FAQs

More About DoneGood

The dollars that we spend are the world’s most powerful force for change. Anytime we give our money to any organization, we help that organization do more of what they're doing! Choosing to give our dollars to companies paying good wages and fighting climate change helps create more economic equality and a better future for our planet.

But we know from experience that it can be really hard to find what you need, when you need it, from a company doing good for people and the planet.

That’s why we created DoneGood—to make it quick, easy, and more affordable to discover brands you can feel good about supporting. We’re working to create the one-stop shop where people can find anything they need to buy and know their purchase is making the world better (or as Forbes called us, we're working to build "The Amazon for Social Good").  
 

Proud to be a B Corp "Best for the World" Awardee

Certifiable: Many of the partner brands whose products we carry on our site, are Certified B Corps. B Corps are businesses certified by the B Lab, a nonprofit committed to the idea of using business as a force for good, to meet rigorous standards of social and environmental performance, accountability, and transparency. In other words—companies that are independently verified to be doing good for people and the planet. We’ve even been named a B Corp “Best for the World” Awardee! Learn more about Certified B Corps.

Street-legal: We’re also legally incorporated as a public benefit corporation. So, we’re "DoneGood, PBC" rather than an LLC or a C Corp. or an “Inc.” PBC is a relatively new legal designation that means that we’re legally required to fulfill a social mission, not just maximize profit. So doing good is literally baked into our corporate charter. Learn more about legal public benefit corporations

 

How does DoneGood select the brands that are featured on its platform?

We look for brands that “make great stuff and make the world better.” These are ethical, sustainable businesses that create unique products built-to-last, and are doing so with production practices that do good for people and the planet.

To us, “good for people” means: empowering workers, paying living wages, safe working conditions, no excessive mandatory overtime, investing in communities, and of course free of trafficked or child labor. 
To determine living wages: For U.S. production, we use the MIT Living Wage Calculator to check living wages in the county in which production is located. For non-domestic production, we look to non-profits who do work to determine a living wage in the country/region production is located.

To us, “good for the planet” means: being incredibly more sustainable than the big-name counterpart in the brand's industry. Different brands in different industries tackle this in different ways--using eco-friendly processes like facilities powered with renewable energy, low impact operations (like small handmade production with a small carbon footprint), using non-toxic, organic and/or recycled or upcycled materials, and otherwise taking significant steps to fight climate change and keep land, air and water clean.  

At the end of the day: our approach is to vet brands, verify info, and then tell YOU how the brand is doing good for people and the planet. Information about each brand's social and environmental impact is listed on EVERY product page. Our (currently small!) team is working to add more impact info to each page.

With the info, you can make an empowered purchasing decision.

How we collect data:

To determine a brand’s impact, we start by aggregating data from independent certifying organizations. This includes B Corps scores, Fair Trade organizations, GOTS, the Rain Forest Alliance, and many others.

We combine these certifications with our own research, interviews, and standards.  We talk to EVERY brand that before allowing them to sell on our site--asking them detailed questions, follow-up questions, and asking them attest to various business practices and requiring that they verify and demonstrate how they’re following through on those practices.

And, we rely on help from the DoneGood community—that’s you! So, if you know a company that should (or should not) be featured on DoneGood, please let us know. Simply fill out this form to recommend a brand you think we should vet and potentially add to DoneGood, or, shoot us an email with the company’s name and website at team@donegood.co and let us know a little about what you think of them.

We’re continually scouring the planet for unique, high-quality mission-driven businesses. But DoneGood companies are often small and hard to find—and new businesses are being started every day. So, we always appreciate learning about incredible companies that we might not know about yet.

In the end, our goal is to select a set of businesses where, if everyone supported those businesses instead of the big-name counterparts in their industry, the world would be a substantially better place.
 

How does DoneGood make money as a company?

DoneGood is a marketplace for ethically-made items by companies that do good for people and the planet. Once a brand passes our social impact criteria, their products can be added to our website.  Items purchased on DoneGood are shipped directly to you by the brand that made them. Those brands then pay DoneGood a commission on sales they make through our site.

