Many groups and individuals have a legitimate stake in our business. We believe that open, trusting relationships with our investors, our community leaders and other stakeholders are critical to our credibility and our business success. Our stakeholders make us stronger and more resilient by:

• Keeping us well-informed about issues of concern and interest to people who make a difference to us.
• Providing us with important insights and points of view that we may not have fully considered on our own.
• Giving us an opportunity to discuss our points of view and, in some cases, to be persuasive about them.
• Helping us to find common ground and gain assistance in advancing common objectives.
• Providing us with incentives and additional accountability for commitments and performance.
• Reinforcing our integrity by knowing that what we say and do will be held up to public scrutiny.

Stakeholder engagement has helped us to transform one-way communication into two-way communication, dialogue into working relationships, and working relationships into partnerships. It has changed our culture; we are less inwardly focused and more externally focused. Engagement is considered a core competency and a matter of material import to our company.

"Federal support for energy assistance and weatherization is at an all-time high. But despite our progress, neither the federal and state governments nor the utility and nonprofit sectors, by themselves, can solve the problem of unaffordable energy for low-income customers."

Q&A with David Fox (pdf)