Green Alliance employee Diana Siarni, co-owner Chad Butson, center, and member Boyd Allen at the Green Alliance Party for the Planet at Redhook Brewery in Portsmouth. Courtesy Photo.
For years, the Green Alliance has helped market those Seacoast companies looking to shrink their carbon footprint. With a new owner at the helm, the organization is refining its focus and growing geographically.
Mike Bellamente, managing director and one of three co-owners of the Green Alliance, took over earlier this year from founder Sarah Brown, who he says was ready to move on to new professional challenges.
Bellamente wants to focus more on the organization’s Green Card program, which offers discounts on green products and services from member businesses, and revitalizing the organization's brand. To do that he is working to expand the reach of the Green Alliance and the Green Card program beyond the Seacoast. He is recruiting businesses in other areas of NH, Maine and Massachusetts to join.
“We will do slow outward growth from Portsmouth,” he says of his plan to attract more Green Card members. “We’re pivoting. Instead of being a full-scale PR firm for green business, we are becoming a connectivity resource.”
Bellamente changed the fee structure of the Green Card from an annual membership fee of $35 to a one-time flat fee of $20. “The more people holding our cards, the more benefit to our business,” Bellamente says. The Green Alliance currently has about 3,000 cardholders. It also has over 100 business members who pay between $750 and $4,200 a year to be members and market through the Green Card.
To attract more participants outside the Seacoast, the Green Alliance participated in Plymouth State University’s Earth Jam in April and the Stonyfield Earth Day 5K in Londonderry in May.
Bellamente plans to change how the Green Alliance ranks businesses for being eco-friendly by moving away from a rigid score card to a principles-based criterion. He says using the same criteria to rate businesses as diverse as a solar energy company and a yoga studio is not effective. “With a diverse membership, it’s hard to say one score card fits all,” Bellamente says.
The new system will take into account whether a product or service inherently lowers the environmental footprint of a customer and the extent of a business’s commitment to reduce its environmental footprint.
While there will be less emphasis on marketing individual businesses, the Green Alliance will continue to use its platform to tell the sustainability stories of member companies and provide consumers with information. “I like working with small businesses to tell their sustainability stories and help them with their journey,” says Bellamente, who has been a member of the Green Alliance for years. He previously served as the executive director of Climate Counts in Portsmouth and as head of consumer engagement for CDP, a global repository of corporate environmental data. He was named to the national economic solutions team to conduct impact analyses for communities affected by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. In 2012, Bellamente was named to Ethisphere’s list of 100 most influential people in business ethics.
During the transition, Bellamente says the Green Alliance, now based in Greenland, was able to retain 85 percent of member businesses and is now adding new members. “Within five months we will be in the black,” he says.
For more information, visit www.greenalliance.biz.