One of the core philosophies of Whimsical is that business is about more than just profit. It's also about ethics, sustainability, and investing in the long-term good.

The health of our planet is as long-term as it gets. There's not a doubt in our minds that anthropogenic climate change is real and that we have to be a part of the solution. We believe that everyone—governments, NGOs, individuals, as well as businesses—have to contribute to help solve this issue.

Last year we donated $5000 to Eden Reforestation Projects to offset the CO2 generated in running Whimsical. While we felt good about it, we knew there's more we could do.

One of the companies that continues to inspire our business philosophy is Patagonia. Patagonia has long-campaigned for businesses to take a leading role in tackling climate change. One of the most straightforward ways they've done this is by first donating 1% of their revenue to projects related to environmental causes. To multiply the impact, they started 1% for the Planet as a way to allow other companies and individuals to invest in the projects that Patagonia has vetted.

The idea of giving back is very exciting to us. This year, we're in a place to prioritize it even more.

Therefore we've made the decision to become part of Stripe Climate, and contribute 1% of our revenue to help tackle climate change going forwards.

While we could spend a lot of time and effort researching, reaching out, communicating, and then validating different projects, we also realized that it would be more effective to "stand on the shoulders of giants". Economies of scale really do play a big part in this, and vetting projects that would maximize the benefit of our contributions is very important to us.

Here's why we decided to partner with Stripe:

• Ease of contribution. Stripe automatically deducts the 1% from our Stripe account. This is very convenient for us as 100% of our revenue goes through Stripe, thus we don't have to do anything other than building a great product to contribute.
• Trust in our relationship with Stripe. We've been able to trust Stripe with large swathes of our payment and revenue infrastructure, as well as multiple Stripe product betas. That, and Stripe's thorough, and public project selection process led us to believe that Stripe would be very scrupulous and attentive towards the projects they supported, thus also maximizing our contribution.
• Belief in Stripe's chosen direction. Stripe has chosen to invest in next-generation carbon removal technologies, and pay the "early adopter tax" to help those technologies develop and become less expensive. This goes well with our beliefs in long-term approaches and investments.

At the end of the day, every little bit matters. 1% may not be a lot, but it's infinitely more than 0%. Also, diversity of approaches matters, as we'll need to plant trees, reduce waste, reduce emissions, alleviate global poverty, and much more to overcome climate change. Therefore this post is about sharing our experiences, current thoughts, and decision-making on how we chose where our contributions go for now.

We don't know exactly what the future holds, but we do know that we're hopeful and that we will continue to support the fight against climate change.

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