Impact Update: March 2024

Our passion for making & selling chocolate differently has roots in our travels through Latin America. That's why Caldera Cacao Roasters is trying to be more than just a chocolate company – we want to be a force for good.

We've seen the struggles of indigenous communities fighting to protect their ancestral lands and traditions, the challenges posed by climate change and overdevelopment, and the consequences of overconsumption. These issues are interconnected – and so are the solutions.

Here's our plan: We give back part of what we earn, buy ingredients from sources that prioritize organic practices and reforestation, use packaging you can recycle or compost, and make sure the folks growing our most important ingredient — great cacao — get compensated for their time, energy, and expertise.

We also want to do our part in fixing what's wrong when it comes to "business as usual." Our first step in this direction is to establish an Impact Fund that will bridge the gap between our business practices, and the critical issues affecting the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem as well as cacao farmers & their communities in Ecuador, Guatemala, and Peru, where we buy from. The goal in all of this, is to start small, but use our business as a tool to create meaningful change over the long run.

Our Impact Fund is a work in progress, and we'll be keeping you updated as we get this project up and off the ground. Here's a bit of what we're currently focused on:

• Identifying the not-for-profit organizations in Montana, Ecuador, Guatemala, or Peru that we will be partnering with to start. Right now, we're doing our research on where and how our support can make the biggest impact.

• Researching how best to set up the Impact Fund, including how we manage and track deposits that we make into the fund, and how we make distributions from the fund to the organizations and nonprofits it will support.

• Working to define how much Caldera Cacao Roasters can sustainably and reliably give to this fund. Is it a percentage of revenue each year? Is it a percentage of net profits each year? Is it a fixed dollar amount each year? We are crunching the numbers and looking at other companies doing similar work to help us develop a plan of action that will be most impactful.

• Lastly, we'll be publishing an annual Impact Report that details the organizations we supported during the previous year, what they do, how much we gave to them, and how those contributions supported their work. Publishing our first Impact Report is still quite a ways away, but it's something we’re starting to think about today as we establish the record-keeping systems required to make meaningful reporting possible.

We're fired up about the possibilities of social entrepreneurship! We want to share what we learn as we go and, hopefully, make it easier and more accessible for entrepreneurs and businesses of every size (NOT just big, board-run corporations) to make meaningful impacts in the ways that work for them.

Our dream is that with every bite, you're not just enjoying chocolate – you're helping write a new story for people and places the world over. Thanks for joining us on the journey, and watch for another update on this in April.

Lauren Burgess
Co-Owner & Chocolate Maker