Impact Report 2023

We make the world a better place through our clients

In 2023, we continued to work overwhelmingly with mission-driven non-profits that are making positive change happen. And we recommitted ourselves to this purpose by expressing a new cultural framework, a new purpose, vision and values.

Evolution rather than revolution saw us commit to the singular purpose of Empowering Positive Changemakers while setting out to Set a new standard for high-impact responsible business over the next three years.

Client impact and disclosure

Having supported Creative Climate Disclosure, we recognise the importance of being transparent about who pays the bills, and how the clients we choose to work with reflect our values. As we did last year, we are disclosing our client relationships here.

Click the images below to read Instagram posts about selected client work from 2023.

We have always been committed to working with positive changemakers but have never previously determined the process by which we challenge cases where that fit isn't clear. Last year, to further safeguard our commitment to working with positive changemakers, we created the Ethical-fit review process. This details the principles by which we make decisions, the process of raising a concern, how we conduct an enquiry in the event of a challenge, and how we decide. Anyone interested in hearing more, please get in touch.

Our overall Carbon Footprint for 2023 shows an increase in emissions from 2022. However, the increase masks a more nuanced picture of our environmental performance. The key factors associated with the increase are:

• Our significant increase in employee numbers over 2022 resulted in a direct increase in our footprint.
• The experts, Zevero, auditing our carbon footprint this year used a more comprehensive methodology which increased our footprint overall and in intensity. This was primarily due to changes in the emissions calculations associated with home-working.
• Our revenue dropped in 2023 compared to 2022 which increased our carbon emissions per £ revenue.

We have made progress in reducing our Scope 1&2 emissions from 2021 by 37.98% location-based and 47.6% market-based. This is very much in line with the default Race to Zero mid-term targets.

* Owned Scope 3 emissions only include Business Travel, Waste (and Water) and Employee Commute (and Homeworking)
**This Scope 3 figure includes Purchased Goods and Services, Capital Goods, Fuel and Energy Related Activities, and Use of Sold Products in addition to our ‘owned Scope 3 emissions’. Having read the GHG Protocol Guidance, we have included emissions relating to our clients’ website hosting. While this does NOT remove them from any client’s Scope 3 emissions, it incentivises both parties to reduce them.
*** The significant overall increase in per-employee emissions is due to calculating home-working emissions by location rather than using a general emission factor for the UK.

Our Bristol office heating gas (Scope 1) is matched with 100% renewable certificates from UK sources via SSE Green Gas Plus. Renewable gas is created when natural waste products are broken down using organic bacteria. The biomethane released is then captured and fed into the national grid. However, this market-based approach is not permissible within the Scope 1 GHG Protocol, so no reduction has been made to acknowledge this.

As mentioned above, the significant overall increase in 'owned' Scope 3 emissions is due to higher employee numbers in 2023 and to calculating home-working emissions by location rather than using a general emission factor for the UK as in previous years. The UK grid has a high proportion of renewable electricity and relatively low emissions per person. In the Philippines, where we have several team members, there is relatively high consumption (you need the AC!) and the electricity is largely from coal-fired power stations.

Check out this deck for a detailed look at our 2023 Carbon Footprint breakdown.

2023 was another busy year for our open source product development team, shipping four releases of Wagtail and a raft of new features and improvements to the product focused on accessibility and sustainability.

Wagtail’s accessibility checker was developed by our Outreachy intern, Albina, who has since joined the Torchbox team. And, once again, we participated in the Google Summer of Code (GSOC) programme – this time in partnership with the Green Web Foundation and Green Coding Berlin – with our two GSOC interns working on image optimisations that have delivered significant emissions reductions for websites powered by Wagtail.

Civic engagement

Our Community Action Group has been set up to help us to contribute to our communities. They also highlight volunteering opportunities and encourage us all to become active members of our communities.

We did a second intake for our Academy in early 2023, successfully recruiting to our digital marketing, tech and SEO teams. The initiative, launched in 2022, aims to cultivate talent and provide opportunities for individuals to develop their knowledge and skills while working collaboratively within a team.

The inclusive selection uses a blind application process and an academy day, in which applicants come together for team-building activities and a short interview.

Having reached financial freedom two years ago, 2023 was a year of maturing as an independent, 100% employee-owned company. We grew significantly in 2023 and were delighted to be able to share a profit with all co-owners.

2023 saw us:

• Elect a new Trustee
• Set up an Advisory Group that gives more co-owners the chance to engage with governance and provides a stepping stone to becoming a Trustee
• Attend the annual EOA Conference where I did a fireside talk and Lisa, now a member of the EOA Membership Council hosted a networking event
• Significantly improve our benchmark co-owner sentiment score
• Encourage and support many more organisations (mostly agencies like Torchox) to become employee-owned.

Our volunteer D&I voice group and our People team are working hard to ensure Torchbox is an equitable and nurturing workplace for all our co-owners.

Initiatives in 2023:

• Private Slack channels that foster an environment where neurodiverse and LGBTQIA+ communities can converge to exchange stories, advice and mutual support.
• Participating in Pride marches in Bristol and Manchester to visibly demonstrate our commitment
• Reviewing the accessibility of the Google Workspace tools we use, and shared guidance to assist co-owners in leveraging these resources for work collaboration and efficiency.
• To better support our remote colleagues:
  • We set up a steering group to understand the specific challenges being experienced.
  • Improved communication channels for remotes for example team meeting videos, notes and archive
  • Provided more explicit policy guidance for remotes
  • Launched a geographic map on our Intranet showing the location and time zone of all our colleagues

At the end of 2023, we launched our first Diversity and Inclusion Survey with one hundred and eleven respondents:

In the survey, 75% of co-owners agreed or strongly agreed that: People from all demographic backgrounds have equal opportunities to provide opinions and input at Torchbox.

Torchbox are committed to:

• Diversity within our leadership teams, the Company Board, Trust Board and our Senior Management Teams. The Company Board is the least diverse group and we are committed to addressing this in the medium term at least.
• Continuing education on diversity via Spark Talks and training. For example, in 2023, we had talks on neurodiversity, bystander training and the importance of designing gender-inclusive services by Emma Parnell and Lee Brown.
• Working with partners to address social exclusion, including Motherboard and The City Academy School in Bristol.
• Ensuring fair and equitable compensation for all of our co-owners through a pay equity analysis. We will use the findings to identify and address inequality.

The feedback provided valuable guidance resulting in several improvements to our support systems:

• We expanded our network of Mental Health First Aiders to four mental health first aiders and eight mental health first responders creating an environment, where mental health is given the priority it deserves.
• We created a new, short course, Conscious Management, which equips managers with the tools and knowledge to foster a supportive and understanding environment.
• We launched activities to boost well-being including “Torchbox Treks' which encourages the team to be more active, tracking our collective achievements.

• During Mental Health Awareness Week, we hired the Zen Bus to visit our UK offices. They also ran online sessions for our remote team.
• We continue to provide other resources including the Headspace app and access to an EAP.
• During International Happiness at Work Week, we invited co-owners to recognise their colleagues who made a positive impact with small gestures. Each day, a nominee received a small prize, and at the end of the week, we celebrated everyone’s contributions.

These initiatives represent our ongoing commitment to creating a nurturing and supportive work environment, where the well-being of every team member is a priority.

We have been actively engaging with the B Corp framework over the year addressing several areas from the B Impact Assessment including those set out in the following table. We encourage using B Corp's framework to continually improve business pratices.