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Apple – Business – Profiles – Sustainable Harvest

This is an amazing profile of a company that uses Mac products. I love the concepts here. For the snippet of the profile, read below. For the full article, go to the link below. I am really adding this for my own info as we work on GAF.

Enjoy!
pd

Apple – Business – Profiles – Sustainable Harvest, pg. 1

As a volunteer in Mexico for Ashoka, an organization that supports social entrepreneurs, David Griswold had a keen interest in the coffee industry and knew that he wanted to help coffee growers, but wasn’t exactly sure how. When a man named Pedro, clad in sandals and a straw hat, walked into his makeshift volunteer office, Griswold’s fate was sealed. Pedro, who made a meager income from commodity coffee beans, said he represented 40 Mexican families who grew coffee in his village. He asked Griswold to teach him how to be more successful at selling their coffee beans. Since then, Griswold’s work has revolved around helping coffee growers throughout the world, changing their lives by teaching them sustainable, organic growing methods, and linking them with top coffee roasters and retailers who give them a fair price for their beans.

Griswold’s company, Sustainable Harvest Coffee, switched to the Mac several years ago and has never looked back. Today, Sustainable Harvest wields Apple technologies to run the business, train farmers, and tell the farmers’ stories to coffee buyers. Griswold believes in making a personal connection up and down the supply chain, among farmers, roasters and coffee drinkers around the world who know their coffee purchase is making a difference. His unique approach is not only good for the environment and for the farmers – it also has led to company growth rivaling that of the world’s most successful high-tech companies. Griswold credits Apple technologies with day-to-day inspiration and the ability to sustain rapid, ongoing expansion.

“We’ve become one of the largest buyers of fair trade, organic coffee in the world, and it’s due to the fact that we train 200,000 farmers in 14 countries to grow exceptional- tasting coffee beans,” says Griswold. “I really don’t know how else we could have reached this level of success without such an easy set of tools to run our business efficiently, create a transparent supply chain, and train farmers cost-effectively on a large scale.”
It’s all about relationships

“Relationship Coffee” is the hallmark of Griswold’s business model. In practice, it means that Sustainable Harvest’s supply chain is completely transparent. Coffee farmers can see Sustainable Harvest’s financial statements and margins, they learn the specific quality parameters of their clients, and the coffee retailers know which villages and farmers they are buying their beans from. And not just in theory. Sustainable Harvest also hosts an annual non-profit educational event, “Let’s Talk Coffee,” that brings the entire supply chain together, face-to-face for five days to train farmers in best practices for sustainable coffee production.

What everyone sees when they look at Sustainable Harvest’s books is that the company operates on gross margins below 10 percent. The only way to sustain the business is low-cost training and operations, supported by engaging, accessible communications. “As an importer in a commodity business, we work with tight margins,” explains Griswold. “Whenever we spend time training one farmer or cooperative how to do something, we absolutely need an easy and efficient way to document the training, and make it available to our entire supply network.”

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I Am Building My Own Investment Fund

I have decided to build my own investment fund. The reason I am choosing to do this is that over the last 6 months, my portfolio has given me an almost 900% gain. I am the only person I know that has turned a few hundred dollars into thousands and thousands into more. Some of my investments just from March 9, 2009 have given a more than 4200% gain. Now, I know that saounds incredible, but I really don’t care what people think, it’s the truth. I am NOT able to give investment advice right now, but I am totally able to create a fund personally that allows me to invest funds that I plan to later donate to my charities of choice. The kicker is that you get the full tax advantage to donating “stock” in whole versus selling it, paying the taxes and then giving the funds.

Then you get to write off the gift after you give it! NOW THAT IS COOL!

So, I have been learning a strategy and now I am building the fund.

Here are some links I plan to use for building my fund:

http://www.capstream.ca/Create_Your_Own_Investment_Fund.pdf

http://www.justmeans.com/editorials/1367/climatechange/Start-your-own-Green-Investment-Fund.html

http://uk.biz.yahoo.com/13042009/404/create-own-investment-fund.html

http://www.elca.org/Who-We-Are/Our-Three-Expressions/Churchwide-Organization/Mission-Investment-Fund-of-the-ELCA.aspx

I will be adding more as I go on this post, but this is my prelim thoughts. If you would like to hear more about my investments and strategy, post a comment here and let me know and I will let you know when I start my new blog on investing and finances.

pd

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How to Donate Stock to a Charity

I have added this article to the latest post set because I am beginning to build a portfolio of stock that I will be donating to my foundation later on, so you are welcome to use this, but it’s really for me.

HAHAHA!

Enjoy!

pd

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Q. I own UPS stock. I’ve held these shares since 1986 (before the initial public offering). I want to give some shares to the church I attend. Do I need a broker? I’ve never sold stock before, but I understand the capital gains/loss issue does not exist when you give stock (in the form of cash after it’s sold) to a non-profit organization.  — D.C.

