Based on surveys and interviews with GMN members, the Paper Diet report reveals how grantmakers can make improvements in their efforts to go paperless to increase efficiency, effectiveness, and environmental awareness.

1. a way to (not) think about paper
introducing
THE PAPER DIET

2. Reframing the Paper Problem
In 2010, the amount of paper recovered for recycling averaged
334 pounds for each person living in the US, according to the
American Forest & Paper Association. And that’s just the
paper that was recovered. We need a paper diet.

3. The Price of Paper
• The average worker in an office
uses 10,000 sheets of paper
annually.
• It can cost up to 31 times the
original cost to send information
on paper (printing, copying,
postage, storage, filing, recycling,
etc.).
• 7.5 billion documents are
created and 15 trillion copies are
made each year.
• The average four drawer cabinet
costs about $25,000 to fill and
$2,000 per year to maintain.
Reduce.org

4. GMN’s Paper Diet Experiment
• The Paper Diet began where the
greening report “Beyond the Recycle
Bin” ended, with results showing
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 current practices and
developing methods of reducing the
amount of paper used in their
everyday work.
• Later, we asked the same cohort to
tell us about the actions they took:
which ones worked and which ones
didn’t?

5. Key Findings from the Paper Diet
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.
• 51 percent of respondents accept proposals electronically
• 16 percent use electronic board books
• 75 percent printed board books in-house – only 16 percent use an outside printer
• 13 percent use electronic grant agreements
• 43 percent accept reports electronically
• 65 percent accept due diligence documents electronically
• 4.9 percent have paperless payment processes
• 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
• 78 percent communicate via email
• 35 percent reported that program staff keep separate paper grant files

6. How Participants Went Paperless
• Accepted electronic proposals and reports
• Implemented a double-sided printing policy
• Published electronic board books rather than hard copies
• Used electronic agreements
• Reduced the number of required reports for smaller grants
• Changed to more robust grants management databases that supported
keeping all files electronically

7. TOP TIPS
FROM PAPER DIETERS
Direct statements from survey respondents appear in blue.

8. Makethe Case
Connect paperless and efficiency to your
organizational values.
• If your organization has an environmental or
conservation focus, build a case based on
"walking the talk" by going green.
• If you have criteria or expectations that grantees
will operate efficiently and embrace technology,
push for your organization to model that
behavior first.
Understand the universal benefits.
• In addition to mission, vision, and values, each
organization has a set of operating imperatives
that guide their behavior. For example, all
organizations are looking to cut costs. Making
maximum use of people and other resources by
going paperless is a clear fit with this goal.
Despite the obvious environmental
benefits to going paperless, those
concerns weren’t as keen for survey
participants as other, more
organizational and functional issues.
Whatever the hook for going paperless
is going to be in your organization, you
must identify and incorporate those
reasons into your paper diet.

9. Get Buy-In Early
Form a Green Team.
– Take the lead in identifying paper waste in
your organization and brainstorm waste
reduction ideas.
– Bring other players on board, especially from
different departments and levels.
Embrace pilot programs.
– Small wins are still wins, and can provide
powerful proof for continuing efforts on a
larger scale.
“One of our key departments was already planning
to go paperless, so it was easy for the grants
management team to use them as an example.
Once the cultural shift began, it was easier to plan a
paperless way forward.”
Start with your immediate supervisor
and enlist their help in going higher up
for buy in on your paperless projects.
Support from those on top means your
project has a greater chance of
success, and starting your paper diet
evangelism with C-level leadership
often means approaching those most
resistant to change right up front.

10. Inform
Address inefficiencies that not everyone sees.
“I previously spent two days creating board books
manually—printing, collating, assembling, binding—
every time my board met, which was up to 12 times
per year. Moving to electronic board books meant I
reclaimed up to 24 days of time previously spent in
paper wasteland.”
Legitimize electronic processes.
“Some staff questioned whether electronic versions
of legal documents were still binding. We went
through a thorough review with our lawyers to make
sure that we were on the up-and-up, but we also
decided to move some essential HR processes online.
If staff questioned the validity of electronic
processes, getting their paychecks electronically
showed that those processes were totally legal.”
Your supervisors and colleagues may
know what your job is without
necessarily knowing how you do it.
Demonstrating significant
inefficiencies and how they affect
others—rather than highlighting their
impact on you personally—helps
illustrate how seemingly small time
wasters can add up to organization-
wide deficiencies.

11. Educate
Start with an environmental assessment.
– Look at the waste your organization
generates to help target areas for reduction.
Point out how the process is already broken.
“We used to print up to 80 copies of 300-400-page
board books. But at the end of the year on recycling
day, I’d see them all in the recycling bins, unused. So I
took a picture of the bins and showed it to my boss.
Then they got on board with a paperless movement.”
Tally the full cost of paper waste.
– On site printers + maintenance; paper;
toner; binding materials; off site production
fees; storage; shipping; staff time.
RESOURCE: Paper Cost Calculator
http://bit.ly/paperdietcostcalc
Going paperless isn’t just about paper.
It’s also about all of the attendant
supplies, processes, and people hours
that are required to make paper into
something important.
Educate colleagues about the capacity
to put the something important—
content, information—in a place that’s
more efficient, effective, and easily
accessible.

