Frequently Asked Questions

There are several things we care deeply about. We want to make sure that we do not allow abusive conditions, or child labor, that all the products are what we say they are (and not bought from someone else), that the survivors are properly paid, well treated, and work in safe conditions, and that any component materials also meet these standards. To see the full detail of our standards, click here.

The most important part of our diligence is that we, or partners of ours, personally visit all the groups we purchase from. Since most of them are programs where we helped set up the business program, we are usually considered a core partner and have open access. We also check with other anti-slavery organizations and our contacts I the US State Department.

Additionally, we often get requests from volunteer groups that want to spend a week or even months with our partners. We use these volunteers as a further way of checking on our partners.

Ultimately we are working on outside certification, probably from a Fair Trade organization.

There are several ways the money goes back to the survivors and it is helpful to understand them all before I break into percentages.

The first way is the original purchase of the products. We pay in advance and don't use intermediaries, so 100% of that goes to the survivors before we even offer the products to you. Recouping this is about 30% of your sales price.

When we sell the products we reinvest the money into buying more products from survivors, and because we are growing, we have to purchase them even faster than we sell them. This takes up about another 20-30% of your sales price.

Also - we have an extensive business development program to help grow the survivor's businesses. This includes everything from product development for our more advanced partners, to the beginning process of training and buying production equipment. This takes up a further 30-40% of your sales price.

So - altogether, about 80-90% goes to the survivors/NGOs for the products or to help them grow their business. The rest covers our basic overhead or is contributed to TEN Charities for other non-business anti trafficking work.

please note, these numbers change all the time as we grow and as we improve - we are committed to keeping our overhead low. For example, the two founders, who used their life savings to start this program, still do not receive any salary.

There is an additional point that I want to make that is very important. As we help the survivors and the NGOs grow their business, they often face the same trade offs about price and volume that any business does.

For example, take a group that makes jewelry. If we can buy the jewelry for $10 and sell it on the web for $20 then we can cover our costs. But we can sell a lot more of their jewelry if we can wholesale it, after all there are thousands of jewelry stores in the US. But to sell into wholesale we need to pricethe items so that instead of getting 50% the survivors only get 20-25% .

So the question we have to help them with is: will they be better off selling for a lower price but selling a lot more products? Since the goals of most groups is to hire more survivors selling larger volumes is more important to them than maximizing profits, but in many cases they will support more survivors and make more profits if we can wholesale their products. Therefore, over time, the percentage of sales price to the provider that chooses this path will decline from 50% to 20-25%,but this is their choice and don’t to fulfill their goals.

Also, if we ever get this wrong and pay to little to the surviors upfront, they get the extra anyway as we donate the profits back to TEN Charities.

T.E.N. Charities is a 501(c)3 non profit.  T.E.N Charities operates the business aspects of its program through The Emancipation Network, Inc, which is wholly owned by T.E.N. Charities.

100% of our profits are donated to fight slavery through TEN Charities. If you make a donation to TEN Charities, you can do so knowing that 100% of your individual donation goes right to survivors and shelters.  We don't need to use any portion of individual donations for overhead costs, since those costs are covered by product sales and a foundation grant.

Yes - absolutely, our partners set their own prices for the products TEN buys and we pay for the products upfront so they have already been paid for any products you buy. Our goal is to enable the survivors to be self-sufficient, so we are not trying to buy products at the lowest possible price, but rather at a fair price that allows these groups to grow, and to pay a fair wage to survivors.   If our partners try to sell us a product at too low a price we will unilaterally raise the price we pay them.

Your purchase of a TEN product is not a tax-deductible donation. Rather, it is a product purchase which contributes to the self-sufficiency programs of our provider groups.   As an social enterprise, the product sales are our revenues which we use to support our operation, buy more products, and support anti-trafficking efforts. 100% of profits are donated to TEN Charities.

TEN Charities does accept tax deductible donations which go to support the prevention, rescue and rehabilitation programs.