Our 2023 Impact Report

Mightybytes’ 2023 impact report shows how we improved our economic, social, and environmental impact while also addressing some of the web’s biggest challenges. 

Mightybytes has been on a mission to make the web better for everyone since opening our doors in 1998. Recently, a host of social, environmental, and economic issues on the web have increased urgency to prioritize more responsible digital practices with our company stakeholders—employees, customers, the environment, and communities with which we interact.

These issues affect everyone. As a marketing agency, Mightybytes can create the greatest positive impact through advocacy, outreach, education, tools, and promoting responsible practices that address these issues. This impact report outlines our efforts.

Impact Business Models (IBMs) 

First, as a Certified B Corp and Illinois Benefit Corporation, Mightybytes employs several Impact Business Models (IBMs) to ensure the solutions we provide are accessible, sustainable, and responsible. Our B Corp certification helps make these things measurable.

IBMs for company product and service offerings are based on specific Theories of Change:

1. Sustainability: Advancing web sustainability on client and internal projects—read sustainability theory of change.
2. Accessibility: Improving accessibility for all websites—read accessibility theory of change. 
3. Education: Expanding the industry’s knowledge of responsible and more sustainable digital practices—read education theory of change.

To align with a widely adopted global sustainability framework, these models also contribute to three of the 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).  

IBM: Sustainability

Improved performance, green hosting, better UX, and reduced data payloads improve web sustainability while helping our clients more effectively achieve their business goals. 

Key Figures

• Number of 2023 projects hosted green: 17

IBM: Accessibility

Prioritizing accessibility in all project deliverables makes the web easier for people with disabilities to use. 

Key Figures

• Number of 2023 client deliverables adhering to WCAG 2.2 “AA”: 99
• Number of clients trained on WCAG principles: 9

IBM: Education

By training clients and reducing barriers to education through free or low-cost resources, Mightybytes strives to shrink the gap between those with access to responsible digital skills and those without. 

Key Figures

• Number of client workshops given: 7
• Number of free or low-cost workshops, webinars, speaking engagements: 29
• Number of clients trained: 14
• Number of reports delivered to help clients improve progress over time: 101

Impact Projects (non-IBM)

Beyond impact business models, Mightybytes implements a variety of pro bono, volunteer, and philanthropic impact projects each year. These projects provide resources for organizations looking to improve the social and environmental impact of their digital products and services.

Free Educational Resources 

Mightybytes researched and wrote over a dozen in-depth articles in 2023. These covered topics ranging from social media and marketing ethics to Scope 3 emissions and various digital sustainability strategies.

To reduce barriers to entry, we posted these articles to our blog and offered 29 free workshops, webinars, podcast interviews, and speaking engagements covering related topics in 2023. 

B Corp Networks 

Related, Mightybytes’ President Tim Frick co-chaired the B Corp Marketers Network in 2023. This network hosts educational events and creates resources that build connections between B Corp marketers, helping them use their skills more responsibly. Topics included impact communications, data privacy, digital sustainability, strategic partnerships, and more.

Ecograder

2023 saw a full redesign of our free web sustainability tool Ecograder’s UI and features. This upgrade makes it easier for anyone to improve the environmental impact of their digital products and services. Ecograder generated nearly 70,000 reports in 2023. 

Also, Ecograder is now used in classes and at institutions around the world to help people better understand web sustainability. Plus, it has been deployed by advocacy groups to encourage environmental organizations in the U.S. and abroad to improve key digital sustainability metrics.

Digital Carbon Ratings

Mightybytes also incorporated digital carbon ratings into Ecograder in 2023 and published a ratings guide on our blog. These ratings were a collaboration between Mightybytes, Wholegrain Digital, and others to make digital emissions estimates more actionable.  

W3C: Web Sustainability Guidelines

Perhaps the most significant impact project we worked on in 2023 was the Web Sustainability Guidelines (WSGs). The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) community group we’ve co-chaired since 2013 published this comprehensive set of guidelines in September just ahead of W3C’s annual meeting in Seville, Spain, where a group member presented them.

Dozens of digital leaders from countries around the world contributed to nearly 100 guidelines in key areas: product and business strategy, UX design, web development, hosting and infrastructure. Key metrics are included with each.

Since launch, these guidelines have been referenced in nearly 150 articles, websites, newsletters, and podcasts reaching millions of people. 

Sustainable Web Design

Finally, with the help of our partners at UK B Corps Wholegrain Digital and As it Should Be, we improved the Sustainable Web Design site, including:

• Accessibility improvements
• New UI features
• WSGs integration

With these enhancements, people can easily chart their own learning journeys through the WSGs, which are now tagged, categorized, and searchable. 

ESG Governance: Policies and Practices

In addition to IBMs and pro bono projects, Mightybytes employs a variety of governance policies and practices to improve our economic, social, and environmental impact. 

Environmental Impact

1% for the Planet

As a 1% for the Planet (1PP) member, we donate 1% of our topline sales to nonprofit organizations that protect natural spaces, provide equitable access to healthy, locally-sourced foods, and expand regenerative business practices. 2023 recipients included:

• Alliance for the Great Lakes
• B Lab
• Copper Harbor Trails Club
• Environmental Working Group
• Fair Food Network
• Growing Home
• National Parks of Lake Superior Foundation
• Swedetown Trails

Since becoming a 1PP member, Mightybytes has donated nearly $60,000.00 to organizations like those listed above. 

