The experience of the Baikal Lake Foundation is presented at the MGIMO Business School
Anastasia Tsvetkova, General Director of the Baikal Lake Foundation, acted as a supervisor of the advanced training program “Business management based on ESG-principles: from practitioners to practices”, which was held from 13 to 18 November 2023 at the MGIMO School of Business and International Competences in cooperation with Baikal Communications Group.
During the program Anastasia Tsvetkova also delivered her lecture on impact investing, social entrepreneurship and current trends in cooperation with socially oriented non-profit organizations for business in Russia. Thus, Anastasia highlighted the regulatory framework for social entrepreneurship activities and gave examples of existing support measures for social entrepreneurs from the government, big business and development institutions. Anastasia also covered the topic of social impact projects, outlining the opportunities for development through cooperation with VEB RF. The listeners showed special interest in the metrics of impact of social projects, criteria of impact investing, popular areas of impact projects realization.
The General Director of the Lake Baikal Foundation paid special attention to the issues of cooperation between business and NPOs. Anastasia Tsvetkova noted that today this cooperation is becoming more and more systematic, embedded in the strategy of sustainable development of companies and meeting the goals and objectives outlined in it. NPOs are becoming partners in change, not only beneficiaries, but also implementers of social and environmental initiatives of companies. Anastasia proposed criteria for selecting an NPO partner, outlining both formal requirements for verification (transparency of information on the website, including the publication of charter documents, mission, values and principles of work of the organization) and ways of verification through the database of successful grantees of the Presidential Grants Fund, platforms of such foundations as Nuzhna Pomoshch, VK Dobro and other platforms. The speaker also noted the growing attention to the expertise and tone of the partner organization from the non-profit sector, which is transmitted through the NPO’s own projects and research, commentary activity in the media, and participation in specialized public events.
The listeners learned in detail about the experience of the Lake Baikal Foundation in cooperation with business, in particular, about the long-term monitoring program of the Research Institute of Biology of the Institute of Biology of the Institute of State University “Point #1” and the involvement of such partners as the World Around You Foundation and Yandex Cloud in the program, as well as about the whole network of partners of the Foundation on the initiative “National Parks without Garbage”, which is currently supported by such companies as Lenta, L-Pak, RusPro Association, Sportmaster and other partners.
The program “Business management based on ESG principles: from practitioners to practitioners” was held from November 13 to 18, 2023. The goal of the program was to reveal both the theoretical foundations of ESG and practical ESG approaches in various sectors of the economy through the cases of expert practitioners from leading companies in such areas as retail, timber industry, oil and gas sector, metallurgy, IT, transport, financial sector.
