SCORE Assessment

SCORE has a separate assessment for each of these sectors and common organizational functions. By choosing the areas relevant to your organization, you can assemble a broad assessment of your sustainability practices and areas for improvement.

QuickLinks: What is SCORE • What's special about SCORE • SCORE assessment areas • How SCORE Works
• Sample SCORE items • SCORE Options • Licensed Assessors • Becoming Licensed • Pay for SCORE Report w/credit card

How SCORE Works

SCORE gathers an incredible amount of information in a short time. It is most commonly done in 4 meetings:

We analyze your data, write a report with our observations, recommendations and associated resources. You get back:

SCORE includes a separate assessment for each major sector (services, manufacturing, government) and as well as common organizational functions (top management, facilities, human resources, marketing, finance, etc.) Each sector is rated on roughly a dozen sustainability practices and the functions usually have about half-a-dozen practices. All together, there are over 100 practices to be rated. However, since they are organized the way organizations are organized, an individual manager only has to attend to a handful of practices.

Sample SCORE Items

Each practice has three benchmarks of performance. The 'incubator' level represents better than status quo and typical performance for those early in their implementation. The 'initiative' level represents the performance expected of an organization with a formal sustainability effort. The 'initiative' level represents best practice, performance in organizations where sustainability is fully integrated and the organization is actively influencing the behavior of others outside the organization.

You rate your organization's performance on a 0-9 scale and SCORE provides you standards at the 1, 3 and 9 level to help you rate yourself appropriately. A licensed assessor helps you interpret the items in your context. This structure is an amazing educational tool because it describes 'fully sustainable' and gives you stepping stones to get there.

SCORE Options

Conduct SCORE—SCORE is typically done in 4 meetings. We can do some of these meetings via teleconference if needed.

SCORE-Again — This option is for repeat customers, a do-it-yourself version. We can compare your results to the last time you took SCORE.

pre-SCORE—pre-SCORE is for customers who are so new to sustainability that they want to use SCORE to understand what sustainability means and build a plan for when to address the practices instead of rating themselves on the assessment.

SCORE as part of a larger sustainability assessment. SCORE assesses the degree to which you've incorporated sustainability into your business practices. However there may be other elements you want to assess (e.g., greenhouse gases, energy, waste, etc.) SCORE can be one part of a much larger sustainability assessment.

Do It Yourself—Anyone can purchase a copy of The Business Guide to Sustainability and use the paper-and-pencil version inside the book (for their own organization only; consultants are required to become licensed if they want to use SCORE in their practice). However, you will not get our expert analysis of your results, a formal report with our recommendations and associated resources, or charts showing how your results compare to others who have taken SCORE. Also, not all assessments are included in the book because the structure of the book is somewhat different than the assessment now.

Mini-SCORE— Coming Soon! SCORE for small businesses: fewer items, faster and more affordable.

Licensed assessors available to administer SCORE

In order to spread the availability of this powerful tool, we have trained and licensed experienced sustainability professionals to administer SCORE. A licensed assessor can help you in the following ways:

Find the best way to administer SCORE in your organization
Understand the items, interpreting them to your situation
Benchmark your organization against others who have taken the assessment
Interpret your report results
Decide what your priorities should be, based on the assessment results
Connect you with resources and provide advice for how to proceed with your goals and plans

The licensed assessors in the table below are available to administer SCORE in your organization. Buy local! (There are other assessors but they only do SCORE for their own organizations.)

Darcy Hitchcock and Marsha Willard of AXIS Performance Advisors are the creators of SCORE. They, along with Dorothy Atwood at the Zero Waste Alliance are master trainers, the only ones who can license other assessors to use SCORE in their consulting practice. In addition to the master trainers, the following people have been trained on the use of SCORE and are licensed to administer it with clients. (Other licensees may choose not to be listed as they only do SCORE for their own organization.) Licensees who are able to do SCORE for you are listed by region.

NOTE: SCORE licensees are the only people who have our permission to use SCORE. The people below are those who use SCORE in their consulting practice. If you encounter others who are using SCORE but are not licensed, please ask them to contact us to become properly trained. They run the risk of using SCORE inappropriately as there are many subtleties to this tool. In addtition, they do not have access to the most updated files or certain assessments that are not available in The Business Guide to Sustainability, and they cannot benchmark your organization's performance against other organizations. Of course, anyone can purchase a copy of The Business Guide to Sustainability and use the SCORE worksheets to do a paper-and-pencil assessment of their own organization. But we hold consultants to a higher standard if they want to use SCORE in their practice. Practitioners inside organizations may also want to become licensed so they can conduct SCORE year after year or in different divisions without incurring the expenses of an external consultant.

Becoming Licensed

Internal practitioners and sustainability consultants can both become licensed to use SCORE.

For option 1 and 2 above, the licensing fee is quite reasonable, now under $500, which you can easily earn back with your first SCORE client. Once you have completed the training, we will list you as a licensed SCORE assessor on the two SCORE websites (at the Zero Waste Alliance and also the creators of SCORE, AXIS Performance Advisors). Note that prospective assessors must possess a strong working knowledge of sustainability concepts and practices as this is necessary for proper use of SCORE.

We provide phone support to SCORE Licensees to help you be successful. This may include discussing how to implement SCORE in an unusual situation, explaining how to interpret SCORE items, or resolving difficulties with the files. We can also go with you the first time or two you use SCORE (although there is a fee for this service.) You will be provided updates and have input to future revisions. At our discretion, we will follow up with your SCORE clients to ensure quality control and will pass on any appropriate feedback or referrals.

Want to become a licensed SCORE assessor? Licensing is for internal sustainability professionals or external consultants, people already well-versed in sustainability concepts and practices. (Quick self-test—You should know what these abbreviations mean: GRI, TNS, ISO-14001, EMS, LEED, SA-8000). The class involves a weekly webinar and then a few hours of additional work each week for 4 weeks.

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What is SCORE?

What’s special about SCORE?