The Instigater Newsletter

The goal is to motivate the private sector to take significant steps for the environment—before it's too late. This isn't about continuing with the same old practices. Instead, we aim to encourage business leaders and institutional investors to think innovatively, involve all relevant parties, and collaborate with community organizations in fresh and meaningful ways.

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The Untold Story of Public Service

2 weeks ago | marktercek.substack.com | Mark Tercek

In this week’s fusillade of crazy headlines, here’s one we shouldn’t forget: Layoffs of 10,000 Government Health Workers Begin. This is . . . not good. What’s worse is how these civil servants are finding out their years of service have come to an end—-with deactivated badges when they try to open the building door. Thanks for reading The Instigator! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. This isn’t new of course.
It’s Not Us. It’s Them.

1 month ago | marktercek.substack.com | Mark Tercek

Our heads are spinning. Each day brings a barrage of bad news about the new administration’s haphazard and harmful decisions. As we’ve written, that’s their strategy. You know what else is part of the strategy? Getting us to turn on one another, arguing about direction, while they plow forward. Thanks for reading The Instigator! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. Many organizations we care about—including NGOs and universities—are in the fight to address these wrongs.
SOS

2 months ago | marktercek.substack.com | Mark Tercek

Another week has passed and there’s no letting up in the new administration’s torrent of executive actions. Long running strategic initiatives are being stymied, agencies shuttered, funding eliminated, website content stricken, and organizations of all stripes bullied. (I mean, the Kennedy Center, really?!)As we wrote last week, it’s one thing to review, finetune, or even restructure existing efforts—indeed, that’s usually a smart practice. But this is something entirely different.
Yes, We Should Speak Up!

2 months ago | marktercek.substack.com | Mark Tercek

It’s been a tumultuous few weeks, fueled in large part by inflammatory rhetoric and baseless accusations. Such matters have been a feature of the American political scene for a while now. You’ll recall Vivek Ramaswamy, for example, calling climate change a hoax in a Republican debate (and no one correcting him). But with the new administration officially in place, they’ve turned the dial way up. One target is DEI.
Don’t Be the Next New Coke

Jan 19, 2025 | marktercek.substack.com | Mark Tercek

Editor’s Note: We are heartbroken by the widespread devastation wreaked by the wildfires in LA and are thinking of all our readers who are impacted. We take some solace in the mass outpouring of support we’ve seen from individuals and organizations alike, and we’re grateful for this community dedicated to making climate progress so we can prevent and/or mitigate further disasters. This week, as we continue our focus on helping NGOs accomplish even more, we come to you with a cautionary tale.
Help NGOs Be Great (Part Two)

Jan 12, 2025 | marktercek.substack.com | Mark Tercek

We were pleased to hear from many of you over the past week about our last issue on the topic of NGOs. Clearly, many of you care deeply. One of the important questions we heard: How can board members help their NGOs achieve more? As you know, boards have official duties in the areas of governance, financial oversight, and compliance. We're not going to address these matters because we think most boards handle them well.
Help NGOs Be Great (Part One)

Jan 5, 2025 | marktercek.substack.com | Mark Tercek

As the year was winding down, a friend asked me to contribute to what looked like a worthy nonprofit organization. I was happy to consider a gift. I hugely admire the nonprofit sector, and I’m grateful that I’m able to help good organizations by making donations. It was clear the org is trying to do good things. But there were a few matters I wanted to better understand. Namely, how it set priorities and held itself accountable and exactly what big outcomes they aim to make happen.
Now What? (Part 2)

Dec 7, 2024 | marktercek.substack.com | Mark Tercek

This continues to be a challenging moment for environmentalists and all progressives. Over the period ahead, we’ll likely make good progress in determining the full set of strategies needed to address challenges like climate change and biodiversity. But, as we wrote in our last issue, there is a lot we can and should do right now. That's our focus again here: what you and your organization can do now.
Answering the Question on Everyone's Mind

Nov 16, 2024 | marktercek.substack.com | Mark Tercek

For climate hawks, it may seem like time is now divided into two distinct periods — the hopeful one before the election and the bewildering haze ever since. Clearly, things did not go quite as many environmentalists hoped. Big challenges lie ahead. We’ll need more time to figure out the full range of strategies to confront them. But one important option persists from the before times: the opportunity to make a serious effort to reach out to folks who have not been part of the climate tribe.
Our Greatest Hits

Oct 26, 2024 | marktercek.substack.com | Mark Tercek

Dear Readers, We’re 4 years old! On the occasion of our birthday, we want to take a moment to acknowledge the reason we keep going—you. Thank you very much!We appreciate how you stay engaged, ask tough questions, share our issues with friends (please keep doing so), and offer feedback (we agree with you—especially that brevity is the soul of wit—and we keep trying to improve). This is our 96th (!!) issue since we launched The Instigator in October 2021.