Some of you may not have known this: Since we founded Drip Roasters in 2018, a part of our sales has gone into a fund for coffee-producing countries and communities. Since then, we've collected more than CHF 30’000.– for the fund. We think of it less as a donation and more as a contribution to existing projects – a small attempt to address the structural imbalances that have kept prices low for producers for a long time.
How it works
For every kilogram of green coffee we purchase, we allocate 0.25 Swiss Francs to the fund. Our customers also have the option to add a small contribution at checkout in our online store. Currently, this sums up to roughly CHF 4,000 per year.
Projects we’ve supported
Gente del Futuro is a social enterprise founded by Vava Angwenyi in Kenya that works to keep younger generations in coffee farming through training, better pricing, and practical support. Vava is also a key sourcing partner of ours in Kenya. We've contributed multiple times financially and have also sponsored coffee equipment.
Bean Voyage is a non-profit organisation that supports women and non-binary coffee producers, primarily active in Costa Rica and Mexico. They're also one of our long-time sourcing partners. We've made several contributions, and we’ve also used the fund to send two producers we buy coffee from – Maricela Esperón and Arleen Jimenez – to the Women-Powered Coffee Summit, which is hosted by Bean Voyage annually.
Chain Collaborative / Primavera – a women-led program designed to support people working in coffee supply chains. Primavera is a green coffee importer rooted in Guatemala with a strong focus on producer relationships and sustainability, our sourcing partner for Guatemala.
Specialty Coffee Transaction Guide – The SCTG is a publicly available resource that documents real transaction data across the supply chain, making pricing more legible for everyone involved. We have made repeated contributions to support its continued development – and contribute by submitting our green purchasing data every year.
We've also used the fund to pay price premiums to producers directly as well as to support covid relief projects.
Going forward
Originally, the idea was to focus on one larger project per year, with roughly half the fund going there and the rest distributed as price premiums. In practice, we've become more flexible – responding to needs as they arise.
In the future, we want to be clearer about where the money goes, sharing annual updates, and thinking more strategically about how to use it well. Each year, we'll publish a short update with the numbers and the decisions behind them.