The Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) and the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB), two major sustainability reporting framework organizations, have announced a joint project through which they will seek ways to communicate that their standards can be used concurrently.

The project came out of observations about the complexity of the current sustainability reporting environment, particularly for organizations that use both GRI and SASB standards. This complexity was the subject of a Trusted Professional article from last year, which reported on the sheer number of standards and frameworks in the corporate social responsibility space, which has served to harm the comparability and usefulness of the information they produce. It was a concern over this complexity that drove the creation of the Better Alignment Project, in which both the SASB and the GRI are participants, along with several other organizations. The project aims to minimize differences where they do not serve the needs of their target audiences by identifying commonalities among them. One might see the recently announced GRI-SASB collaboration as a product of this thinking, as GRI Chief Executive Tim Mohin said there is growing demand for clarity in this area.

“GRI and SASB share the guiding principle that transparency is the best currency for creating trust among organizations and their stakeholders,” said Mohin. “Investors, policy makers, civil society and other stakeholders are demanding improved disclosure of information on sustainability impacts, including those likely to drive risk and opportunity in both the short and long term.”

“In a post-COVID world, companies will increasingly be expected to disclose their performance on a range of ESG [environmental, social and governance] topics,” said Guillot “The pandemic has demonstrated that so-called ‘non-financial’ information can indeed highlight material financial implications. This makes the collaboration between SASB and GRI, and the increased clarity it will bring for all stakeholders, all the more timely.”