TCG is proud to have been assessed to be a Certified B Corporation! This was a lofty goal of ours in 2018 which was realized in 2019. We have spent this year navigating the B Corp waters, a positive experience that brought us into the community of change makers. This is very exciting for us here at TCG. 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.

We are proud to report that in our inaugural year of obtaining the B Corp certification, we were named a 2019 Best For the World: Governance honoree. This designation is reserved for companies whose overall mission, ethical policies, accountability, and transparency are rated among the top 10% of all B Corps. 

In 2019 TCG worked on the goals set in the previous year to improve Greenhouse Gas Emissions, Volunteerism, Worker Flexibility Options and Training and Education. Being a Certified B Corp meant implementing programs that could “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. We also found things we need to do better. We’re inspired to be better and do better now that we know better!

We believe we continue to do well in the following B‑Corp focus areas:

Governance

• The ethics we show as individuals and as a company
• Discrimination and Harassment Training for all employees
• Our newly adopted corporate citizenship program that will codify our existing practices and give us a basis for instantiating our beliefs on where we can help our community further

Workers

• Our newly implemented and tested (in 2019) Intern Program which allows us to extend our social and workplace practices beyond our employees
• Our new policy on Job Sharing, to make TCG even more flexible if contracts allow
• Our healthcare plan and supplementary benefits
• Our professional development and employee review process

Community

• Our community engagement and development, and job growth (helping TCGers grow in their jobs and take on new roles)

Environment

TCG is in the process of completing a greenhouse gas (GHG) inventory, identifying strategies for reducing our carbon footprint, and creating a GHG policy to ensure a reduction in GHG emissions over the long term. To date, we have identified and collected information on: 

• Headquarters electricity/gas use — total Kw hours used on the electric and gas bills
• Water supply & treatment — total cubic meters (m3) used and treated on the water bill
• Staff commuting 

As part of our strategy to reduce emissions, TCG is working with Terrapass, a carbon offset provider, to analyze our company’s impact and purchase offsets. To date we have made the following purchases:

• Purchased 20mT of carbon offsets from the Business Carbon Offset Package on November 2, 2019 to compensate for emissions involved in the travel required for a company event
• Purchased 1MWh from the Renewable Energy Credit Package to offset TCG’s footprint per recommendation from Terrapass on February 20, 2020
• Purchased 193.81mT of carbon offsets to compensate for each employee’s carbon footprint for March of 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. In 2019, TCGers reduced their vehicle mileage by 802,720 miles and saved 36,487.27 gallons of gas. This is an on-going area of improvement for us and we hope to make even greater strides in 2020.

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 2019 TCGers elected to focus our efforts on the beautification and support of national and local parks.

The TCG National, State, & Local Park Charity Initiative 

• We kicked off our year-long Parks Beautification Project in 2019 by adopting a park in Washington, DC. Marvin Caplan Park is just a few blocks from TCG’s headquarters and is a beautiful spot to stop and appreciate nature. At our Annual All Hands meeting in 2018, we made bee houses for this important green space in the city as well as our employees’ gardens. We have had one major park clean-up with a park-bench installation, with subsequent cleanups scheduled for Spring 2020 and beyond.
• We have also helped the larger parks in DC by volunteering our time and labor to make DC in general a cleaner place. TCGers participated in a Ward 8 Woods Clean-Up in December as well as the Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens clean up on National Public Lands Day in September. At the Ward 8 Woods Clean-up, TCGers helped remove 22 tires and hundreds of pounds of other litter from national forest land that surround the community in Southeast DC. TCG made donations to both Ward 8 Woods and the Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens. TCG will be cleaning up local parks in 2020 on MLK Day of Service and Earth Day.
• TCG started a Bat House reimbursement initiative. So far 4 of our employees have put up these houses for our important insect-eating friends, including one in our adopted park.
• Finally, in 2019, TCG pledged to donate 1% of our profit to supporting local and national parks. That donation will be made in Q1 of 2020.

Additionally, we worked with numerous charities, including Generosity Feeds, Ward 8 Woods, Montgomery College Foundation, and Friends of Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens for other volunteer and sponsorship initiatives.

We also helped our clients help the world:

• Millennium Challenge Corporation. The Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), 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. International Trade Commission. The U.S. International Trade Commission protects U.S. intellectual property from patent infringement, prevents foreign manufacturers from dumping inferior goods in the U.S. market, aids administrative law judges in making decisions on cases brought before USITC, and provides economists with analysis and research on global trade matters. Its public search tools are used by businesses and the general public to obtain information on all goods and services imported and exported by the U.S. to nearly every country in the world. Businesses make international investment decisions based on data that USITC provides. ITC also maintains and publishes the Harmonized Tariff Schedule, the definitive source for all tariff data in the U.S. Since 2017, TCG has operated, maintained, and enhanced these enormous data systems and tools. We have helped the agency upgrade legacy software, communicate more effectively with domestic and international stakeholders, and improve the security of the data they collect.
• U.S. Office of Management and Budget, Executive Office of the President (OMB). MAX.gov is the tool OMB uses to collect, validate, analyze, model, collaborate with agencies on, and publish information relating to government-wide management and budgeting activities. This tool helps avoid duplicative investment, and streamlines and accelerates collaboration among government users and officials. Often, it creates efficiencies through unanticipated consequences. For example, MAX Survey was intended to support government-run surveys. However, we were delighted to learn that the Navy Bureau of Medicine (BUMED) is now using MAX Survey to conduct daily safety and supply checks on US Naval Hospital crash carts via mobile devices. By designing solutions that are extensible, accessible, and secure, TCG is helping MAX.gov create incredible efficiencies and savings across government.

Goals for 2020

Our goals for improving the world around us in 2020 are listed below:

Environment

By the end of 2020, we want to 

1. Establish a Greenhouse Emissions policy in place and reduce any Scope 1 and 2 GHG emissions by 3%.
2. Purchase certified carbon credits to offset 1–24% of TCG’s GHG emissions.
3. Use the new SDG (Sustainable Development Goals) Action Manager that is being unveiled on the B Corp portal in January 2020. Developed by B Lab and the United Nations Global Compact, the SDG Action Manager is a web-based impact management solution and will enable TCG to take action on the Sustainable Development Goals through 2030.

Community

1. Annual Cause: In 2020 we will give 1% of our profit to our 2020 social cause, which is feeding food-insecure families. We will also continue to support national, state and local parks.
2. Volunteerism: We aim to track our volunteerism more effectively, offer incentives, and have a clear policy in place to inspire and move our employees to volunteer on a more regular basis.

Governance

1. Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Training: We want to further develop training that will give our employees an opportunity to have better cultural awareness, competence, empathy, and emotional intelligence when it comes to diversity, equity, and inclusion.

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 rights 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
Business 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
Business 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
Business 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.