Future 500 Invites Stakeholder Opinion Leaders to Rate Companies

Online, September 8, 2010 (Newswire.com) - Future 500 is calling on stakeholder influentials from across sectors -- NGOs, activists, corporate directors, academics, shareholder and community advocates, media, and governmental officials -- to rate the performance of fifty top companies on stakeholder engagement and issue leadership.

The online survey will be open for responses through September, 20 2010.

Survey respondents are asked to rate fifty top companies, including Safeway, Best Buy, Intel, Google, Coca-Cola and others, on their stakeholder engagement activities such as:

-Direct dialogue with stakeholders
-Transparency and accessibility of social and environmental metrics for analysis and research
-Public corporate communications and reporting
-Lobbying and advocacy
-Participation in associations and issue related coalitions or working groups
-Any other corporate activities that create dialogue between the company and its stakeholders on environmental and social issues.

The survey is being conducted by the sustainability consulting firm, SureGround (www.suregroundsolutions.com). Future 500 is partnering with Plant with Purpose (www.plantwithpurpose.org) to enable survey respondents to help make a small but positive environmental and social impact through their participation. For each survey completed, Future 500 will plant a tree in Moren, Haiti, a small rural community of farmers with an average annual income of 0. Tree planting helps prevent soil erosion and can provide much needed food crops (avocados, mangos) or cooking fuel and timber (eucalyptus, chenn, calliandra calothyrsus).

Future 500 is a non-profit 501c3 organization dedicated to building relationships that matter between corporations and stakeholders to advance solutions to the world's most critical sustainability challenges. The group fosters cross-sectoral engagement, linking together strategically-selected companies and NGOs, and turning their focus away from cross-demonization and toward systemic solutions in four core program areas: Climate, Water, Recycling and Product Stewardship, and Labor and Transparency.

TAKE THE SURVEY -http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/Future500StakeholderEngagementSurvey

For more information on Future 500 and Sureground, please contact Maryann McDonnell at 800-655-2020 or mmcdonnell @ future500.org.
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