We give away part of what we earn. Not part of what you pay.
Most online shops put a donation button at checkout and let the customer carry the cost. We do it the other way round: a fixed share of our profit goes out every quarter, whether you tick a box or not. You don't have to do anything. You already did it by ordering.
The commitment
1 % of every order, and 5 % of net profit, donated quarterly.
Whichever of the two is higher. Even in a quarter where we make no profit, the 1 % still goes.
That last part matters. A promise tied only to profit is a promise that quietly disappears in a bad quarter — and a small business has plenty of those. Tying it to revenue as well means it survives the months when it's inconvenient.
Where it goes
We split the amount between two things, deliberately:
Half to immediate relief
Food, clean water, medical aid, emergency shelter. Delivered by established organisations who were already there before we arrived and will still be there after.
Half to work that outlasts the donation
Vocational and technical training, school equipment, small-business and craft microfinance, and access to tools and connectivity. Relief keeps someone alive this month. Training changes what next year looks like.
We fund registered organisations rather than running projects ourselves. We are a small shop run by an engineer — we have no business pretending to be an aid agency, and money handed to people who do this properly goes further than money handed to people learning on the job.
How we choose who receives it
Three rules, no exceptions:
- Registered and independently audited. For German organisations that means the DZI Spendensiegel — an independent seal awarded to charities that meet strict standards on how donations are used and reported. If an organisation doesn't publish audited accounts, we don't send money there.
- Low administrative overhead. Published, verifiable, and reasonable. Zero-overhead claims are a warning sign, not a virtue — competent organisations cost something to run.
- No political or religious conditions attached to the aid. Help given to whoever needs it.
Currently being finalised. We are in the process of selecting the specific organisations for our first quarter. Once chosen, they will be named here by name and registration number, and the amount sent to each will be published below. We would rather leave this section honest and unfinished than fill it with logos we haven't actually funded.
What we publish
Every quarter, on this page:
- Total revenue for the quarter
- The amount donated, and how it was calculated
- Which organisations received it, and how much each
- The receipts
If a quarter passes and nothing new appears here, hold us to it. Write to us and ask. A commitment nobody checks is a marketing slogan, and we'd rather not have one of those.
If you want to give directly
You can give far more effectively by donating straight to an organisation than by routing it through a shop. You get a receipt, they get the full amount, and in Germany a donation to a recognised charity is tax-deductible — which it would not be if it came through us.
Search the DZI register for organisations carrying the Spendensiegel, pick one whose work you care about, and give to them directly. That is genuinely better than anything we could arrange, and we'd rather say so than pretend otherwise.
Why we do this at all
The founder came to Germany from elsewhere and built a career here in engineering. The difference between a life that works and one that doesn't is very often access — to training, to tools, to someone willing to give a first chance. That's a debt worth paying in the direction it was received.
Questions about this page: skhnigroup@gmail.com