NIKE exists to progress sport. But in recent years, we also face a broader challenge: to help protect sport itself.
Today, that’s why we’re thinking even bigger than delivering inspiration and innovation for athletes. To best serve future generations, we’re also bringing the best of NIKE to respond to some of the most pressing challenges of our time.
NIKE’s purpose is to unite the world through sport to create a healthy planet, active communities and an equal playing field for all. These are more than aspirations – they are foundational priorities that shape decisions across every aspect of our business.
As of this FY19 NIKE Impact Report, I have been President and CEO of NIKE for less than two months. Yet the extraordinary impact NIKE can have is already clear to me.
This is the power of sport. Like so many across our company, I came to NIKE because I believe in sport. I believe in sport’s capacity to transform lives and communities. And at a time when our society is more fragmented than ever, when polarization is wearing down our institutions and climate change is threatening our very survival, I believe in the power of sport to bring us together to change the world for the better.
Nowhere does that capacity for impact matter more urgently than with regard to our changing planet. When it comes to the growing climate emergency, the data is crystal clear – and so too are the voices of our athletes. As marathon start times get moved into pre-dawn hours and players and fans suffer from heat exhaustion due to extreme weather conditions, those who work in sport see first-hand the damaging effects of climate change. This crisis is affecting the athletes we serve – not someday, but right now – and in turn compelling us to swiftly evolve our business.
If there is no planet, there is no sport. It is this understanding that drives the urgency of our commitment to sustainability and impact.
In FY19, we made some incredible progress toward our goals. We invested more than $81 million to drive impact in our communities and got more than 17 million kids active. When we help unleash the power of play and sport for kids, we change lives. That’s why our priority in our community work is getting kids moving. And because a good coach can make all the difference in a kid’s experience – we’ve helped train nearly 100,000 community coaches through NIKE-supported programming.
One particular focus for us is increasing the number of female coaches, as we know they are such powerful catalysts in inspiring girls to get more active. From partnering with community organizations to recruit and train female coaches to launching a training guide with the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee to help all coaches create a girl-inclusive culture, we continue to invest in creating safe spaces where girls can learn, grow and become the leaders we know they can be, in sport and in life.
We’ve previously set a target to reach 100% renewable energy in our owned or operated facilities by 2025. We recently achieved 100% renewable energy across North America – an impressive stride toward our global energy goals. We are also working to eliminate footwear manufacturing waste to landfill or incineration. In FY19, 99.9% of footwear manufacturing waste was recycled by contract factories or converted to energy. In addition, we are increasing the use of more sustainable materials across our products, transforming some 1 billion plastic bottles per year into recycled polyester for jerseys as well as other materials for both apparel and footwear.
Across our supply chain, we’re also investing in creating a skilled, valued, and engaged workforce. One key, we believe, is enabling contract factory workers to share in productivity gains. This year, we scaled our supplier Engagement and Wellbeing Survey, which provides a holistic, comprehensive view of the worker experience and captures an actionable data set for our suppliers. In FY19, we increased participation in the survey to 45 facilities, nearly doubling the reach to 270,000 people in their combined workforce.
We also continue to think critically about the change we want to drive inside NIKE. In FY19, we maintained the global pay equity ratio for men to women, and white to underrepresented groups in the U.S., that we achieved last year. Over the past year, we increased VP-level representation for women by 3 percentage points (p.p.) to 39% globally and for U.S. underrepresented groups by 2 p.p. to 21%. While this is good progress, we know there is more work to do. We will continue to increase representation and strengthen our culture of belonging.
And we will continue to strive to bring sport to kids and communities everywhere by scaling more sustainable solutions that teams across NIKE are tirelessly developing every day. We will continue to innovate for all athletes everywhere to help ensure an equal playing field for all and to challenge existing systems while we drive toward a more circular future.
To me, the same qualities that have made NIKE the world’s leader in sport – our boldness, our creativity, our ambition – are the same qualities that position us for wider impact in the face of today’s global challenges. This is why I’m so hopeful. Already, I can see the meaningful difference that our teams are making in the world – for our people and our planet. The stakes couldn’t be any higher. And yet, the opportunities couldn’t be any greater.
Like so much else at NIKE, it’s not enough to be in the game. At NIKE, we lead. And as we challenge ourselves to always do better and think bigger, we can and will create the future we want to see.
John Donahoe
President and CEO