2010, the amount of paper recovered for recycling averaged 334 pounds for each person living in the U.S., according to the American Forest & Paper Association. And that’s just the paper that was recovered. In 2010, GMN released “Beyond the Recycling Bin: Greening Practices of Grantmakers,” which reported on paper use, energy efficiency, and green travel practices of member organizations. GMN’s survey showed that grants managers are overwhelmingly interested in greening practices, and their actions can impact the overall greening of their organizations. The Paper Diet began in 2011 where “Beyond the Recycling Bin” ended, with results that show grantmakers’ interest in greening and understanding of the key practices required to lessen the use of paper and increase content efficiency. What changes could grants management professionals implement in their own organizations? A group of GMN members—just under 100 individuals from organizations of all sizes—agreed to tell us about their paper usage. We then asked them to spend time looking at their original reports and develop methods of reducing the amount of paper used in their everyday work. Later, we asked the same cohort to tell us about changes they made and the resulting decreases in paper usage. Before the paper diet, GMN members clearly understood the value of using less paper to make processes more efficient: 42 of 81 respondents (51.9 percent) used an electronic proposal process. But that understanding hadn’t spread widely. Only 13 of 81 respondents (16 percent) used electronic board books.

Grants Managers Network

The Paper Diet

January 2013 | Page 1 of 9

Key Findings Based on the initial Paper Diet survey (August 2011) and the subsequent follow up survey (January 2012), grantmakers’ paperless processes reflected some movement toward less use of paper but also demonstrated significant ambiguity about the purpose and benefits of using less paper. o

51 percent of respondents accept proposals electronically

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16 percent use electronic board books

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75 percent printed board books in-house – only 16 percent use an outside printer

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13 percent use electronic grant agreements

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43 percent accept reports electronically

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65 percent accept due diligence documents electronically

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4.9 percent have paperless payment processes

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18 percent have a double-sided printing policy -

47 percent report that while they have no formal policy, most of the office prints double-sided

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78 percent communicate via email

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35 percent reported that program staff keep separate paper grant files

Buy-in is Critical Grants managers were able to make some changes themselves, but the most extensive and successful paperless attempts came with support from senior management and boards of directors. Respondents noted that senior management buy-in was needed to allocate resources and time to move processes electronic, and helped to get staff buy-in as well.

Greatest Improvements Respondents to GMN’s follow-up survey found the greatest improvements by moving many processes online and creating awareness of paper use alternatives. o

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Turning to Technology -

Accepting electronic proposals, agreements, and reports

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Publishing electronic board books

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Changing grants management databases

Raising Expectations -

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Implementing a double-sided printing policy

Right-sizing -

Reducing the number of required reports for smaller grants


The Paper Diet


Application Process Many respondents reported that their biggest successes came in transitioning to electronic application/proposal processes, which reduced paper use and also facilitated moving the rest of the grants process to electronic as well. Electronic application and proposal processes take several forms for GMN members. One foundation reported completing the process entirely via email: grantees email a soft copy of their proposal to a program officer or grants manager, and the approval process is done via an email chain of approvals. Some create intranet folders and scan/attach documents to grantee files to maintain complete and up-todate records. Other foundations used online application portals. At the beginning of the paper diet, 52 percent of participants were using online application processes; after the challenge, that percentage had increased to 70. Respondents reported varied changes: »

“We stopped printing annual reports and blank pages of budgets, asked people to double-side print whenever possible.”

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“We have removed the grant summary review process which saves on staff time (writing) and paper. We now meet and discuss the grants in person using only one sheet of paper.”

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“Copy only what the Directors actually want in their monthly notebooks rather than everything for every director.”

Approval Process Many respondents reported that they were able to make at least modest improvements in their grant approval processes. Those that moved to an electronic system saw the greatest improvements, although they did report that some staff still preferred to print materials to review them. One foundation began conducting the review process in a group meeting. Others encouraged staff to review documents electronically or print them double-sided.

Electronic Board Books Several respondents reported replacing their board books either partially or completely with electronic versions. Sixteen percent of participants were already using electronic board books at the start of the paper diet; the follow-up survey revealed that 25 percent were doing so. »

“We used to put board books on a disk or a USB. Now we use DropBox.”

