With 580 local employees and yearly revenue of between $75 million and $80 million, Booz Allen Hamilton has numerous reasons to be thankful to San Diego, where the Space and Naval Warfare System Command (SPAWAR) is its biggest customer for consulting and engineering services.

The managing partner of the San Diego operation, David Karp, says the firm attracts its work force locally from the ranks of the military and from graduates of universities. When recruitment is necessary, he says, Booz Allen Hamilton has no trouble persuading workers to come to San Diego because of the region's high quality of life.

To return to the community, the company currently budgets $37,500 in direct cash contributions to charitable causes, while encouraging its workers additionally to volunteer their time to local non-profit causes. Internationally, the company estimates its annual cash outlay for charity exceeds $2.4 million.

These contributions, Karp says, are based on a bottom-up philosophy in which employees can obtain corporate funds for charities, provided they can show they are also enthusiastic about volunteering their own time to whatever non-political cause it might be.

Karp estimated that Booz Allen Hamilton employees in the San Diego office alone donate 12,000 hours per year to a variety of charitable projects. A list provided by the firm gave no per-charity amounts, but indicated that the donations are clustered in the fields of health and support of the underprivileged.

Health organizations receiving the company’s support locally include the American Heart Association, American Cancer Society, ALS Association (to fight Lou Gehrig's disease), Children's Hospital and the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation.

Beneficiary charities focusing on the underprivileged include the Alpha Project ("Dress for Success"), Operation Homefront (helping military families with home repairs), St. Vincent de Paul Village, Rescue Task Force (providing medical teams and supplies to remote portions of the globe) and Rebuilding Together (providing volunteer efforts to revitalize communities and houses in low-income areas).

Rebuilding Together, formerly known as "Christmas in April" has seen as many as 100 Booz Allen Hamilton employees and family members come out on a weekend to help rebuild a home, says Karp.

Besides the good these projects do for the community, Karp says they provide an out-of-the-box mechanism for junior level employees to show their organizational and leadership skills to other members of the firm.

"Imagine on a Saturday morning, you have 100 unskilled workers, and they include your boss," he says. "You get to see all kinds of behavior that you wouldn't normally see in an office, and you start getting a feel for who really is a top-quality person."

The employee-driven charitable contribution and volunteer program is known throughout Booz Allen Hamilton as the "San Diego model," Karp says. "San Diego has the second largest office in the whole firm," surpassed only by the company headquarters in McLean, Va., he added. "Community service is vital, it helps our retention, and keeps people focused."