3A Blog

I need your help. I need to sell some coffee. A lot of coffee. Why? Two reasons. First, there are people in Africa that you’ve never met, that I’ve never met, that are in pain. They hurt. Physically and emotionally. There are orphans, widows, and babies being born with AIDS. There are children that can’t be fed. There are children getting sick and dying from drinking the very water they must drink in order to live. We can’t ignore them. We can’t pretend they don’t exist. At least I can’t. Second, my heart aches to help these people. To give...

I’ve gotten a lot of questions about why we went the non-profit route vs forming as a social enterprise. It would probably be  a little bit easier to be a for-profit organization and just donate 100% of our proceeds. For me though, there was two main reasons to form Three Avocados as a non-profit organization. The first reason is for credibility. By forming as a non-profit, our customers are ensured that no employee or board member may take a distribution from the organization. This doesn’t mean we’ll never pay employees. Quite the opposite. We’re going to have to have employees,...

AIDS is typically viewed as a ‘gay disease’ or ‘promiscuous disease’. In Christianity, both of these are viewed as sinful lifestyles. So, the simple Christian response is that we shouldn’t worry about those people with AIDS because it was their sinful lifestyle that got them into the situation, right? Wrong. Pretend for a moment that you are rushing after work to your child’s baseball game. On the way to the game, you run a red light and hit another car in the intersection. You have serious injuries and are in a great deal of pain. But wait, you ran a...

I often get the question, “How did you end up selling coffee from Uganda?” Typically from people that have known me for a little while. But, sometimes from total strangers. So, here’s the story… I was going through a bit of a difficult point in my life. I had everything you could want: great wife, beautiful children, nice home, nice cars, etc. The problem is that I felt a gaping hole in my life. I ended up meeting with my pastor a few times, just chatting about life. He challenged me to raise $25,000 to build a school in Uganda....

Ever wonder why a coffee company is named “Three Avocados”? I mean, what do avocados have to do with coffee? Well, pretty much nothing. No, the coffee does not have avocados in it. And yes, I’ve really been asked that before. However, avocados have everything to do with WHY we started Three Avocados. In January of 2010, a group of us were in Uganda on a mission trip. We were worshiping with a congregation in the village of Bulopa. As the offering basket went around, a widow placed three avocados into the basket. I saw this and was stunned. For...