12. Collaborate
Widen the circle of influence.
– You never know where your biggest
champion will come from, or how buy-in and
quantifiable changes can ripple through the
organization.
– Look to peer organizations as models for
going paperless; seeing paperless process in
action and working may help increase buy-in
from the top down.
Ask for feedback from as many areas as
possible.
– Perspectives aren’t always clear or shared by
everyone on the team.
“Not everyone cared about the environmental
impact of our paper waste. So we approached some
holdouts from the perspective of time wasted
dealing with paper, and space wasted storing it.
Once people were on board—for whatever reason—
they supported and help implement the plan.
Everyone should be involved in initial
conversations, and even those not
involved in the implementation should
receive frequent updates.
Communicate as much as possible
about what you’re doing, why, and
how; share your plans, big successes
and miserable failures.

13. Iterate
Use suggestions from the internal audience.
– Show colleagues that their buy-in is essential
and their suggestions carry real weight. Start
by challenging people to come up with ideas
that might work for everyone. Ask people
about their individual paperless processes
and build on what works for them.
Give new processes a little time to work, but
don’t cling to them out of fear of failure.
“We tried bits and pieces of many different
strategies. Some worked immediately, others we
couldn’t judge for a while. But as soon as we saw
something wasn’t working, we tweaked it and were
up front about why it didn’t work. This helped
colleagues feel empowered to make suggestions.”
Starting a paper diet from scratch is
intimidating because there’s no clear
path that works for every organization.
Strategy is essential. Focus on the end
goal and the small incremental goals it
will take to get to the finish line. Then
try everything and keep what works.

14. EmbraceHoldouts
Be flexible when you can.
– Everyone may not move at the same speed,
and those who are reluctant will appreciate
your willingness to support their individual
progress.
“We put our entire set of board materials—up to
300 pages—online as a PDF. But some board
members *still* wanted a printed copy. We agreed
internally that we would supply printed copies only
upon request, and only a handful of people still want
to do it the old way. Now those people they don’t
complain about dealing with a few electronic
documents throughout the year because we’ve
respected their request for a printed board book.”
Allay fears about losing parts of the process or
being left behind.
– Demonstrate tech solutions in a way that
convinces people they aren’t losing access to
information
Most people who fear change actually
fear being left behind in a change
movement. By embracing the holdouts
who are skeptical of or outright
opposed to going paperless, you can
win support and increase buy-in.

15. Harness Your
Expectations
Know what your resources will be.
– If you have limited resources, your paper
diet experience will be far different than that
of a team working with a large budget to
invest in new systems and equipment.
Understand that your initial goal isn’t the
same as your end goal.
– Make interim goals small and attainable and
then build on those successes.
“Biting off more than we could chew only made the
process more difficult; it didn’t get us anywhere any
faster.”
When moving many people and
processes around, it’s important to be
honest with yourself and the team
about what can be accomplished
quickly, what might take some time,
and what may never happen but is still
worth working toward.
Acknowledge your small wins
throughout the process and celebrate
when something works well. But don’t
let the end goal overwhelm you when
there are so many interim steps still to
take.

16. Address Barriers
to Success
Organizational culture
– Fear of change
– Entrenchment in legacy systems
Time and cost investment
– Competing organizational imperatives
– Pressure to get it right the first time
– Experimentation viewed as failure
Technology learning curve
– Not necessarily generational
– People prefer systems they know
“We looked at the paper diet not as a new way to
handle old practices but as an opportunity to create
new practices that fit the way our staff is working
now—some remotely, some purely by tablet instead
of PC. This approach made the changes seem less
optional and more tied to updating our work
practices across the board.”
Every organization will have a different
set of barriers, from staff and financial
resources to lack of buy-in or support.
Identifying and addressing these
barriers up front may help remove
them entirely, or at least provide
workarounds that keep the process
going.
Some barriers require skills you may
already have internally, such as
training knowledge. Use those skills to
maximize resources and spread
collaboration.

17. Resources
• The Paper Diet Report bit.ly/paperdietreport
• Project Streamline Guide to Online Applications & Reporting
bit.ly/paperdietonlineappsreporting
• Project Streamline Guide to Budgets and Financial Reporting
bit.ly/paperdietgrantbudgetsfinancial
• Project Streamline Guide to Right-Sizing
bit.ly/paperdietgrantbudgetsfinancial
• Beyond Recycling Bin Report bit.ly/paperdietbeyondrecyclingbin
• Paper Cost Calculator bit.ly/paperdietcostcalc