What Our Monthly Impact Update Actually Shows (a Plain Walk-Through for Anyone Who's Curious)
We publish a monthly impact update. It's a plain page on our site that shows where the previous month's 1% to rescue partners went. The page is short. It doesn't have marketing copy. It doesn't have a logo header. It's mostly numbers and a short note.
This post is a walk-through of what's on that page, where the numbers come from, what we deliberately don't publish, and how to read it honestly. If you've wondered whether the 1% to shelters claim is real, this is the inside view.
Where to find the page
The page is at `/pages/our-impact`. It's linked from the header, the footer, and from every product page. If you order from us, there's also a link in the post-purchase email.
The page exists separately from the blog because it's not editorial content. It's an operational report. It updates on the first Monday of each month with the previous month's numbers, and it stays online indefinitely. Every month is its own entry, scrollable as a list.
What the page contains
The page is structured into four sections per month. They are:
1. Partner breakdown. A list of which rescue partners we sent money to that month, and how much. Each partner gets a row with the partner name, the amount, and a short identifier (the partner's organization number with the IRS or the partner's published nonprofit listing) so you can verify it.
2. Total donation amount. The sum of all donations for the month, plus the implied 1% of what the month's revenue would have had to be to generate that amount. This is the most-asked-about number on the page. We publish the actual total and the implied revenue number, not the percentage. The percentage is a derivative you can calculate; the dollar amounts are the receipts.
3. What's in scope. A short line on what counts as the "1%." Order revenue minus refunds. Excludes shipping, tax, and any third-party marketplace fees. We publish the exact calculation method.
4. Founder note. A short note from me about anything that happened during the month that affected the numbers — a partner we added, a partner we rotated, a project we funded specifically. The note is usually 50 to 150 words.
That's the entire page. Nothing else.
What we don't publish
A few things that we explicitly leave off the page.
Customer counts. We don't publish the number of orders that contributed to the month's donations. The number is small enough that, on a per-month basis, it would identify specific orders or customers. Aggregated across the year, we'd publish it. On a per-month basis, we don't.
Per-customer amounts. We don't publish how much each customer contributed to the monthly donation. The 1% is on the order total, and each customer contributed differently depending on what they ordered. This is private information.
Future projections. We don't promise a 1% for future months. The 1% applies to every order we fulfill today. If something changes — costs go up, the model shifts, the donation amount has to drop — we'll publish that change, but we won't project forward.
Rescue partner internal details. When our partners receive funds from us, they often give us their own reports on what the funds did (treated X rescued animals, sponsored Y medical procedures, etc.). These reports are valuable but they include identifying details about specific animals or procedures that we don't publish without the partner's specific consent. The partner reports are private; we summarize only what we've been given permission to publish.
Comparative claims. We don't publish "we donate more than Roaster X" or "we donate more than the industry average." The numbers we publish are about us, not about the industry. Comparative claims are easy to get wrong.
Where the numbers come from
The page is generated from a small spreadsheet I maintain. Each row has:
- Date of the donation (the actual ACH or check date, not the order date).
- Partner receiving the donation.
- Amount.
- Reference number (the ACH trace ID, the check number, or the PayPal transaction ID — so you can verify it).
The spreadsheet is reconciled monthly against the bank statement. When I publish the impact page, the numbers match the spreadsheet, and the spreadsheet matches the bank. Every cell has a source — either a bank transaction or a check image.
The order totals that feed into the 1% calculation come from Shopify. We run a saved report at the start of each month that pulls all orders for the previous month minus refunds, then we calculate 1% of that total. The exact Shopify report query is documented in the partner breakdown.
This is not glamorous data infrastructure. It's two spreadsheets, one Shopify report, and a bank statement. We publish what the spreadsheets show.
How to read the page honestly
A few things to keep in mind when you look at the page.
