Each year, we track several indicators that show progress toward achieving our community service and philanthropy goals.
Company-Paid Community Service Hours: The company-paid community service hours metric tracks the on-the-clock hours our employees spent in community service activities, including hours for local volunteerism through our Volunteer Days benefit and half the hours employees spent participating in the ACE Mentor Program. Hours contributed to Bridges to Prosperity increased in 2023 as we returned to Rwanda for the first time since the pandemic. We are meeting our goal of increasing employee service hours by 10% each year.
Volunteer Days Benefit Claimed (Hours): Our Volunteer Days benefit allows employees to receive compensation for up to two days per year for community service activities. This metric tracks the hours employees logged under the “volunteer day” code on their time sheets. It does not account for volunteerism by employees in their personal time. The 43% increase in use of the benefit from 2022 to 2023 is the result of more group community service events organized by green champions and employee network groups, as well as our post-pandemic return to constructing bridges in Rwanda.
Company-Paid Student-Mentoring Hours: We track company-paid participation (time spent in mentoring or board membership activities) in the ACE Mentor Program, an organization serving high school students in the U.S. and Canada that was initiated by Thornton Tomasetti Founding Principal Charles Thornton. ACE volunteers are paid for 50% of their hours spent – an average of 15 per year. Because remote programming enabled employees to continue to serve during the pandemic, our participation remained steady throughout and has now begun to climb. Each year, we encourage employee involvement in the program through our ACE Mentor Appreciation Week.
Charitable Contributions: Charitable contributions include all payments in each year coded as “donations” in our accounting system. This includes annual contributions – such as those to the Thornton Tomasetti Foundation, Bridges to Prosperity and the ACE Mentor Program – and donations by our offices to local charities. It doesn’t account for contributions like pro bono work for nonprofits, lecturing at universities and colleges, or labor hours spent performing community service – only tracked as “hours,” as described above. Contributions increased by 42% from 2022 to 2023, an indicator of a full return to pre-pandemic donations and a reflection of our new matching program for employee donations to the Red Cross.
