2022 ANNUAL B CORP REPORT
A B Corp for over 10 years, 3Degrees accelerates global climate action while advancing positive social outcomes.
2022 was a year marked by international growth for 3Degrees. As we expanded our global presence and efforts to help clients take climate action, we also scaled our commitment to B Corp values.
As a Certified B Corporation since 2012, 3Degrees is part of a business community taking collective action to address society’s critical challenges. B Corp certification is a globally-recognized designation that a business meets high standards of verified transparency, corporate governance, and social and environmental impact. 3Degrees is a global provider of renewable energy and decarbonization solutions whose mission is to help businesses and their customers take urgent action on climate change, so B Corp values are embedded in how we operate. We’re proud to rely on the standards set by B Lab as a check on our operations, to ensure we’re living out those values and working steadily toward building a more inclusive, equitable, and regenerative economy.
2022 was another year of unprecedented growth for 3Degrees. As organizations around the world accelerated climate action, we expanded our global presence to support our customers in achieving their ambitious goals. Throughout this journey, we remained rooted in a foundation that puts our people, clients, communities, and environment first. Read on to learn more about our efforts to advance our business as a force for good in 2022, and as we work to renew our B Corp certification in 2023, we look forward to many more years of going beyond business as usual.
Impact on employees
As a growing and increasingly diverse company, we prioritized employee development, care, and listening.
3Degrees is a team united for impact and every day we work together for what matters — bold, swift, and equitable climate action. As our business expanded both domestically and internationally in 2022, we hired new team members across the globe. With this growth, we increased the diversity of our skill sets, and expanded our cultural diversity as well. This presented a number of opportunities to rethink our policies and practices regarding how we work and connect with one another.
As 3Degrees expanded globally, we retained our commitment to employee care. While introducing new benefits and initiatives in 2022, we continued to provide staples such as flexible paid time off, a paid half-day Friday each quarter, monthly no- and low-meeting days, wellness days, a wellness benefit fund, and more.
PRIORITIZED TRANSPARENCY AND EMPLOYEE CARE BASED ON
TEAM FEEDBACK:
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We expanded the options for health insurance benefits, providing employees more options to select plans that fit their life situation.
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3Degrees is committed to having a fair and equitable compensation philosophy. To aid this effort, we introduced an action plan for providing employees with individual wage band transparency, as well as training to better understand the company’s approach to compensation.
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We opened a new office in Oslo, Norway and London, United Kingdom. We also hired several new remote and hybrid team members across Europe, and developed a hybrid work policy to foster equity across our global teams, as well as provide opportunities for collaboration and camaraderie.
FOCUSED ON BELONGING AND ADVANCING DIVERSITY, EQUITY,
AND INCLUSION:
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We continued our focus on increasing the racial diversity of our workforce, increasing racial diversity in our talent pools from 12% in 2021 to 50% in 2022. Racial diversity among our staff remained steady year-over-year, with a slight increase in 2022 to 31.24% of our staff members identifying as Black, Indigenous, and other people of color.
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We partnered with a gender equity advisor, spurring several activities to advance equity in day-to-day work that are continuing in 2023. We hosted a nonbinary listening session, where anonymous employee suggestions were curated. We launched four new initiatives, focusing on supporting employees in their first 90 days, and offering training sessions on mentoring, promotions and gender inclusion to move 3Degrees towards a more welcoming and inclusive work environment.
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Our DEI Business Resource Group hosted Lunch & Learn sessions with Tahoma Peak Solutions, learning best practices for communication when working with tribal nations, sustainability education, and food sovereignty education.
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We introduced biweekly guided meditation sessions and offered two tracks of guided meditations, with one specifically tailored to the unique needs of BIPOC team members.
INVESTED IN EMPLOYEE GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT:
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Staff usage of our Learning & Development fund grew by 46%. This fund provides a stipend to all employees on an annual basis to help pay for classes, get certified in their areas of expertise, and more.
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We hired our first Learning and Development Manager to shape, develop, and execute on improved learning programs, systems, and governance to support our growing global workforce.
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The Learning and Development team partnered with internal departments to identify and create learning opportunities to enhance employee knowledge and skill development.
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We introduced new onboarding modules focused on giving new employees a strong understanding of our broad portfolio of climate products and services.
A GREAT PLACE TO WORK:
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For the ninth year, 3Degrees was recognized as a San Francisco Bay Area “Best and Brightest” employer, which is based on both an employee survey and a review of best practices. We were also honored to be recognized, for the fourth consecutive year, as one of the Top Workplaces in Oregon and southwest Washington based on employee survey feedback in The Oregonian/OregonLive’s annual rankings. Learn more about working at 3Degrees on our careers website.
IMPACT ON CLIENTS
As more companies around the world heeded the call for urgent climate action and accelerated their decarbonization initiatives, 3Degrees was there to help provide climate strategy guidance and implementation support. In 2022, we helped our clients navigate their range of options and implement plans that achieve both their business goals and better outcomes for people and the planet.
