Spreading the Love Update

Hey all! A while back I talked about wanting to spread my good fortune from having this business, while balancing my need to, you know, eat and such. Complicating factors are my obvious desire for some privacy especially online (post about that coming soon), but also wanting to be transparent and accountable – we’ve all seen companies claim to want to help, but shroud the process in such obscurity that who knows.

So, while accepting that this is an imperfect system, this is how I’m going to move forward with this. While this policy might change in the future, this is how I see it going for now.

Basically, I’m going to structure it as a progressive tax system. Every month, I will not give any of the first $1,200 profit. So this is total revenue – costs, including cost of items, website hosting, etc. This amount is basically my living expenses – allows me to eat, pay bills, etc. This part is going to be somewhat obscured, due to both privacy concerns and honestly just the awkwardness of portraying the information in a user-friendly way. I do recognise this, but I don’t have an elegant solution.

After that, it’s a progressively larger cut of the total revenue. These specific numbers are going to fluctuate a bit, but I’ll try to keep this post up-to-date on them. Actually, maybe I’ll add a section to the website. But for now, it will be 10% of the gross, total revenue for that month beyond that initial profit chunk, up to an additional $5,000 in that month. I don’t think I’ve ever exceeded that, but past that point, it will be 20% of the total revenue in excess of the previous levels.

So let’s say that I make $7,000 in total revenue a month, for a total of $2,000 profit. I take the initial $1,200 for myself, leaving $6,200 ($7,000 – ($2,000 – $1,200)). I donate $500 (10% of the first $5,000), and $240 (20% of the remaining $1,200), for a total of $740 donated, or about 10.5% of the total revenue for the month. (Note: these revenue and profit numbers are almost entirely made up, don’t get too hung up on the fact that I made $2,000 profit on $7,000 revenue. I chose them to illustrate the progressive proportion system rather than being an accurate representation of my profit margins etc)

Again, obviously these specific numbers are going to fluctuate a bit as we get a handle on these things, but that’s the intent going forward. I do appreciate and accept suggestions for particular causes/organisations, but as things stand I’m probably going to default to the Against Malaria Foundation and other effective poverty-alleviation organisations. From the research I’ve read, focusing on them is the safest and most effective way to improve the world per dollar.