TCG continues to be proud of our B Corporation certification from B Lab. Certification was a tall order back in 2018, but we completed the requirements in 2019 and spent 2020 working on our processes and goals. We also got to know the B Corp community through the B Hive portal and our B Corp mentor. The work we’ve done has created positive changes within TCG, and we continue to be inspired by the B Corp community. The B Corp certification gives us a roadmap for how we can best serve our community, environment, and stakeholders, helping us define our role in making the world a better place.

In 2020, TCG worked on the goals set in 2019 to improve Greenhouse Gas Emissions, Volunteerism and Diversity, and Equity and Inclusion Training. TCG is committed to implementing programs that can “meet the highest standards of verified social and environmental performance, public transparency, and legal accountability.”

As we worked on these projects, we found a lot of things to make us proud as well as things we need to do better. We are committed to being consistent in incorporating social and environmental considerations into decision-making at TCG because the health of our communities and our environment is important to the success and profitability of our business.

Achievements in 2020:

• In March 2020 we announced that we would no longer purchase single-use plastic water bottles and invited employees to join in the ban. This included purchasing Brita Water Pitchers for HQ.
• TCG took part in the #GoVote initiative that B Labs was promoting in partnership with the Civic Alliance and Provoc. 
  • Made a public commitment to support civic engagement for employees.
  • Employees were allotted 2 hours of paid leave to vote or work at their polling center.
  • Provided resources for staff to learn more about the candidates, voter registration, and to find their polling place.
  • Conducted an internal and external outreach campaign to encourage voting and civic engagement.
• Adopted Park Initiative — Continues 
  • We are working with the DC Government to have Pet Stations installed around the Shepherd Park neighborhood — this will take place in March 2021 and TCG will contribute $1,000 to these stations.
  • We are working with the DC Parks to adopt two more parks in neighborhoods that need help. So far their suggestions are in neighborhoods that are substantially wealthier (and their parks are already great) than we would like, so our adoption would not be as helpful.

Governance 2020

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Training (DEI). In 2020, our goal was to develop employee DEI training to promote better cultural awareness, competence, empathy, and emotional intelligence around diversity, equity, and inclusion. In order to get this right the first time, we were diligent in researching our options and consulting with experts. We started working with the Moss Group in 2020, and the rollout in 2021 is proceeding. We will retain this goal in 2021 because we haven’t finished.

Inclusive Hiring Practices. We also had a goal for 2020 to identify implicit bias specifically related to gender in job descriptions. Since this is not fully integrated this will remain a goal for 2021.

Environment 2020

Greenhouse Emissions. TCG’s office at 7348 Georgia Avenue, NW, Washington, D.C. generated 2.4 mtCO2e of greenhouse gas emissions for the 2019 calendar year and 1.5 mtCO2e of greenhouse gas emissions for the 2020 calendar year. TCG has set a greenhouse gas emissions reduction goal of 10% emissions intensity (2% per year) per Full Time Equivalent (FTE) employee below a 2019 calendar year baseline by 2025.

We committed to having a Greenhouse Emissions Policy in place by the end of 2020.

Carbon Credits. By the end of 2020 we committed to have purchased certified carbon credits to offset 1–24% of TCG’s GHG emissions.

Carbon Offsets Purchased

• 3 mT carbon offsets for 149 employees (1 year’s estimated carbon emissions for all our employees’ TCG work (lower this year than normal because COVID-19 meant we had no commuting from early March through the end of the year) purchased 10/29/2020.
• 1931.81 carbon offsets for 134 employees (1 month’s estimated carbon emissions for all our employees’ entire existence) purchased 3/3/2020.
• 1mWh from the Renewable Energy Credit Package to offset TCG’s footprint per recommendation from Terrapass purchased 2/20/2020.

As a company with a predominantly remote workforce, we are also working to track work-related energy usage of our off-site employees and energy saved through working from home. We are reducing our carbon footprint by offering telecommuting and alternative commuting benefits. Due to coronavirus-related work from home policies, we were able to keep many employees off of the road and at home, conserving a great deal of energy. Consequently, gas conservation increased 67% from 36,487.27 gallons in 2019 to 60,943.18 gallons in 2020. While the company grew in 2020, we do not expect to stay at this level as the country reopens after COVID.