IMPACT ON COMMUNITY
We made a company-wide effort to strengthen the communities where we work and live.
Our 3DGives Business Resource Group (BRG) serves to advance 3Degrees’ values, mission, and social mission to advance a just transition in our day-to-day work by empowering all employees to have a meaningful and specific impact on causes they care about, specifically through volunteerism and charitable gifting.
The 3DGives BRG continued its work to encourage charitable giving through our employee-directed donation matching programs, enabled volunteerism through offering paid volunteer hours to our team, and added new organizations to our Just Transition donations program.
In 2022, 3Degrees donated to the following organizations, whose work is human-centered, climate-focused, and aligned with our social mission to advance a just transition to an equitable low-carbon future:
- Native Renewables: An Arizona-based organization working to empower Native American families to achieve energy independence by growing renewable energy capacity and affordable access to off-grid power
- Rising Sun Center for Opportunity: A nonprofit organization building career pathways for economic equity and climate resilience via green training, employment, and residential energy efficiency grounded in equity
- RE-Volv Mission: A national nonprofit organization whose mission is to tackle climate change at the local level by empowering people to accelerate the adoption of clean energy in their communities.
BY THE NUMBERS – CHARITABLE GIVING:
- 87 organizations received donations through both employee-directed donations from 3Degrees and donation matching programs
- Nearly half of total donations were gifted to organizations that align with a Just Transition
- 3Degrees donated $10,000 to support people in crisis from the war in Ukraine
BY THE NUMBERS – VOLUNTEER WORK:
- We hosted two B of Service weeks, where we encouraged employees to utilize their volunteer benefits, including paid volunteer hours
- 59 employees spent a total of 488 hours volunteering
IMPACT ON ENVIRONMENT
Environmental stewardship is central to our mission and values as a climate solutions provider. We’re committed to walking the same path we recommend to our customers.
3Degrees continued to make progress on our path to achieving net zero emissions in our own operations by 2030, following standards set by SME Climate Hub and continuing our participation in B Corp’s Climate Collective. Our expert internal team worked diligently to baseline and take steps to achieve this goal.
ADVANCED COMPANY SUSTAINABILITY
- 3Degrees was named Best for the World 2022 by the B Corp certifying organization, B Lab, in recognition of our impact and commitment to the environment. “Best for the World” is a distinction granted to B Corps whose verified B Impact Scores rank in the top 5% of all B Corps in their corresponding size group.
- We improved our greenhouse gas accounting methodology, and identified areas for improvement in 2023. Our Accounting team and various departments worked together to account for all impact and improve methodologies.
- We purchased water restoration credits to account for all water usage in 3Degrees’ physical offices and remote workspaces.
- By purchasing carbon credits from Biolite Cookstoves, we matched all energy consumption for 3Degrees’ physical offices and remote offices with carbon credits.
EMPOWERED INDIVIDUAL CLIMATE ACTION
- We continued our employee education and engagement efforts via environment-focused Lunch & Learn sessions that featured Clean Energy Bright Futures, Habitat for Humanity, Washed Ashore, Zero Foodprint, and more.
- We partnered with the National Forest Foundation, and continued a program that invites employees to opt to plant trees in place of receiving company gifts. To date, 3Degrees employees are responsible for planting over 4,000 trees.
IMPACT ON GOVERNANCE
Drawing inspiration from a global movement of people going beyond business as usual to make their mark on the world.
We continued to strengthen our commitment to the principles of the B Corp movement. Some notable moments from 2022:
- Our B Corp Business Resource Group served as a key catalyst for aligning with B Corp values and news, and made recommendations for company improvements and activities that would also improve our score on the B Impact Assessment.
- Arbonne, a personal wellness goods company and 3Degrees customer, invited 3Degrees to participate in its B Corp certification celebration, where we spoke on a virtual panel about our longevity as a B Corp and our approach toward making a positive impact on society.
- We participated in the 2022 B Corporation Champions Retreat by B Lab US & Canada – a gathering of the B Corp community which celebrated the human values that fuel our businesses.
BENEFIT CORPORATION
PUBLIC BENEFITS AND DISCLOSURES:
- 3Degrees is both a B Corp and a benefit corporation under Delaware law. We provide public benefits to our clients, our employees, and the community.
- 3Degrees measures our public benefit through the B Lab Impact Assessment which measures a company’s positive social impact on its stakeholders. We have been using this assessment since 2012, the year we registered with B Lab. This audit takes place once every three years and will happen again in 2023.
- There is no organizational connection between 3Degrees and B Lab, although a 3Degrees shareholder (and board member) donated a significant amount of money to B Lab when it was founded.
- The 3Degrees shareholders with an ownership stake of more than 5% are Daniel Kalafatas, M. Hadley Mullin, Stephen McDougal, Jan McDougal, The McDougal Family Foundation, Mark Mondik, Erin Craig, and ARB, a family investment office.