We are flattered by the number of organizations that approach us with requests for donations of free product.  As much as we’d like to support all of the great many worthwhile and deserving organizations, we are a small chocolate company and are unable to donate items to all who ask for our support without jeopardizing our own financial well-being.  We have an obligation to our stakeholders to maintain profitability through responsible management and it is hard to reconcile this with our very human impulse to simply give product to all of the deserving organizations who ask.

We use the following criteria when reviewing requests for donations.

1. We favor those organizations that seek to build and support communities of all sorts as we believe in the power of people working together to create a more just and peaceful world.  The community can be a small one, it can be a religious one but we look for organizations that have vision, a clear purpose, are inclusive and display a generosity of spirit.
2. We find great joy in supporting organizations that count young people among their membership or otherwise support youth and youth education, especially in the area of cross-cultural understanding.
3. Do we have an existing retail presence in the community where the donee resides?  We prefer to donate to organizations in locales where Omanhene products are available for retail sale.  Are the members of the organization current customers of Omanhene?  It gives us great pleasure to support individuals and organizations that support us – we thereby strengthen each other and mutually build a more sustainable community.
4. Is the request from a true charitable or educational organization? While tax-exempt status 501(c)(3) status is a very strong indicator of the sort of charitable purpose we seek, we do not require such formal tax status and have donated to small organizations that do not yet have federal tax-exempt status.  It is extremely unlikely we would donate to a for-profit entity.