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“The foundation has purchased iPads for executive staff and admin staff and has begun providing electronic board and grants review committee materials. We've set up board material file sharing through DropBox and board and staff use GoodReader on the iPad to review and annotate meeting materials. Foundation staff provided an iPad demonstration to the Board, a "board book" cost analysis, and took a survey of each member's current technology. We determined that board members already have sufficient technology in place to provide


The Paper Diet


connectivity (wi-fi) for the iPad and the Board voted to go ahead with the process of phasing out paper-based books and moving all meeting materials to the iPad.” »

“Use shortened summaries for board materials.”

Grant Agreements Several respondents noted that their organizations have implemented a partially or wholly electronic grant agreement. Some sign a hard copies of grant agreements and then scan and email the agreement to grantees, who print, sign, scan and email it back. Others use a third-party service like DocuSign, which allows parties to sign a PDF document via email. Another foundation attaches a GIF file of the president’s signature to grant agreements upon his approval, and emails that to the grantee. Another foundation sends grantees language that states that by accepting the grant payment they are agreeing to the terms and conditions of the grant. This way there is no delay between the grant being awarded and payment being made. Thirteen percent of participants used electronic grant agreements at the beginning of the paper diet; the follow-up survey reveals 35 percent using electronic grant agreements. »

“Send all cc's via email (when I first started a year ago - we sent all the cc's hard copies).”

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“Having grantees email last page of signed grant agreement.”

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“We send grantees only electronic agreements.”

Payment While many participants noted that their payment process consists of only a check or single sheet of paper, no one had gone totally electronic. Some of the methods respondents reported using to make their payment processes electronic include: submitting pay orders electronically, keeping electronic rather than paper files on payments made, paying by electronic file transfer, and paying by automated clearing house.

Reporting Of the 43 percent of participants whose organizations accept reports electronically, many accepted them via email. Others had grantee portals where the grantee could upload reports. Some of these portals allowed grantees to see their entire suite of grants, while others allowed grantees to see reports due on a grant-by-grant basis.


The Paper Diet


Biggest Barriers »

“Trustees aren't ready for digital copies yet, they like to write notes on the proposal summaries and record amounts on a project list sheet.”

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“Upper management claims that auditors want everything on paper.”

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“Relying on grantees to have the technology/capacity to be paperless.”

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“Tradition - change is hard here because the staff is comfortable with the way things have always been done.”

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“Resistance to change (people like paper because they are used to being surrounded by bits of paper!)”

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“Bringing the other departments into the paperless culture.”

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“Individual resistance to change; the inter-generational differences and work types and preferences.”

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“The paper usage has become decentralized, so it is hard to track whether we are really using much less paper. Even though we do 90 percent of our processes electronically, I'm not sure if the [everyone is] actually in the habit of reviewing materials electronically. Some people have continued personally printing large amounts of paper for their own review... so we've effectively moved the admin work of printing & organizing from admin staff to the person reviewing.”

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“Not all staff members were in agreement to the change.”

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“All staff have personal printers in their offices which do not print double-sided.”

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“The notion that email communication is less formal/respectful than printed correspondence.”

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“The time involved in scanning documents and saving them in our database”

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“Duplicate filing systems. We keep hard copies of everything, in addition to uploading proposals to GIFTS. We are a very small staffed Foundation, so are challenged with finding the time to streamline our process.”

Benefits of Going Paperless The main benefits of going paperless that respondents noted included: o

More efficient grants management

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Cost savings on printing and paper supplies

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Increased ease in sharing information

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Reduction in clutter

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Greater responsiveness to grantees

While environmental considerations were not absent in respondents’ decisions to go paperless, issues of cost and efficiency were much stronger motivating factors.


The Paper Diet


9 Steps to Starting Your Own Paper Diet Make the Case o

Connect paperless and efficiency to your organizational values

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Understand the unique impact and imperatives for your organization

Get Buy-In Early o

Get C-level supervisors on board early

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Make sure all constituents are represented

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Champion small changes and use them as a catalysts for more support

Inform o

Find and point to paper waste that everyone can understand

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Keep colleagues and supervisors up-to-date on the latest improvements and successes

Educate o

Ask colleagues to audit their paper use and share with the group

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Take a look at yearly spending on the accoutrements of paper waste, like printers and toner

Collaborate o

Keep track of suggestions and give them real credence when planning your changes

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Ask for feedback on how you can improve the next round of changes

