Our Community Aid Program - Sustainability and Compassion:   As a gourmet coffee company, we partner with coffee growers all over the world. When we began traveling to their farms, we talked to the workers, explored the communities, and we encountered a way of life most people would prefer not to think about as they sip their morning cup of coffee. But we couldn’t stop thinking about it. The farm workers were struggling to feed their own children, even as they toiled to provide the world’s richest countries with the second largest commodity on Earth, after oil. As we thought about the children of the coffee farmers, and about our own children, we realized that their fates - and the fates of all the world’s children - are connected. If we wanted to leave them a better planet, then we had to take action where we could.

So, in 1989, we set up our Community Aid program (then called “Source Aid”), and since then, we've invested several million dollars to improve the quality of life for the farmers and communities where our coffee is grown. Today, when you enjoy your morning cup of coffee from the Organic Coffee Company, San Francisco Bay Coffee, Fairwinds Coffee, Black Mountain Gold, or any of the Rogers Family brands, you can take comfort knowing that the farmers and workers who made that coffee possible are treated with respect and paid fairly - in no small part thanks to you.

Our Community Aid Program is based on three key tenets:

Care for Farmers - We set up long-term contracts that allow farmers to treat their employees fairly, improve the environment and make a reasonable profit for their hard work. We consider the costs of production, infrastructure, and maintenance, as well as the need for a reasonable profit.

Care for the Community - Our investment in Community Aid program hovers around $1,000,000 every year. These funds go to education, nutrition, and health care programs that help break the cycle of poverty in our partner coffee growing communities. From 2001 to 2009, we constructed 25 schools, 140 bathrooms, 130 housing units, 15 clinics, and 60 kitchens, in communities throughout Central America, South America, Rwanda, and Southeast Asia (Sumatra and Papua New Guinea).

Care for the Environment - We practice “sustainable, responsible farming,” which means shade-grown, organic coffee, and farmlands with large areas left in their natural state, so that the ecosystem can continue to thrive around us. Responsible farming not only makes for superior coffee, it helps keep the land, people, and wildlife healthy everywhere our coffee is grown. We employ natural, sustainable methods, like using 10,000,000,000 worms to turn coffee farm waste into 5,000 pounds of pure fertilizer each week.

Paying Directly to Ensure Effectiveness:

Instead of donating a percentage of sales to a charity without knowing where the money goes, we ensures first hand that all Community Aid funds go directly to farmers, workers and their families. We work directly with our partner coffee growers and their communities to oversee the distribution of funds from Community Aid. We pay the invoices ourselves, making sure that every dollar goes directly to things like cement and lumber, used to build schools. Finally, we continuously manage all agreed-upon projects to ensure that no money is diverted to “administration.” 

Community Aid involves a wide array of social, economic, and educational programs, ensures the long-term viability and productivity of coffee "source" communities, guarantees a long-term source of quality coffee and protects the people, flora and fauna in and around coffee farms in Mexico, Rwanda, Panama, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Ethiopia, Colombia, Nicaragua, Sumatra, Honduras and Papua New Guinea.