The Prince’s Accounting for Sustainability Project (A4S) was established by HRH The Prince of Wales in 2004 as a programme of The Prince of Wales’s Charitable Foundation (PWCF). A4S aims to make sustainable decision making business as usual.

A4S has a range of resources available in their knowledge hub including case studies, videos, reports and they also run events, webinars and awards. Committed to education within accounting and finance, the A4S Academy, a CFO-sponsored programme, equips finance teams with the skills needed for their businesses to succeed in the face of environmental and social risks and opportunities.

A4S works with a range of industry stakeholders:

• Chief financial officers (CFOs) and finance teams
• The accounting community
• Investors, capital markets & the wider finance community
• Governments, regulators & policy makers
• Business schools and academia

A4S’s work is led by network members who engage organisations and finance leaders for practical action. A4S has a global network where members can share from best practice, peer support and collaboration. A4S has four networks:

• Chief Financial Officers Leadership Network, a group of CFOs from leading organisations seeking to embed the management of environmental and social issues into business processes and strategy. The network aims to create open source guidance, which members of the network commit to adopt and share.
• Accounting Bodies Network (ABN) which helps achieve a common approach to accounting for sustainability. The ABN represents 2.4 million accountants in 181 countries, making up two-thirds of accountants globally.
• Asset Owners Network which brings together chairs of UK pension funds, their pooling partners, investment committees and endowments to explore the relevance of material social and environmental risks and opportunities with peers. Members include chairs of corporate pension funds, public funds, from both defined benefit (DB) and defined contribution (DC) schemes, and have combined pension assets of over US$450 billion.
• Circles of Practice which are more informal regional or sector level groups which provide finance leaders with the opportunity to share and exchange information and knowledge, rather than work on specific projects.

Aims:

A4S aims to inspire action by finance leaders to drive a fundamental shift towards resilient business models and a sustainable economy. To do this, A4S has three core aims that underpin everything they do:

• Inspire finance leaders to adopt sustainable and resilient business models
• Transform financial decision making to enable an integrated approach, reflective of the opportunities and risks posed by environmental and social issues
• Scale up action across the global finance and accounting community

A4S is a programme of The Prince of Wales’s Charitable Foundation (PWCF) and receives funding from their commercial subsidiaries such as, Duchy Originals Limited in partnership with Waitrose and Highgrove Enterprises which is the trading name of AG Carrick Limited, which donate their profits to provide income for their charitable activities. PWCF also receives income from Trusts, Foundations and High Net Worth donors.