Small monthly amounts. Our monthly donation amounts are not large — they're typically in the hundreds of dollars per partner per month. That's what 1% of a small roastery looks like in the early stage. Some readers have written in asking whether the amounts are real because they're small. They're real. We just aren't a large operation.
Quarterly rotation. Every quarter, the partner list rotates. We support a primary partner for the quarter, plus one or two additional partners per quarter. The rotation is part of the way we work. If you see a particular partner's name in January and again in March but not in February, that's why. The pattern is published in advance on the partner breakdown.
Rounding. Donations are in whole dollars. If we calculated $87.34 for one partner and $39.18 for another, we round to whole dollars before sending and reflect those whole dollars on the page. The page totals match the amounts we actually sent, which means there are small rounding discrepancies between what you'd calculate from the 1% formula and what we actually donate. We publish the donation amounts, not the calculation. If you want to verify the math yourself, the order totals are available on request.
Year-end reconciliation. At the end of each year, we publish a year-end page that aggregates all the monthly donations and reconciles them against the year's total 1% calculation. The year-end page replaces the month's report in January, and is archived permanently. The year's report is what you'd quote in a publication or a long-form article.
Why we publish this way
A few reasons the page is what it is.
We chose plain over glossy. A glossy impact page with a big logo, an animated header, and a "join us" CTA would look more marketing-y, but it would also obscure the actual numbers. Plain pages make the numbers central.
We chose monthly over quarterly. Quarterly reports would be easier to produce, but they let the conversation die down between reports. Monthly reports keep the conversation continuous. The 1% claim only feels real if you're seeing it updated regularly.
We chose partners over cause categories. We could publish "we support animal welfare." That's vague. Naming the specific partners and the specific dollar amounts to each makes the claim checkable.
We chose not to overclaim. We don't publish percentages of "impact" or "lives saved." Those numbers come from the partners' internal reporting, which is valuable but not ours to republish without consent. We publish dollar amounts to specific partners. That's the most accurate thing we can publish.
What's not on the page but matters
A few things people have asked about that aren't on the page.
How the partner selection works. Every quarter, I review which partners we work with. The criterion is roughly: "Does the partner spend its funding on direct animal care?" Most of our partners are 501(c)(3) nonprofits whose financial forms show less than 20% of revenue going to administrative overhead. The exact selection criteria are documented in a private document we share with partners on request.
How much we could donate vs. how much we do donate. We could donate more. We could donate less. The 1% is what we currently commit to. We won't drop below 1% unless the business actually can't cover costs. We could increase the percentage, but the partner list and the dollar amounts are already calibrated to what the partners can meaningfully absorb.
Whether the partners are happy with the amounts. Yes. The partners are happy. We don't have a partner asking for less; we don't have a partner asking for more. The amounts we send are at a scale the partners can usefully deploy without overhead issues.
Whether we ever declined to publish a number. No. We have published every number we have generated. If a month happened where we couldn't reconcile the numbers (a partner refund, a chargeback, an audit review), we publish the month with a note that says so. We've had two months where we published with a clarification note, both in 2025.
The honest take
The 1% to shelters claim is small. It's not going to fund a sanctuary. It's not going to fund a country-wide spay-and-neuter program. It's a small monthly contribution to specific partners, and it's an honest claim about what we do.
We publish the numbers because the alternative — saying "we care about animals" without saying what that costs — is exactly the kind of marketing we try not to do.
If you want to verify the claim, the page is at `/pages/our-impact`. The numbers are real. The partners are real. The contributions are real. We make the claim because we can back it up.
If you've been skeptical of coffee brands that "support a cause," our page is what to look at instead. Plain numbers, plain partner names, plain dollar amounts. No marketing copy.
See our post on why we rotate partners quarterly.
P.S. If you want to know why we picked a specific partner in a specific month, I keep a private note for each quarter that walks through the reasoning. I'm happy to share it on request — it's not part of the public page, but I'm not precious about it.
— Seraphina