Community 2020

Social Cause. Our focus this year was on food insecurity within our region. The pandemic made the problem of food insecurity worse than in previous years, making this a particularly important issue in 2020. We committed and succeeded in giving 1% of our 2020 profit to this cause.

Volunteerism. We committed to having an updated Volunteer Plan in place, and it was approved in December. Our new plan aims to track our volunteerism more effectively, offer incentives, and creates a clear policy to inspire and move our employees to volunteer on a more regular basis. We also now have a better way to track volunteer service per capita.

Creating a Public Benefit

Maryland regulations require that we specify how we pursued and created a public benefit, any problems we had, and an assessment of the performance of the benefit corporation based on a third-party standard. We choose the United Nations Global Compact as our third-party standard — see below for more details and a copy of our Communication on Progress as submitted to them.

We helped create a general public benefit by advancing the idea that a government contracting company can help its employees live better lives with more purpose. To that end, we are establishing a network of government contractors that are B Corps, so together we can explore ways to improve how the government serves the public.

Internally, we established several programs and a policy to improve employee relations. To start, we carefully monitor employees’ hours to ensure they have time for rich family lives and involvement with their communities. To help make a positive impact on their communities, we encourage employees to run charity events with their co-workers, and TCG provides $1,000 per event to the charity. In addition to these individually-run events, each year TCGers vote on the social cause we will support as a company throughout the year. Through ranked choice vote, in 2020 TCGers elected to focus our efforts on Food Insecurity in our region. Since COVID kept us from hands-on volunteer work we gave to various charities in the DMV.

• TCG made quarterly $5,000 donations to different non-profits working in the food insecurity sector across the Washington, DC area
• In August 2020, TCG donated $5,000 to Capital Area Food Bank
• In November, TCG donated $2,500 each to Manna Food Center (MD) and the Maryland Food Bank
• In February 2021, TCG donated $2,000 each to Food for Others (VA) and Arlington Food Assistance Center (AFAC). TCG also donated $1,000 to Loudoun Hunger Relief.
• TCG also started a matching donations program where we donate 1 dollar for every 2 dollars that our employees donate. TCG has now matched $264 in matching donations.

We also helped our clients help the world:

National Institutes of Health. Tools and resources developed under NIH research programs were often abandoned when the grant ended, the responsible graduate students graduated, or the researchers moved on to other projects. Consequently, important data and resources were frequently forgotten or left to go stale, or the broader research community was unaware of their existence. TCG worked with NIH to create NITRC. NITRC is a free, collaborative site and repository of neuroimaging analysis software, publicly available datasets, and virtualized computational environments that can be run anywhere, including on commercial clouds. Initially intended to make government’s research investments available to the public, the broader neuroscience community has adopted NITRC as a way to collaborate, access, and share neuroscience research and resources. NITRC is currently the only comprehensive repository of neuroimaging software and tools to aid neuroscience research in the world.

Millennium Challenge Corporation. The Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) is an independent U.S. Government foreign aid agency that provides financial assistance to countries to promote their economic growth, reduce poverty, and strengthen their social service institutions. MCC collects and analyzes data to determine whether a country has good governance, economic freedom, and investment in its own citizens — values necessary for advancement. This assessment determines which countries will receive aid. TCG has supported the Millennium Challenge Corporation by developing modern, efficient, and stable tools to collect, aggregate, analyze, and produce scorecards on data. The tools let MCC staff make fact-based decisions on aid. Leaders of many of the countries use the scorecards to help pinpoint where they should make improvements in their policies and governance. The increased process automation provides MCC with the metrics they need to manage their grants, leading to MCC being named the most transparent government aid agency in the United States and the second-most transparent aid agency in the world.

