Seattle Fair Trade

“A copy of form 990 is distributed to the board for review prior to filing.”

“The coi policy is distributed and reviewed by governing board annually.”

“The board conducts an annual performance review of the ed/store manager. The manager's salary is generally considered to be less than that of comparable positions in the retail market.”

“Governing documents, conflict of interest policy, financial statements and forms 990 are available upon request.”

“Ten thousand villages provides vital, fair income to third world people by marketing their handicrafts and telling their stories in north america. Ten thousand villages works with artisans who would otherwise be unemployed or underemployed. The income artisans earn helps pay for food, education, health care, and housing.”

“Board of the ttv store in seattle works to connect our mission with other non-profit partners through various activities, such as community shopping events, off-site sales and pop-store opportunities. The board works to support our staff to increase sales, develop a dedicated group of volunteers, support interns learning about fair trade and retail practices, and provide educational opportunities for all of these groups as well as to our community. This year the board, staff and volunteers had very specific goals to support the increase in support of artisans around the world. Our goals are to increase sales of the unique goods we carry and broaden our partnerships in the community, as well as to provide educational opportunities to our patrons, volunteers and students. For our fiscal year ending march 31, 2017, we have created an educational space in our retail store to provide meeting space for book clubs, community groups, and student groups, explored compressing our physical space to reduce costs, acquired and changed signage to increase our visibility to draw in more patrons, provided networking opportunities for our executive director, increased our community partnerships through new off-site events; of special note are events at seattle university, the gates foundation and a private shopping event out of our local area to increase awareness of our store. We also began to develop an online presence through social media and email lists, worked to finalize standard marketing materials - brochures, postcards, tried new marketing opportunities - ads in special additions of print media with a wide circulation for our target audience, operated a pop-up store in partnership with a coffee shop, worked with the local girl scouts to develop and deliver an educational program for participants to earn a fair trade badge, provided a guatemalan weaving demonstration, provided opportunity for other non-profits such as global visionaries to host a fundraising event at our store, provided special events to highlight local immigrant artisan groups the opportunity to place their goods in our store as well as to increase awareness of their causes, and recruited two new board members. In fy 2017, we did not focus on fundraising activities. The focus on activities was to increase awareness of our operations through our primary activity - selling artisan goods.”