Good Store sells everyday products and donates 100% of its profits to charity. The company is exploring a purpose trust to safeguard this mission long term.
Founded
2023
Location
Missoula, MT, U.S.
Donated operating profits
> $ 10 million (2025)
It takes all but three seconds to be swept up in the excitement that Laura Joukovski (LJ), CEO of DFTBA (Don’t Forget to be Awesome), brings into the Zoom conversation. DFTBA operates a consortium of e-commerce businesses, including Good Store, a philanthropic venture that gives 100% of profits to charity.
We’re here to interview LJ about the journey in their ownership transition that Good Store is currently on, and why the team decided to even think about ownership in the first place.
What we get: a rare combination of deep e-commerce experience, drive, and infectious enthusiasm for what her work and Good Store stands for.
This article is based on that conversation and tells the story of two founders and their superstar CEO being brave enough to address the (sometimes painful) questions that come with an ownership transition.
Photo: Good Store
Founded by the two brothers Hank and John Green (two “phenomenal humans” as LJ describes them to us), Good Store in its current form was officially launched in 2023.
It exists for a simple, slightly unusual reason: to turn everyday purchases into reliable funding for charitable work.
This purpose is built into how the company operates. It shapes everything: What products make sense. How money moves through the business. How success is measured.
Good Store has a somewhat eclectic product mix that shares the singular feature that 100% of profits go to charity. The focus is on discovering and celebrating partners that carefully craft the best quality items that are used often – even daily, and that are also infinitely giftable. The engaged community of Good Store shoppers can make Good Store items a ritual to enjoy on repeat, and also share Good Store at key gifting moments throughout the year. And here is the magic – together, this community of Good Store customers are tackling global health and environmental issues with many small acts adding up to big impact.
As the company grew, the two co-founders repeatedly brought a related question into focus (one that usually doesn’t show up on a balance sheet, and is often overlooked):
If this is what the company is for, how should it be owned?
Two reasons were mainly influencing the work around this question: Hank and John would like to continue to be involved in being champions of Good Store, but if they ever decided to exit the ownership, they wanted to already have a clear pathway towards a formal commitment to continue to do the work to fuel high-impact charitable organizations. In addition, they wanted to create clarity and transparency for the employees, making sure they can step up and take over responsibility for the go-forward business, supporting its expansion, continuing to drive impact and to generate profits to donate.
So the question of ownership becomes a question of whether the structures holding the business are sturdy enough to carry its purpose forward, even as people and circumstances may change. How can the purpose be embedded in the company’s DNA?
Good Store sells everyday, fairly sourced, thoughtfully made and joyful items – socks, coffee, soap – and then does something quietly radical with the result: it gives 100% of its profits to charity.
The story began in 2019 with brothers Hank and John Green, early YouTube pioneers and bestselling authors. Financial success was no longer motivating – they wanted to channel energy and resources toward causes that mattered.
Their first experiment was the Awesome Socks Club. Then came coffee, then soap. Now Good Store continues to add product lines and expand the customer base. Each project pairs something everyday and joyful with an extraordinary promise: all profits would fund charitable work. But, from the very beginning, Hank and John aimed to build more than a fun product line – they wanted to build a business that would consistently and in the long-term channel consumer spending into real-world impact.
Over time, those projects were bundled and institutionalized into Good Store, operated by DFTBA (Don’t Forget to be Awesome). The commitment was clear: sell high-quality products that enrich every day, run a serious, scalable business and donate all profits to charity.
Today, the company has an annual turnover of just under 30 million $, focusing on the US business.
While questions around what legal or governance structure will best fit their needs, the team under the lead of LJ started to take first steps, weighing the options and looking at different ownership solutions (ranging from employee trusts to ESOPs to worker coops). As one promising solution, LJ saw the perpetual purpose trust as an instrument that can achieve both of the defined goals in an elegant way.
It would provide a clear structural foundation to safeguard its mission and fulfil one key mechanism for protecting Good Store’s purpose: separating control from financial extraction, ensuring that no individual can redirect profits away from the charitable mission. At the same time, it creates transparency and confidence for employees and partners, signalling that every decision is guided by long-term impact, continuity, and values, rather than short-term financial gain.
Thanks for the insights, Laura. We are excited to see the final version of their ownership design, and hope for a full-blown best practice case study in the near future.
Photo: Good Store
Last updated: 10 August 2026
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