Pop the champagne and ready the party hats, IBM announced it has ranked #3 overall on the 100 Best Corporate Citizens List, an annual list published by the Corporate Responsibility Officer (CRO) magazine, and beat out all other technology companies making the list.

"Some believe the current economic climate dictates corporate citizenship efforts be put on hold. At IBM we believe just the opposite. A strong commitment to corporate citizenship strengthens our brand and increases shareholder value," said Stanley S. Litow, vice president of Corporate Citizenship and Corporate Affairs at IBM.

To come up with the list, CRO magazine looks at the largest publicly traded companies in the U.S. and uses publicly accessible documents to determine who the leaders are in seven categories. These include environment, climate change, human rights, philanthropy, employee relations, finance, and governance, with environment and employee relations being given the most weight.

Ahead of IBM are Bristol Myers-Squibb (1) and General Mills (2). Some other popular tech companies making the list include Intel (13), AMD (46), Dell (34), Microsoft (47), and Apple (77).

View the full list here (PDF).