For over two decades at Crop to Cup, our core mission has stayed simple: connect smallholder producers to the North American specialty market. But connection alone doesn’t build a long-term, sustainable business.

To support our supply communities for the long haul, our role as importers has to be pragmatic. We supply feedback, financing, and commercial support so that our producer partners can stay increasingly competitive in a very competitive field.
In practice, our direct interventions are heavily focused on the coffee itself—improving quality, scaling volume, and building consistency. The commercial benefits of that focus are clear and shared across the supply chain. But coffee farmers are communities first, built on individual people and families. And those people often require support that falls outside the scope of farm yield, processing, or cup scores.

This creates a common business tension. Any commercial company has a primary mandate to act in its own commercial best interest and sharpen its core business. In coffee, that means pursuing goals that directly improve production and quality. But because that core mandate naturally stays focused on coffee-related outcomes, it often leaves community needs that fall outside the commercial scope unaddressed—even when supporting the broader community is at the heart of why we engage in this work in the first place.

A resolution to this tension came in 2022, when we sat down in Houston and listened to Nora Burkey speak about her work at The Chain Collaborative (TCC).

TCC approaches community development differently. Instead of arriving at origin with a pre-packaged agenda or pushing producers toward activities designed to yield a commercial result, Nora and her team ask a simple, powerful question: What does your community actually need?

That distinction clicked immediately. It drew a clean, logical line between two complementary pillars:
— Crop to Cup’s Role: Strengthen the scaffolding of the commercial relationship.
— The Chain Collaborative’s Role: Strengthen the scaffolding of the community itself—with zero strings attached, no —commercial agenda, and execution driven entirely by local leaders.

To see how TCC operates on the ground, check out this brief introduction video:

In Practice: Kenya & Beyond

We put this approach to work alongside TCC with the Farmers Caucus in Trans-Nzoia County, Western Kenya. Through TCC’s Incubator program, 15 local estate leaders designed a pilot project on the Muinami and Yellow Diamonds estates specifically to help coffee worker families create alternative, year-round streams of income.

Rather than focusing on coffee, this community-designed initiative invested $15,000 directly into local priorities:
— Diversified Incomes: Supported 22 worker families in launching 5 non-coffee ventures—spanning livestock, poultry, beekeeping, horticulture, and a local agrovet store.
— Land & Infrastructure: Financed 3.25 acres of land leases for family farming and built 16 physical farm structures, including 13 livestock/poultry housing units, 2 apiaries, and a greenhouse.
— Direct Assets: Delivered 13 livestock animals (heifers, sheep, goats), 248 poultry birds, 26 beehives, and up to 10,000 crop seedlings per family.

The results proved that by giving local leaders the autonomy and funding to solve their own problems, small dollars can yield massive and meaningful impact. Building on that success in Kenya, we are actively expanding our work with TCC into our supply chains in Peru.

How You Can Build With Us: The Evergreen Fund

This season, we are expanding our direct financial commitment to TCC’s annual $15,000 Incubator grant cohorts, and because our roaster partners are equal stakeholders in these origins, we are implementing an easy, transparent way for you to join us on an ongoing basis.

This will be an Evergreen TCC Donation Option for all green coffee contracts:
— Opt-In Micro-Donations: You can choose to add $0.10 or $0.15 per pound to any active or future green coffee contract you hold with us.
— 100% Trackable: Your contribution is billed as a separate line item on your invoice, giving you a clean, simple paper trail for your business’s giving.
— Direct Progress Updates: Roasters who participate are added to a dedicated update loop, receiving direct, transparent progress reports on every new cohort funded by your dollars.

Whether you’re buying a single bag or multiple full containers, adding a few cents per pound ensures that every contract actively reinforces both sides of origin scaffolding—the coffee trade and the community that powers it.

If you’re ready to add an evergreen contribution to your existing or upcoming contracts, reach out to your trader or click below to email us. Together, we are thrilled to keep building.