Ivory Ella donates 10% of profits to conservation; are there other similar orgs?

By Dave Cortright 🔸 @ 2022-03-31T16:06 (+1)

Ivory Ella doesn’t call themselves EA or a B-corp, but they sure look like one. They were founded in 2015 by pragmatic entrepreneur John Allen who noticed that the best-selling item in the store where he worked had an elephant on it. So he decided to create t-shirts emblazoned with elephants and sold out the first run of 500 in just a few minutes.

They’ve pledged 10% of their profits to elephant conservation (and now other animals and causes too). Which has added up to USD $2M. [Impressive growth and generosity]

At one point they were the largest donor to Save the Elephants, and currently, they are still one of their major contributors. [I worked for Wildlife Conservation Network, so know Save The Elephants fairly well.]

I wrote this to highlight a great org that embodies EA principles but might not be known in the EA community (and perhaps Ivory Ella doesn't know about EA either). But also to start a thread where the community can highlight other similar organizations that are for-profit but donate a substantial portion of the profits to EA causes.

Yellow (Daryl) @ 2022-03-31T18:53 (+12)

That's very altruistic of them! (Uncertain about the effectiveness of choosing elephants conservation though)

Here's a short list of cooperate altruism(varying in effectiveness) https://www.buyforward.org/
 

Harrison D @ 2022-03-31T19:02 (+5)

I'm unclear what about this organization embodies EA principles: as Daryl noted, donating to these charities may be altruistic/nice, but I didn't see any indication (or even a direct claim in your post) that the charities are highly impactful, especially in comparison to flagship EA charities like Against Malaria or Give Directly.

As for other organizations that donate portions of their profits/revenue to charities, I think there's a fairly large list, perhaps more than you might think. Most may not donate 10% of their profits, there are products like Ethos Water (which I dislike for seeming to be highly inefficient and overpriced) and the Smile version of Amazon. I'm sure I could think of a variety of others if I had spent more time on this.

Dave Cortright @ 2022-04-02T21:57 (+1)

I wish you would spend more time on it. I believe the whole community would benefit from your curated list. Or at least please point us in the right direction.

Regarding their effectiveness, they are the preeminent elephant research and conservation organization in the world. They help manage the elephant crisis fund, and they share their experiences and best practices with other conservation orgs (for example they help share the cost of a wildlife vet in central Kenya). They also embody community based conservation. They partner with communities in the elephant range and provide support like scholarships to assign concrete value to conserving elephants. They also innovated the beehive fence to produce honey for extra income and safeguard crops from raiding elephants.

I believe the world is more valuable with diverse megafauna in it. Even if STE is not as effective as mosquito nets or deworming, it still falls in the realm of EA topics mitigating wild animal suffering and environment/climate change. I think it’s a worthwhile investment.

MarisaJurczyk @ 2022-03-31T20:08 (+1)

Very cool! A few companies have taken the Giving What We Can pledge.