U.S. Office of Government Ethics. The Office of Government Ethics (OGE) provides overall direction, oversight, and accountability of Executive Branch policies designed to prevent and resolve conflicts of interest. OGE worked with TCG to develop Integrity.gov. Integrity is an electronic financial disclosure system used to resolve financial conflicts of interest among presidential appointees, legislators, and senior government executives. OGE looks for conflicts of interests the filer may have in serving in government, such as investments that would potentially benefit from this person taking office. OGE works with the filer to eliminate those conflicts before they move forward for Senate review, White House appointment, or move directly to government service. Integrity enhances oversight of government ethics, increases the uniformity of public financial disclosure, promotes transparency in the financial disclosure process, and increases the overall satisfaction of financial disclosure filers and ethics reviewers across the Federal Government.

Goals for 2021

Our goals for improving the world around us in 2021 are listed below:

Community

1. Annual Cause: In 2021, we will give 1% of our profit to our charity focus of the year.
2. Adopt two more parks and have Pet Waste Stations installed in Shepherd Park Community.

Governance

1. Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Training: This is a goal from 2020 that will continue to be worked on into 2021.
2. Outplacement Services: In 2021, the Employee Happiness team will develop an Outplacement Services Policy.

Environment

1. TCG has set a greenhouse gas emissions reduction goal of 10% emissions intensity (2% per year) per Full Time Equivalent (FTE) employee by 2025, below a 2019 calendar year baseline.

How TCG Follows the Ten Principles
of the United Nations Global Compact

TCG’s Communication on Progress as submitted to the United Nations Global Compact:

Human Rights

PRINCIPLE 1
Businesses should support and respect the protection of internationally proclaimed human rights.
TCG makes positive contributions towards the protection and fulfillment of human rights through our philanthropy and public policy engagement. Philanthropy has included donations of time and money to science, technology, engineering, and math education in public schools. Public policy engagement includes testimony before local municipal governments and in the halls of Congress supporting family leave.

PRINCIPLE 2
Make sure that they are not complicit in human right abuses.
TCG does not engage in human rights abuses; all those who work for TCG do so under the United States’ labor laws.

Labour

PRINCIPLE 3
Businesses should uphold the freedom of association and the effective recognition of the right to collective bargaining.
TCG does not in any way limit or prohibit association or the right to collective bargaining.

PRINCIPLE 4
The elimination of all forms of forced and compulsory labour.
TCG pays all employees fair wages based on local standards for specific jobs; no employee is allowed to work without pay, according to the Employee Handbook.

PRINCIPLE 5
The effective abolition of child labour.
TCG does not hire children, nor does TCG use children as contract labor (or labour).

PRINCIPLE 6
The elimination of discrimination in respect of employment and occupation.
TCG’s Equal Employment Opportunity Policy says:
It is our policy not to discriminate against, or to tolerate discrimination against, any employee or applicant for employment because of race, color, religion, age, sex, national origin, marital or veteran status, status of a qualified individual with a disability, or any other category covered by applicable law.

Environment

PRINCIPLE 7
Businesses should support a precautionary approach to environmental challenges.
TCG does not produce or sell any products that contain potential environmental risks. Additionally, we work to ensure our purchases make sense for the environment.

PRINCIPLE 8
Undertake initiatives to promote greater environmental responsibility.
TCG works to ensure that its activities do not do harm to the environment. For instance, more than half the company telecommutes, thus keeping automobile exhaust from fouling the air. We also reward staff members for living within walking distance of their workplaces, and for walking there instead of driving or using public transportation. To further keep cars off the road in cases where employees live too far from work to walk, we underwrite bicycle commuting and public transportation, and explicitly do not pay for employee parking or commuting in a personal car.

PRINCIPLE 9
Encourage the development and diffusion of environmentally friendly technologies.
TCG re-uses code whenever possible, communicates in re-usable bits rather than paper, and encourages its clients to use TCG-created shared services rather than build their own.

Anti-Corruption

PRINCIPLE 10
Businesses should work against corruption in all its forms, including extortion and bribery.
TCG employees are not allowed to engage in bribery or in the appearance of bribery; they may not do favors for or even buy cups of coffee for those who are in a position to hire the company, or to influence those who do the hiring. Conflicts of interest must be reported, according to the Employee Handbook.