Company Emissions

As a virtual, low-footprint service firm, most of our company emissions fall into Scope 3. We work to reduce these emissions in several ways:

• Providing green web hosting to client websites,
• Purchasing from low emissions suppliers,
• Using sustainable web design and other means to improve the environmental impact of digital products and services we design and build for clients.

Mightybytes offsets remaining emissions through fellow Certified B Corp Tradewater, which focuses on halocarbons and methane, two very potent greenhouse gasses. Methane alone has a global warming potential of 84 times that of CO₂. 

Tradewater’s overall work to date is equivalent to planting nearly 100 million trees or preventing more than 6.7 billion pounds of coal from being burned. As Mightybytes strives to reach the continuously moving target that is net zero, we’re proud to play a small role in this important work. 

Social Impact

Certified LGBT Business Enterprise

The National LGBT Chamber of Commerce first certified Mightybytes in 2019. We have re-certified twice since then. This sends an important signal to company stakeholders that Mightybytes prioritizes justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion in our business practices.

To learn more about why this is important to businesses like ours, read Why Mightybytes is a Certified LGBT Business Enterprise on our blog. 

W3C and Web Standards

The Web Sustainability Guidelines mentioned above serve as the driving force behind efforts to create sustainability standards for the web similar to those that already exist for accessibility. In 2023, our W3C community group created a working group charter to start the process of transitioning the WSGs to the web standards track. 

Policy Advocacy

Political advocacy plays an increasingly important role in how businesses, especially Certified B Corps, create impact. For Mightybytes, this takes shape in the following ways:

• Efforts to improve web standards, which inform legislation and regulatory guidelines. 
• Signing petitions that advance responsible tech policies, improve AI ethics and transparency, provide gender-affirming care, expand LGBTQ+ rights and reproductive healthcare, and other issues important to our business.
• Participation in bimonthly B Corp advocacy calls and meetings with representatives to make progress on regulatory issues important to the B Corp movement. 
• Encouraging our team to vote and providing paid time off and schedule flexibility on election days. 

Economic Impact

Code of Ethics

In 2023, we updated our Code of Ethics to improve clarity around truth and transparency in company communications, greenwashing, and, most importantly, how we vet clients and suppliers to prioritize the impact economy.

Team Education & Wellness

2023 marked Mightybytes’ first full year as a virtual company since the business started in the late 1990s. Asynchronous collaboration through tech tools improves the company’s flexibility. As a company that understands the value of creative collaboration, it also presents specific communications challenges.

Here’s how we prioritize team mental health and well-being in a virtual work setting:

• We meet regularly in-person as team schedules allow, at least once per quarter.
• Flex time and a balanced work schedule with predictable hours allows team members to plan their personal lives alongside work commitments. 
• We encourage regular screen breaks.
• Training is built into company operations. We collectively identify trends and opportunities, then devise a plan to build skills and capacity among the team.
• Mightybytes strives to offer the best benefits we can while also acknowledging resource constraints, given our small company size. 
• Mightybytes is and always has been committed to paying a living wage and maintaining a low pay scale ratio between the highest and lowest paid employees.
• Most importantly, we solicit feedback, listen to what’s important to our team, and adjust accordingly.

B Impact Assessment Governance

Also, we employ a variety of other policies and practices driven by the B Impact Assessment, including:

• We buy from B Corps first whenever possible to support the impact economy.
• Similarly, we try to choose more sustainable marketing tools when they are available. 
• We integrate social and environmental performance into decision-making and engage stakeholders in our mission whenever possible. 

Collective Impact with Clients

Finally, for all the positive impact we strive to create as a company in our own products, services, policies, and programs, the collective impact we create when collaborating with mission-aligned clients is potentially the most far-reaching.

To this end, 79% of Mightybytes’ 2023 clients are directly aligned with our B Corp mission and values.

Take City Parks Alliance, for instance. This organization leverages the power of parks in shaping equitable, resilient, and thriving cities. Anyone who has enjoyed urban green spaces in American cities has likely benefited from their inspiring work. Mightybytes started working with them in 2023.

When Mightybytes helps clients like City Parks Alliance achieve their goals, we in turn advance our own. Helping organizations like these is why our agency exists.

Therefore, when we receive testimonials like the one below, it is especially meaningful:

Mightybytes really ‘walks the talk’. They are thoughtful, transparent, and committed to acting as a true partner on every project. They don’t jump to quick fixes or make assumptions about what an organization needs. Instead, they ask questions and really listen to understand our organization and audiences. They also push us to think deeply and challenge our own assumptions. In the end, they deliver solutions that fit an organization’s short and long-term needs.

— Jennifer Caddick, Communications & Marketing Director, City Parks Alliance

We’re so grateful for our clients and all those who support Mightybytes. We wouldn’t be able to create the impact described in this report without them. If you have any questions whatsoever about the content shared in this impact report, please contact us. Thank you.