Collaboration on advocacy, research, and required testing through consortia is key for entities in the industrial, agricultural, and specialty chemical spaces. Leveraging resources to meet research, testing, regulatory, advocacy, and other shared obligations to promote and advocate issues of shared concern allows participating entities to reduce resources and maximize impact. B&C® Consortia Management, L.L.C. (BCCM) takes efficiency and efficacy one step further for consortia members through our consortia management services.
BCCM creates and maintains the operational framework for consortia so that members can focus on substantive issues most pertinent to their needs and essential to their success. We provide core management services along the operational hierarchy, from strategic business and legal counsel to basic administrative support. We structure and manage consortia to conform with the realities of the industrial, agricultural, and specialty chemical business communities, and offer a variety of state-of-the-art platforms to ensure consortia participants have a business organizational model that allows seamless access to and communication with the consortia and their business affairs.
What We Do
Administrative and Management Services
BCCM’s significant experience allows us to tailor our services to meet each consortium’s chemical-specific needs. We emphasize that the services listed below are comprehensive but not exhaustive — we are flexible and can provide additional or diminished support services to adapt our support services, as may be required.
- Legal –
- Prepare a consortium charter, bylaws, record retention policy, and an antitrust policy
- Provide scientific, regulatory, legal, and antitrust counsel
- Operational –
- Create a business and/or strategic plan
- Prepare requests for proposals and negotiate contracts with laboratories
- Develop product defense strategies, including: draft press releases and related documents, formulate responses to media and other inquiries, and prepare question and answer documents
- Administrative –
- Coordinate and schedule conference calls and meetings
- Organize and administer web conferences
- Coordinate and arrange annual or other meetings
- Prepare and distribute minutes for conference calls, web conferences, and meetings (usually within 24-48 hours)
- Conduct all recordkeeping duties
- Develop and maintain an e-mail list serve for internal communications
Communication Services
BCCM understands the necessity of timely and accurate communications among consortium members. To ensure all consortium members are aware of news and developments affecting their chemicals and have timely access to key documents, we offer a range of support services tailored to facilitate internal and external consortium communication needs.
- Informational –
- Track significant regulatory, scientific, and legal issues relevant to the consortium’s needs and long-term goals
- Prepare periodic updates (g., monthly, quarterly)
- Catalog and summarize chemical lists on which a chemical is included (including federal, state, and international lists)
- Alert consortium members promptly of relevant industry/government developments
- Marketing –
- Lead membership recruitment and promotional activities
- Develop professional brochures, advertising, promotional, and other informational materials (e., position statements, best practice guides)
- Technical –
- Design and maintain public and private websites
- External Relations –
- Build and maintain positive relationships with federal agencies (g., U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA)), other user groups, Congress, and related entities
- Prepare for meetings with EPA and/or Congressional delegations
- Prepare for EPA site visits
- Additional Services –
- Serve as a clearinghouse for the amalgamation of what would otherwise be competitively sensitive information
- Coordinate and monitor testing activities
Financial Services
BCCM appreciates the importance to member companies of controlling costs, developing accurate budgets, and tracking costs and budget items carefully on a real-time basis. By assessing management costs to each member company on a flat-fee basis (exclusive of disbursements), BCCM provides member companies with a high degree of business certainty, transparency, and hands-on engagement in the generation of the consortium budget in which they participate.
- Prepare periodic financial statements (all financial information is prepared by a certified public accountant)
- Invoice member companies for annual fees, disbursements, special assessments, and other expenses
- Maintain consortium funds in a separate bank account
- Collect and distribute fees
- Conduct annual audits
Representative Engagements
- Assisted a consortium with developing strong and compelling advocacy platforms to ensure the robust commercialization and growth of biobased and renewable chemical feedstocks.
- Worked with consortium members to prepare communications to EPA regarding commercial and enforcement consequences of evolving re-interpretations on nomenclature conventions under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA).
- Facilitated consortium members working cooperatively to prepare a series of articles about nanomaterial measurement in water, air, and soil that now serve as a practical guide for state and federal regulatory agencies tasked with measuring engineered nanomaterials in the environment.
- Assisted a consortium made up of a coalition of food and beverage producers, processors, packaging suppliers, equipment manufacturers, and other stakeholders to share information and strategies to enhance worker safety education and advocated on workplace exposure issues.