We founded CarbonHero with the goal of enabling 1,000,000 people to offset their carbon footprint so they could live a carbon neutral life. We fundamentally believe the only way to do this is to bring transparency into everything we do.
Today, we wanted to dive into the fees we charge and why we charge them. We work hard to keep our operating costs as low as possible so we can:
- Ensure that the most possible people can access CarbonHero. This will directly lead to an improvement in our environment.
- Ensure that the most possible funds go directly to supporting the environment.
The Fees We Charge: We charge 20% in addition to the cost of your carbon offsets. For example, if the cost of your offsetting is $20 per month, you’re all-in price would be $24 per month. Importantly, we do not take the fees out of your carbon offsets so they don’t impact your actual offsetting.
Why Do We Charge Fees: There are two main factors that lead us to charge fees:
- The operating costs of running CarbonHero: There are real costs to running CarbonHero including website hosting, development, other technology costs, and credit card processing fees. We have to pay between 4-5% of each transaction for credit card processing fees. The good thing about the majority of these fees is they will become a smaller cost as a percentage of our revenue as we grow! This will allow us to continue reducing this fee burden and pass it back to our customers. For example, as we process more payments, Stripe will give us advantaged pricing. Our website hosting is a flat fee each month so the more customers we have, the lower burden each member of our community will feel.
- The offsetting process: We view our core jobs as ensuring that we choose the correct carbon offsets and monitor these projects effectively. Part of that is choosing the correct offset partners, but an equal part of that is having our team underwrite these specific projects. This all takes meaningful time and requires bandwidth from our team. This is where we want to spend our time and resources because it ultimately ensures that we deliver the highest possible impact per metric ton of offset.
- The investment costs of building CarbonHero: We continue to invest in CarbonHero so that it can scale and provide services to more individuals. We have a laundry list of things to continue to enhance so that CarbonHero can be used by a wider variety of individuals. The more we improve, the more we can offset. In addition, we want to invest in marketing so that more people hear about CarbonHero and are interested in using it. These funds are monitored closely and we track ROI to ensure we’re investing in the right areas to help us grow and scale. We plan on keeping this fee level flat as a percentage of total offsets so that we can scale appropriately.
Our Current Situation: With our current scale, we’re investing far more than the fee level we’re currently generating. We anticipate doing this for the coming months so that we can get CarbonHero to the masses as quickly as possible.
Our Promise: We promise to continue our level of transparency as we grow so our customers know exactly where their funds are going. Our mission is to make this as accessible as possible to the masses and we will continue to adjust our fees to ensure we’re serving that mission.