How do I read alternate GNOME configuration files

I have a number of versions of GNOME installed on a number of different hosts. All users have network mounted home directories. In some cases GNOME works poorly when reading configuration from the .gnome2 directory. I would like to read config files from version specific directories. Is there any way to specify this when starting GNOME? Environment variables perhaps? I know how to move the .gconf directories but this is not sufficient. I need to read the .gnome2 from a different path.