What is the difference between the four types of signatory?
Individual – select this option if you wish to make a personal and professional commitment to embedding the SDGs in your work as an individual. This is open to all members of universities and colleges such as researchers, academics, students or operational staff.
Institution – you must only select this option if you are the highest authority at a college or university (such as a principal, president or vice chancellor) and are making a commitment on behalf of the whole instititution.
Support organisation – select this option if you are the leader of a support or network organisation for the sector.
Student Union – select this option if you are a leader who wishes to sign up on behalf of a student association such as a Student Union or Student Guild.
Please only submit your form once. It can take up to 2 weeks for us to review your sign-up form and update the website during busy periods. Please check the website after 2 weeks and use ‘Control + F’ to search for your name. Institutional signatories will receive a sign up email with further information once their request has been processed.
Please contact info@eauc.org.uk to update your email address or other relevant information.
The only type of signatory required to submit an annual report are whole institutions. Individuals, support organisations and student associations are not required to submit a report on an annual basis.
Institutional signatories will receive an email with full instructions on the reporting process in the Spring each year. This involves a mandatory online survey to fill out and an optional step to submit a case study. We publish an annual summary report each year (usually Autumn) which collates this data and provides an overview of the progress made by the sector in embedding the SDGs. You can find previous examples of annual reports here.
We will email you directly with essential requests and updates, such as when we require annual reports from our institutional signatories or launch our annual report.
We also have an additional mailing list for signatories which is optional to join. If you choose to join this mailing list, you will receive occasional emails about upcoming events, useful case studies and wider sector news that may be relevant to your work in embedding the Sustainable Development Goals. As part of the initial sign up process, you are given the option to sign up to this mailing list by ticking the box called ‘Sign up to the SDG Accord Learning Network’ on the form. If you tick this box and once your sign up form has been processed, you will receive a confirmatory email from SDG-ACCORD@jiscmail.ac.uk with further instructions and guidance. You can unsubscribe at any time using the link at the bottom of each email. If you did not originally sign up to the learning network but wish to receive these emails, please contact info@eauc.org.uk.
We recognise that institutional signatories gather a range of internal data and insight to inform their annual SDG Accord report submission. Universities can choose to use the information they have submitted as part of the SDG Accord reporting process within their submission to the Times Higher Education Impact Rankings. Your annual report submission can be used as evidence within your mandatory submission for SDG17.3 or SDG12.4. The easiest way to do this is to integrate your responses to Questions 8 to 24 of your 2024 report submission into a wider sustainability report for your institution. You may also wish to include any relevant background data that you used to inform your answers. Please note that to score full points, Times Higher Education require the sustainability report to be publicly available on your website – it is at an institution’s discretion to choose what information they wish to publish from their SDG accord report. If you require a copy of your responses to this year’s survey, please email info@eauc.org.uk. You can visit the Times Higher Education website to download the full 2025 guidance.