Five Questions to Ask Any Brand That Claims a Cause (Ours Included)

Almost every bag of coffee with a cause on it says something like "a percentage of profits supports animal rescue." Almost none of them publish enough for you to check.

That is not an accusation of anybody in particular. It is how cause marketing works: the number is the hook, and the hook does not need a receipt. It is also exactly the kind of claim we built this store against, which is why we would rather hand you the questions than ask you to trust us.

These five questions work on us. We have answered all five, including the ones we do not pass yet.

Why we are writing this

We set aside 1% of our profits to support rescue partners. That claim is on the site, in the footer, and on our impact page.

We also cannot yet tell you what that works out to in dollars each month, and the reason is not discretion. It is that we have not been able to verify it in a way we would put our name on. We wrote the long version of that in why we won't publish an impact number we can't verify, and the short version is that a number you computed from your own books is a number you marked your own homework on.

So this post is the other half of that. Here is the checklist, and here is how we answer it.

Question one: what exactly is the percentage of what

Revenue, gross profit, net profit, order total, profit before labor, profit after labor. These are six different numbers and only one of them is usually the one behind the claim.

A brand that says "one percent of profits" has told you something, and a brand that says "one percent of every order" has told you something different, and the second one is a larger number than the first.

Ask which one it is. If the brand cannot answer without reaching for a footnote, that is your answer.

Ours: one percent of our profits. Not revenue. Not order totals. We have been careful about that sentence, and why we won't publish an impact number we can't verify explains why the distinction matters more than it looks.

Question two: how much is it, in dollars

A percentage with no dollar amount behind it cannot be checked by anyone, including the brand.

Ask what it works out to. If the answer is a range, if the answer changes every month with no explanation, or if the answer is a round number with no method behind it, you are looking at a feeling rather than a fact.

Ours: this is the one we do not pass yet. We have the percentage and the partners, and we do not have a monthly dollar figure we are willing to publish. The honest reason is in why we won't publish an impact number we can't verify: a number is arithmetic, but a number is also only worth something if you can show what happened on the other side of it.

Question three: who receives it, by name

"Animal rescue" is not an organization. Ask for names.

If the brand names a national organization that receives a hundredth of a percent of its annual budget, you have learned something. If it names a local shelter in your own area, you have learned something else. Both are legitimate. What you cannot do is verify a claim about an unnamed recipient.

Ours: we support the ASPCA, Best Friends Animal Society, and a local shelter we work with. What each of them actually does is in what our rescue partners do, and how we choose them is in how we pick rescue partners.

Question four: when was the last transfer, and what did it fund

This is the question almost nobody asks, and it is the one that separates a relationship from a logo.

Ask when the money last moved and what it paid for. A real answer looks like "it funded spay and neuter surgeries in March" or "it covered two weeks of boarding for animals in foster care." A brand that cannot answer this is funding something in the abstract, which is a real thing, but it is not the same thing.

Ours: we ask our partners this, on a regular schedule, before we send anything. The questions we ask them are in the questions to ask a rescue group before you give, and it is worth reading whether you are thinking about partnering with a group or just buying coffee from one.

Question five: is there a dated record anybody can read

A page with no date on it is marketing. A dated entry, even a short one, is a report.

Look for a specific month. Look for the calculation method. Look for the name of the recipient on that specific entry. If the page says "we give a percentage" with no month and no numbers, the claim has no timestamp, and a claim with no timestamp cannot be audited.

Ours: our impact page is at our impact page. Where we cannot answer a question, we say so rather than letting the silence look like a yes.

Where we stand, all five in one place

• What percentage of what: one percent of profits. We pass this one.
• How much in dollars: we do not publish a monthly dollar figure yet, because we cannot verify one we would stand behind. We fail this one, on purpose.
• Who receives it: ASPCA, Best Friends Animal Society, and a local shelter. We pass this one.
• When was the last transfer and what did it fund: we ask, on a schedule, and the questions we ask are published. Partially passed.
• Is there a dated record: the page is there, and so is this answer. Partially passed.

Two clean passes, two partials, and one honest fail. We would rather show you that than a page with nothing on it.

If that reads like a weak position, it is the position we are in. The alternative was to print a number that felt good, and we have decided that a wrong number is worse than a missing one.

How to ask us

We read every email ourselves. Not a support tool, not a ticket queue — the inbox, answered by the two of us who run the roastery. We wrote about why in why we answer our own customer emails.

So if you want to know something specific, ask it. If our answer is that we do not know yet, that is what you will get, and if we can find out, we will find out and tell you. A question we cannot answer is a note to ourselves.

Use this on us, and on everybody else

The point of writing a checklist like this is not to grade ourselves in public. It is that you should not have to trust a brand because the packaging looks nice.

Five questions. Ask them of any cause claim on any bag, including the ones that make us look good. If a brand answers all five clearly, they are probably worth buying from. If they answer two and go quiet on the other three, that tells you something too — and now you know which two.

Brew slow. Sip slow.

— Seraphina