We don’t require or accept compensation from any companies up front. First, we decide whether a business passes our social impact threshold, then we talk to them about supporting our work by paying us a percentage on sales that we help make for them.

Our partner brands like this model because it’s both less expensive and less risky than traditional marketing. Instead of spending their dollars on advertising and hoping for results, our brands only share revenue with us when a sale has been made. We only make money when we actually help the businesses we’re trying to support. This kind of business model allows us to work every day on something we truly believe in, and make sure we're always accomplishing our mission of helping brands that do good be more successful, and to help fuel the entire business-as-a-force-for-good movement.

How do the items I order get to me? 

Items purchased on DoneGood are shipped directly by the brand who made them. 

If you ordered multiple items, your order may arrive in more than one shipment. Once an item ships, you'll receive a tracking number for each package via email.

You can check the status of your order by logging in to your DoneGood account with the email address this confirmation notice was sent to.

If you have questions about your order, please reach out to us via email at team@donegood.co. We will get back to you with an answer as quickly as we can.

How long will it take for my order to arrive?

DoneGood is a marketplace offering products from lots of different ethical and sustainable brands. Your order may come in more than one shipment if you ordered products from more than one brand.

Since items ship directly from the company that made it, it really depends on that companies' process. Unlike Amazon, we don't have warehouses where we work people to the bone, nor do we impose stringent shipping requirements on our (often small-medium sized, always ethical) partner brands. So DoneGood cannot guarantee shipments arrival times. 

How do I return or exchange an item I've purchased?

Email us at team@donegood.co and we’ll help you through the return or exchange process. Please include your order number and the name of the item you would like to return or exchange.

 

Why isn’t DoneGood a nonprofit?

DoneGood is a public benefit corporation, a new kind of legal designation that means a company is legally chartered to focus on a social mission first, profits second. Ultimately, our goal is to show that businesses can be commercially successful and make the world better at the same time. We exist to support people building businesses like that, and that’s the kind of company we want to be ourselves.
 

Does the browser extension slow down my computer or internet speed?

We work very hard to make sure it doesn’t. In fact, we programmed the extension to allow your web page to load like normal before the extension shows you ethical and sustainable alternatives. Our tests have shown that if there is any delay in page loading time it’s a fraction of a second. If you believe the extension is slowing your internet loading speed any more than that, please let us know at team@donegood.co.
 

How does DoneGood protect my privacy?

Being transparent and protecting your privacy is part of what it means to be a DoneGood company. We do not sell your contact information or any other personally identifiable information. We do not track your personal browsing history.

We do look at aggregate data as a whole to try to make our platform better and more user-friendly, including things like: 

  • How the DoneGood community is using the DoneGood website, extension, and app (like total traffic to our site, total sales, which pages get visited, best-selling products on our site, the total number of times our user base has clicked on a button or used a certain feature, etc.)

  • Search terms used on our site more frequently, or search terms with our browser plugin that lead to a result that displays DoneGood-approved brands or a company that provides similar products or services to a DoneGood-approved brand

  • Basic aggregated demographic data on the DoneGood community as a whole from Google Analytics

We use this data to help us improve our platform to serve you better, and it can help demonstrate the impact of the DoneGood community overall.

You can review our full privacy policy. We’ve tried to ensure it clearly states—in plain English—how we protect your privacy rights. But please contact us anytime at team@donegood.co if you ever have any questions or comments.

 

Why you guys doing this?

We truly believe that our dollars are the world’s most powerful force for change. Anytime we give our money to anyone, we’re helping them do more of what they’re doing. When we give our money to good people doing good things, we help them succeed. We encourage more businesses to follow suit. And eventually the big companies have no choice but to take notice and change their practices for the better.

When every business in the world begins supporting people, animals, and the planet, many of our problems will be solved. In that case, DoneGood will no longer be needed. We’re working to put ourselves out of business.

In the meantime, before we can all solve the world’s problems, shopping with DoneGood means getting solid products, exclusive offers, and feeling good about where your money’s going and how that positively impacts lives and makes the world better.