Iterate o

Borrow successful processes from peer organizations

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Expand vertically and laterally so that change reaches all levels

Embrace Holdouts o

Lessen fear by using hybrid systems at first, so everyone can move at their own pace

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Provide the necessary technology training to enable holdouts to become champions

Harness Your Expectations o

Expect great things but plan for small, incremental improvements

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Get a firm sense of the resources available to you and plan accordingly

Address Barriers to Success o

Know what you’re up against and the ways to address challenges

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Look for solutions that use skills already available internally

For more on these steps, see the accompanying PowerPoint presentation bit.ly/paperdietpresentation


The Paper Diet


The Price of Paper The average office worker continues to use a staggering 10,000 sheets of copy paper every year, according to statistics from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. These are extremely alarming numbers given the technology available in today’s world.

Paper productivity costs o

A typical employee spends 30-40 percent of their time looking for information locked in email, documents, shared hard disks and filing cabinets.

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The average document is copied 9 to 11 times.

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Filing costs average $20 per document.

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We are approaching 4 trillion documents being stored by businesses and government agencies.

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Each four-drawer file cabinet holds an average of 10,000 to 12,000 documents, takes up to 9 square feet of floor space, and costs about $25,000 to fill and $2,000 per year to maintain.

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Every 12 filing cabinets require an additional employee to maintain.

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18 minutes is the average search time for a document.

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Each misfiled document costs $125.

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Each lost document costs $350 to $700.

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More than 70 percent of today’s businesses would fail within 3 weeks if they suffered a catastrophic loss of paper-based records due to fire or flood.

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Paper in the average business grows by 22 percent a year, meaning your paper will double in 3.3 years.

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At any given time, between 3 and 5 percent of an organization’s files are lost or misplaced.

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U.S. managers spend an average of 4 weeks a year searching for or waiting on misfiled, mislabeled, untracked, or ‘lost’ papers”.

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It can cost up to 31 times the original cost to send information on paper (printing, copying, postage, storage, filing, recycling, etc.).

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7.5 billion documents are created and 15 trillion copies are made each year.


The Paper Diet


The Cost of Pushing Paper o

Every misfiled document costs firms $125 in lost productivity.

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15 percent of an organization's revenues are spent creating, managing, and distributing documents.

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60 percent of employee time is spent working with documents.

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85 percent of business documents are in paper form.

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90 percent of a business's information is in documents.

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At $30/hr., knowledge workers waste $4,500 each year working with paper.

Paper Protection o

Recycling one ton of paper saves about 17 trees.

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Recycling 15,000 pounds of paper equates to saving about 125 trees, 1,950 gallons of oil, 24 cubic yards of land fill space, 30,000 kilowatts of energy and 52,500 gallons of water.

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Recycling 120,000 pounds of paper equates to saving about 1,000 trees, 22,800 gallons of oil, 192 cubic yards of land fill space, 2,400,000 kilowatts of energy and 420,000 gallons of water.


The Paper Diet


Acknowledgments GMN wishes to thank: the volunteer members of the G4 team, whose work preceded and predicated the paper diet experiment; GMN members who participated in the paper diet surveys and whose feedback created the practical knowledge on how to decrease paper use; and GMN members Scott Pietka, Chris Percopo, and Patrick Taylor, who led the G4 team and spearheaded the paper diet project.

G4 Volunteer Team Anne Assehn

Lucy Hollis

Kyle Reis

Mama Cash

The Atlantic Philanthropies

Ford Foundation

Christy Dickinson

Beery Jimenez

Thomas Reuter

Arts Midwest

Proteus Fund

Deaconess Community Foundation

Cynthia Drennan

Jordan Kramer

Bonnie Rivers

Sisters of St. Joseph

Planned Parenthood

Carnegie Corporation of New York

Charitable Fund

Federation of America Courtney Rottman, JD

Laura Duty

Paula Lentoni

King Foundation

Mott Philanthropic

Susan G. Komen for the Cure Jackie Shaul

Shirley Hamilton

Elizabeth Murph

EyeSight Foundation

Harold K.L. Castle Foundation

Annie E. Casey Foundation Anela Shimizu

of Alabama Christopher Percopo Phillip Harmon

The Leona M. and Harry B.

Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation

Helmsley Charitable Trust

Hau'oli Mau Loa Foundation Patrick Taylor The Energy Foundation


The Paper Diet
