This strategic partnership will help design professionals find the best products and benefit building product manufacturers through increased access to the design community.

San Antonio, TX, June 19, 2018 – Ron Blank & Associates, GreenCE, and Sustainable Minds® (SM), both with a track record in innovation and education, are collaborating to help building product manufacturers increase specifications of their sustainable building products. This comprehensive program allows manufacturers to select the offerings they need to move successfully through the process of creating product transparency disclosures, through marketing those products to get selected and specified — with education and training offerings in every phase. The strategic partnership will capitalize on both company’s significant strengths.

The demand for products with transparency information has been continually increasing, however the product transparency reporting process is complex and expensive. Manufacturers have been challenged to leverage these investments into sales and get a measurable ROI. To that end, the collaboration provides a complete go-to-market program including:

1. Product transparency disclosure creation— product category rules (PCRs), environmental product declarations (EPDs), Health Product Declarations (HPDs), Declare labels
2. Product marketing / lead generation— Architect Specification Calls, SM Transparency Catalog Featured Brand and Standard subscription packages
3. Education / lead generation— AIA, GBCI, & IDCEC continuing education and free LEED education; SM Transparency Catalog sales training

“Our team is excited to collaborate with Sustainable Minds to help manufacturers get their building products specified,” said Ron Blank, founder of Ron Blank & Associates.

Ron Blank & Associates (RBA) and GreenCE are the leading AIA continuing education providers in the country with over 100,000 subscribers and courses that are consistently in the top ranked education courses on the USGBC platform. GreenCE have made video courses that have consistently had longer levels of interest from the AEC community, and the highest levels of consistent ROI in the business.

“Collaboration will allow our individual specification services to help manufacturers fully contribute to LEED projects and transform the built environment,” said Devotion Phillips, Director of Marketing, GreenCE.

The Sustainable Minds Transparency Catalog™ is an educational marketing and customer service solution that makes it easy for building professionals, and manufacturers’ employees and partners, to find, understand, select and specify products to build higher-performing, greener and healthier buildings – all in one place. What makes it different from other online product resources is its focus on brands. People are not looking for disclosures, they’re looking for PRODUCTS with disclosures from brands they know and trust.

“Behavior change is challenging, and everyone needs education to make that happen. We are excited and honored to partner with the leading providers of AIA and GBCI education. Ron Blank & Associates is literally the name brand in this industry helping manufacturers get their products specified,” said Terry Swack, CEO & Founder of Sustainable Minds.

Ron Blank & Associates, GreenCE, and Sustainable Minds will be at the AIA Conference on June 21 and June 22nd in Booth 811. We invite you to come visit and for a consultation to understand the offerings and the benefits to your organization.

The companies:

Ron Blank & Associates have been getting products specified for over 30 years. Through the Architectural Specification Program our architectural specification representatives meet one on one with spec writers and other design professionals at the largest A&E firms across the U.S. who make decisions about what building products are specified in their projects.
Contact: Landon Boone, COO

GreenCE, Inc., is the nation’s leading provider of AIA continuing education and LEED courses for design professionals with over 100,000 subscribers. GreenCE, Inc. is an AIA Education Provider and USGBC Education Partner.
Contact: Brad Blank, Vice-President and Media/Education Director

Sustainable Minds environmental product transparency cloud-based applications and services help product manufacturers design and market greener products. In 2013, the company introduced its award-winning SM Transparency Report™, an innovation in ISO 14025 Type III environmental declarations (EPDs) and became a program operator expressly to develop standardized environmental reporting guidance and tools that make product transparency easier, understandable and more effective.
Follow the company @sustainablemnds and learn more at transparencycatalog.com and programoperators.org. Join the LinkedIn group: Transparency is the New Green
Contact: Jennifer Larkin, Sales, Transparency Products