When you save with Nammu, you choose a slice of your earnings to give away. The money you put in is never touched, only what it earns. This post is about where that slice will go, why we picked conservation first, and how you'll be able to check every dollar of it yourself.
Why conservation, and why first
Three reasons.
The money goes a long way. Protecting tropical forest is one of the cheapest ways a small amount of money does a large amount of good. Our partners publish their own numbers: Rainforest Trust reports an average cost under $100 to protect an acre of threatened habitat. A few dollars of earnings, month after month, adds up to acres of protected forest.
You can measure it. Acres are countable. Our partners report acres protected, publish annual reports, and in some cases monitor their forests by satellite. Instead of taking a warm feeling on faith, you can look at a map.
It's neglected. Environmental causes receive roughly 2 to 3 cents of every philanthropic dollar in the US. The need is enormous and the funding is thin, which means new, steady sources of giving matter more here than almost anywhere else.
Who we chose
We looked for partners with three things: a long track record, top-tier independent ratings, and impact you can verify per dollar. We're starting with these organizations:
Rainforest Trust
Has helped protect more than 60 million acres across 60+ countries. What convinced us: 92.22% of funds go directly to conservation programs, because their board covers operating costs separately. Your donation buys forest instead of office space.
Rainforest Foundation US
Works alongside Indigenous communities, who are the most effective guardians of the forests they've lived in for generations. They've helped secure land rights covering 43 million acres, and they equip communities with satellite and drone monitoring to catch illegal deforestation as it happens.
Amazon Watch
Has spent nearly three decades defending Indigenous rights across the Amazon Basin, stopping extraction projects and winning legal battles that keep forests standing. Protection is more durable when the people who live there hold the power, and Amazon Watch works on exactly that.
One more practical reason we chose these partners: all of them can receive digital-dollar donations directly. Your gift doesn't need to pass through a chain of intermediaries, each taking a cut, before it arrives.
Every donation will have a receipt
Giving apps have burned people before. Some counted trees they hadn't planted. Some kept most of each round-up and sent pennies onward. We built Nammu so you never have to wonder.
Donations will be routed through Endaoment, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that processes charitable giving on a public ledger. Its maximum fee is 1.5%, and we put that number right here in the body so no one has to hunt for it. Every donation will carry a transaction ID you can look up yourself, showing when it was sent, how much, and to which partner, straight from the public record.
And we're making two promises about how we'll talk about impact:
- We will only ever report donations that have been completed. We won't dress pledges up as results or put projections in headlines.
- We will only use per-acre numbers our partners certify. If we can't verify a claim, we won't make it.
Starting focused, growing with you
We're launching with rainforest conservation because it's where we found the strongest combination of urgency, track record, and dollars-go-far impact. But your causes are yours. Over time we plan to add more partners and more causes, from wildlife to clean water, so your giving can follow what you love. If there's an organization you believe in, tell us: [email protected]. We read everything.
You shouldn't need to be wealthy to be generous, or need blind faith to feel good about it. A slice of your growth goes to real forests, and you get a receipt for every dollar.
Keep what you want. Give what you choose.