A. Wait, wait — don’t sell it! If you sell it, you will create a capital gain and you will have to pay the tax on it. If you’ve owned shares of United Parcel Service (NYSE: UPS) since 1986, the capital gains will be huge! If you let the church sell it, they probably won’t have to pay any taxes on it. Much nicer. Giving stock to a charitable organization is a wonderful way to expand the amount you can afford to donate. You get a tax deduction for the gift, and the church puts it to good — and untaxed — use.

This is the season for giving, and I suspect that a lot of us will be feeling more generous than usual this year. The needs are so great. I hope that everyone reading this article will take a moment to check out our five unique and very cost-efficient charities.

Charitable giving used to be simple. Donate money, stock, old shoes, whatever, and deduct the value of the goods from your taxes. Those days are gone, but donating stock to charity is still a good idea and one that rewards you (after you jump through the appropriate hoops) with a nice tax deduction.

A donation of stock is a contribution of property in the eyes of the IRS. When you donate property, you can deduct the “fair market value,” which with stock (as opposed to that run-down heap in your driveway) is easily ascertained. Well, since this is the IRS, it’s not easy, but it’s doable. You just look up the highest and lowest trading price for UPS on the day you made the transfer and average them. (Hint: Make sure you do the transfer on a market trading day.) Multiply the average share price by the number of shares you donated, and that’s your fair market value. (For a real laugh, see IRS Publication 561, “Determining the Value of Donated Property,” for the formulas to use when the day of your donation isn’t a market trading day.)

Since you have held your stock more than one year, you can deduct the full amount (subject to limits discussed later). Donating stock that’s been held for less than a year isn’t as nice a deal. You can generally deduct only what you paid for the stock unless you pay the taxes on any capital gains.

The mechanics of the donation aren’t difficult. If you actually have in your possession the stock certificates in the correct denominations for the number of shares you wish to donate, you won’t need a broker. You can simply fill in the form on the back of the stock certificate and make it over to your church. The church can take the stock to a broker and sell it, but I suspect they won’t mind the trouble.

If your shares are held in a brokerage account, you can have the broker issue a stock certificate for the number of shares you intend to donate in your name and make it over to the church, or you can ask your broker for assistance in the transfer. (It might be a bit late to order up a stock certificate if you want the deduction for this year.)

Now we come to those limits on how much you can deduct. First, remember that you will have to itemize your deductions to get the full effect. Then, if you are donating a lot of shares, you could run into the limits on charitable giving. They are complicated. Sigh. Essentially your deduction can’t be higher than 30% of your adjusted gross income, unless you pay the capital gains taxes on the sale. (In your case, that could be disastrous!) You can deduct an amount equal to 50% of your income if you pay the capital gains tax, but it’s hard to imagine how that could work out to your benefit.

If you do run up against the limits, there is a silver lining. Anything that you can’t deduct this year can be carried forward for up to five years, so you can keep deducting until you use it up or run out of time. If the tax deduction is important and the amount is large in relation to your income, you might want to contribute some now and some in a later year. No matter what, you should read Publication 526 very, very carefully.

I’m afraid that this time I will have to refer readers to the IRS website which is a pretty good resource if you don’t mind scrolling through a list of hundreds of forms and publications to find what you need .

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Starting a Foundation | It can be tricky!

If you have funds of your own that you plan to use to endow the foundation, then it can be very simple. I’d start down that path by talking with staff at the appropriate community foundation. Unless you have a lot of money to put into this (more than $250,000 is what I’ve heard people say, and they usually follow that with something like “it’s better with a lot more), you will probably find that the community foundation can arrange a donor-advised fund for you that will allow you a good deal of flexibility, handle all the administrative tasks for far less cost than you would incur, and can all be done in a few days. (There are similar services offered by major financial insitutions; you might want to compare services and fees.) There are lists of community foundations at The Grantsmanship Center (http://www.tgci.com/resources/foundations/community/) and the Foundation Center (http://fdncenter.org/funders/grantmaker/gws_comm/comm.html).

If you are planning to raise money to support your foundation, then it is a great deal more complicated. You might still be able to use a donor advised fund at a community foundation, but you would need to ask them about the requirements if you want to raise money from other people to put into “your” fund.

Or you can, as your question suggests, set up a separate foundation. This process is likely to take several months to a couple of years, depending on many intricacies that only someone who knows your plans, goals and local conditions can really estimate for you. It is also likely to cost several hundred to a few thousand dollars, depending on how much outside advice you need, want and use.

The rules about incorporating foundations vary from state to state. You will need to incorporate as a first step; everything else follows from that. Incorporation can be very simple to do, but it needs to be done exactly right to avoid problems later on down the road.

For example, In order to be eligible to receive tax-deductible donations, you will need to be sure your corporation meets the requirements the IRS has developed to implement the Internal Revenue Code, especially section 501(c)(3) — and there are many other things to think about while setting up the corporation in the first place.

