Every cup of coffee we love begins with an imbalance.
The people who grow it work with prices they cannot control, a climate that is becoming harder to predict, and land that needs more care and investment each year. Yet they carry much of the risk and receive the smallest share of the value coffee creates.
At Coffee Circle, we want to help shift that balance through the way we do business. We buy high-quality coffee, build long-term relationships, and pay prices well above the market so producers can plan beyond the next harvest.
But fair prices alone cannot solve everything. For every kilogram of Coffee Circle coffee we sell, € 1 goes through the Coffee Circle Foundation e.V. into projects in coffee-growing communities. These projects respond to challenges that reach far beyond coffee itself: access to water, knowledge, livelihoods, stronger local systems, and more resilient communities.
Because this contribution is tied to our sales, not our profits, it continues in strong years and difficult ones alike. It is not a one-off donation – it is part of how our business works: sending value back to where coffee comes from and supporting the people and places behind every cup.
The Coffee Circle Vision Funds take this idea further. They open the Foundation’s funding to organisations already working alongside coffee-growing communities, helping us build stronger partnerships and increase the positive impact we can create together: for people, for the planet, and for a coffee sector that can thrive for generations to come.
After Coffee Circle Vision Fund I, through which we committed € 500,000 to six projects around the world, we opened Vision Fund II in October 2025. This time, we doubled our commitment and launched a € 1 million fund.
More than 160 organizations applied from around the world. We were looking for projects built with communities, not simply delivered to them; projects rooted in real local needs, strengthening local ownership, and creating value that can last long after the grant ends.
Four organisations stood out. We are proud to begin this work with them and excited to see what we can build together.
Fundación Entre Mujeres Nicaragua
For more than 30 years, Fundación Entre Mujeres (FEM) has worked with rural women in northern Nicaragua. Their project takes on a basic injustice in coffee: women do much of the work but stay stuck at the lowest-paid end of the chain, selling to middlemen at prices that do not even cover the costs they encountered. Working with 50 women coffee producers across Estelí, Madriz, and Nueva Segovia, FEM builds technical and commercial skills through workshops and training at their own accredited school, the Madre Tierra Ecotechnology School, and grows the women’s own coffee brand, Café Diamantina. A revolving fund lets producers be paid in advance, so they no longer depend on buyers who underpay them. The result is real economic independence, climate-resilient farming, and value that stays with the women who create it.
Apuna and Siruma Colombia
The Apuna Foundation, set up by the specialty exporter Siruma, takes on a problem most farms simply live with: the pulp and mucilage left over from processing coffee, which pollutes soil and water and releases greenhouse gases when it is dumped untreated.
Their „Inclusive Composting“ project installs 50 composting pits on farms in Caldas and Cauca and turns that waste into organic fertiliser. It cuts chemical fertiliser use, improves the soil, and saves each family around 166 euros a year. The 50 farms are led by women and young coffee growers, and the project trains 100 people in composting, leadership, gender equity, and farm management. It is a circular economy model, designed from the start to be adopted by other farms and communities.
Food 4 Farmers Colombia and Mexico
Many coffee families face something quietly brutal: three to seven months of hunger every year, once the harvest income runs out and the next crop has not yet paid off. Food 4 Farmers has spent over a decade helping families close that gap.
In Cauca, Colombia, they will help 500 coffee-farming families grow their own food and find new income through home gardens, agroforestry, backyard livestock, and beekeeping. The project continues an existing programme with the COMEPCAFE cooperative and adds a new partnership with the Mundo Mujer Foundation to reach more families, backed by training and monthly visits from technical staff. A knowledge exchange brings together the Community Promoters, the local leaders who run the programmes and keep them alive long after the grant ends. It amounts to roughly 150 euros per producer per year, with the communities themselves in the driver’s seat.
Muraho Rwanda
We already know this team well. Muraho was part of our first Coffee Circle Vision Fund, and we are proud to keep backing their work. This Rwandan coffee company is now expanding across three districts to make farming ready for a harder climate.
The plan is concrete. Train over 2,000 farmers in regenerative practices, supply seedlings, and improve working and safety conditions for more than 1,000 employees. Extend clean water and hygiene access, including menstrual products for the 600-plus women working the dry-mill season. Every bit of Muraho’s coffee waste gets turned into compost and biochar for healthier soils, and beekeeping and livestock give farmers new ways to earn. By year three the project is built to carry itself, with Muraho keeping the key activities going on its own.
What Happens Now
These four projects have now received their first funding and are taking their first steps. We will stay closely connected, listen carefully, and share what happens along the way: the progress, the challenges, and the learnings that come with building change in real life.
Because this work cannot be done alone. Coffee Circle can contribute, bring people together, and help turn good ideas into action. But a resilient coffee sector will only be built through strong partnerships and by backing the people in coffee-growing communities who already know what change looks like on the ground. That is how we can help ensure future generations can continue to grow, share, and enjoy coffee.
To everyone who applied: thank you. The more than 160 proposals we received are a powerful reminder that the people growing coffee are not waiting for the future to arrive. They are already shaping it.
And with every kilogram of Coffee Circle coffee you buy, you are part of that, too.
