iF Design Made Sustainability a Fifth of Its Award Score

Three years ago, iF Design replaced the "Impact" criterion in its annual iF DESIGN AWARD with "Sustainability" — a decision that now accounts for one-fifth of the total entry score. Lisa Gralnek, U.S. managing director and global head of sustainability at iF DESIGN, says it makes iF the only international design award known to fully integrate social and environmental factors into its primary jurying criteria.

Gralnek, who also hosts the award-winning podcast FUTURE OF XYZ, laid out her argument in a recent essay. Her core claim: nonprofits measure success better than their for-profit counterparts because missions without finish lines force intentional thinking about what progress means.

What changed at the iF DESIGN AWARD?

The old "Impact" criterion included commercial considerations. The new "Sustainability" framework is tailored to the most relevant social and environmental factors in each of the award's design categories.

Changing an established system was not painless. Gralnek writes that the jurying premise of "what makes great design?" had to be rethought, and sustainability experts from across disciplines and around the world had to be brought into the process. There were logistical challenges and implementation questions.

"Keeping the existing system would have been simpler," she notes. "But our mission gave us a clear reason to move forward."

Her rationale: iF exists to advance design excellence and impact. "If we believe design has a role to play in creating a better future for all, then sustainability invariably is part of how we evaluate it," Gralnek writes. She calls the decision "not necessarily the easiest one" but "simply the decision most consistent with pursuing our purpose at this moment in time."

How do you measure progress without a finish line?

For-profit companies get a scoreboard largely handed to them, Gralnek argues. Executives may debate which numbers matter most, and ownership structures, industry and geography all create differences. But the broad measures of success — customers, dollars, CAGR — are usually understood.

A mission-driven nonprofit has no such default. "A mission without a finish line comes with no such scoreboard," she writes. "You have to decide what progress looks like."

At iF, that means tens of thousands of designers from around the world submit work each year to the organization's award programs. But Gralnek says the number of entries matters less than what participation makes possible: new ideas, objective feedback and talent recognition. Growth, in her framing, is about how many people engage with and are positively affected by the mission — not organizational size.

"The question is not simply whether the numbers are going up, but who is benefiting from our work," she writes.

What should for-profits learn from this?

Gralnek spent years as a senior marketer and operator focused on values-based brand building before moving to the nonprofit side. She does not claim one model is inherently better. But she wants the for-profit world to borrow from the nonprofit playbook.

It starts with purpose — which she concedes is a buzzword, but defines as the question "Why do we exist, and to what end?"

Her sharper point: purpose should not be articulated after the business case has been made. It should help determine whether the business case makes sense in the first place. For brand builders, that means treating mission and values as a starting point for decision-making rather than as marketing messages. Done well, she argues, the approach strengthens brand loyalty and customer advocacy.

She cites Aaron Sorkin's recent film depiction of Meta, The Social Reckoning, as one take on what happens when growth logic runs unchecked — when almost any decision is justified so long as profits trend upward.

Revenue and profit still matter, Gralnek acknowledges. Every organization needs to create enough value to sustain itself, and nonprofits are no exception. Her distinction is sequencing: when purpose is clear, money becomes a means rather than the primary destination.

The practical test she offers is direct: understand what growth makes possible for the people you serve and the wider world, and it becomes much easier to know whether you are moving in the right direction. For iF, that test put sustainability at the center of its scoring — and made the harder choice the obvious one.