At The McGraw-Hill Companies, our commitment to responsibility extends to our relationships with our suppliers and vendors. As a leading information services provider, our own intellectual capital forms the basis for our product offerings. As a result, we are less dependent than other businesses on raw material suppliers to bring our products to market.

We conduct business with all suppliers in an ethical manner and with the greatest integrity, following our Code of Business Ethics in all business dealings.

Further, our concern for the environment extends to the practices of our vendors, which we review annually. For paper suppliers, for example, we require a copy of their environmental policy, survey them annually to make sure they are in compliance with all federal, state and local environmental regulations, and encourage the use of independent, third-party certification to ensure that the paper we purchase comes from sustainably managed forests. We also recently began a green procurement effort, in which we review janitorial service companies to assess their use of green cleaning products and cleaning methods.

Moreover, we support minority and female-owned businesses to help encourage diversity and economic development. Our goal is to use qualified minority and woman-owned firms as regular suppliers, provided that they offer the most competitive bids in areas of price, quality, service and financial stability. To accomplish this, we have created a Supplier Diversity Program, which concentrates these efforts under one department in the company.