The you will need to apply for recognition as a tax-exempt entity under federal tax laws. The form for doing that is IRS 1023; there’s a publication you can get from the IRS, or download from www.irs.gov, called “Tax Exempt Status for My Organization” (pub. 557), that explains a lot of this. For this step, you will indeed need a business plan (since you have to provide a budget, including details of the sources and uses of funds, for the first three years of your planned program).

Foundations are governed by similar regulations for federal tax and reporting purposes to those that apply to the more familiar “public charities” — the organizations that we all know as “nonprofits.” But the prohibitions on self-dealing are more stringent and all foundations have to pay an excise tax.

As a fundraiser, you will probably also have to register with and report to your state’s charity officials (usually in the Secretary of State’s office — see http://www.multistatefiling.org for information about this subject).

Another option, especially if you are planning to assist just one or a small number of nonprofits through your foundation, would be to work out an agreement that allowed you to operate as a “program” of some established organization. You would be subject to the overall direction of the sponsoring organization’s board, but the agreement could allow substantial flexibility and scope for you to work on your cause without having to meet the administrative requirements foundation status would impose. This structure often goes under the name of “fiscal sponsorship.”

The “Start-up” section of the Nonprofit FAQ has lots of information about all these subjects, and pointers to further information as well. See http://www.nonprofits.org/npofaq and click on Start-up in the left hand column.

(If by any chance you’re in Washington state, you’ll want to get hold of the King County Bar Association’s very useful workbook “How to Form and Manintain a Nonprofit Organization” – see http://www.tess.org/pages/support2.html#publications for advice
about how to do that and other subjects. Many other states have statewide associations of nonprofits who can connect you with local resources; for a list see http://www.ncna.org)

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Bill Gates ups his billion-dollar giving

I love this article by the editor of Fortune Magazine. Read on to see how Gates is responding to the current economic downturn. All I have to say is, You go Bill!

pd

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There aren’t many optimists these days. Bill Gates, thank God, is one.

His assets – actually the assets of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, where the bulk of his wealth resides – are down like everybody else’s. They declined about 20% last year, he says in his first annual letter for his foundation. Still, Gates notes in the letter released today, he and his wife have decided to increase their spending to $3.8 billion this year. vs. $3.3 billion in 2008.

The need is that great. So is the Gates’ optimism. I learned about that up-close a year ago when I wrote the first profile of Melinda that’s been done with her involvement. Fortune called her “The $100 Billion Woman” on its cover because that’s how much money – theirs and their friend Warren Buffett’s (BRK.B) combined – theyll likely give away in their lifetimes.

Bill was full of hope then – and eager to trade his Microsoft (MSFT) job for full-time work at the foundation. But here’s what strikes me about his comments in today’s letter and a conference call he held this afternoon for reporters: how hopeful he is about advances in global health, where he’s spent 50% of his philanthropic dollars. In the next four to six years, he says, he expects HIV/AIDS to be “dramatically” reduced via a pill or a microbicide, which is a gel that women use to protect themselves from infection.

As he told me a year ago, Melinda helped draw him away from singly focusing on vaccine research and scientific solutions that may be decades away. “You can’t save kids just with vaccines,” as she says. Bill says in his letter that an AIDS vaccine is coming, but it’s “very likely to be more than 10 years away.”

The Gates are traveling more than ever. Melinda is in Ethiopia now. Bill is heading to Nigeria. A malaria vaccine is another big goal for him. A vaccine will go into the last phase of human trials this year, he says, and could be ready for wide use by 2014. It goads him that companies and governments have invested little in new malaria drugs simply because the disease has been eliminated in rich countries. It kills almost 1 million children per year elsewhere. So part of his new full-time work at the foundation is to egg on pharmaceutical companies that aren’t working on vaccines for the developing world. “Nobody gives them a hard time,” he told me. “That job is natural for me to do.”

The Gates’ newest passion: agriculture. They hope to bring a “Green Revolution” to Africa similar to the program that increased crop yields in Latin America and Asia beginning in the 1940s. This is high-tech and inordinately complex work – thus their lust for the challenge. But it may be easier than fixing U.S. education. In the past decade, the Gates have spent more than $2 billion on America’s public schools and it’s been a slog except for pockets of progress like New York City, where better teachers have made all the difference. Gates says in his letter that it’s “amazing how big a difference a great teacher makes versus an ineffective one…If you want your child to get the best education possible, it is actually more important to get him assigned to a great teacher than to a great school.”

While running a foundation is not like running a business (”You don’t have customers who beat you up when you get things wrong or competitors who work to take those customers away from you,” Gates says in his letter), here’s one way the two converge: Investing in the right people gives you the best shot at success. It’s a point that management guru Jim Collins, featured in the current issue of Fortune, preaches and it’s one of the many lessons Bill Gates is learning in his new calling.

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