At first glance, it looks like a formula to increase sales by tapping into people's charitable impulses.

Buy a jar of jam and a dollar goes to support an orphan in Africa.

Sales should soar.

Talk awhile with Keith Walker and Kurt Yordy — who early this month launched the Web site www.FeedYourFamilyFeedTheWorld.com — and the picture changes.

It's common for companies to have a philanthropic component, they say. What sets their company, Higher Call Inc., apart is that it makes philanthropy its core value rather than tacking it on as a secondary goal.

That's not to say there's no profit motive involved.

"We're not tax exempt," Walker said. "We want a viable business. There's no question about that."

Higher Call's main business the past few years has been distribution of the Amish Family Recipes brand of products. It's the same brand that's offered on the new Web site.

Photos of the sponsored children at Project Hope & Charité, a program of Grace Brethren International Missions, appear with the products along with a counter that shows how much money has been collected.

A jar of jam costs $3.75. A dollar of that will support a child for a day, or about 4,900 jars of jam to see a 5-year-old through to adulthood.

Walker said Higher Call intends to keep collecting money for a particular child until the entire $4,900 is in before shifting to another child.

Project Hope & Charité
Higher Call is the first company to direct a portion of its sales to help Project Hope & Charité's orphan center, Barb Wooler, one of the program's founders said by telephone.

"We're a new program, in our third year," she said. "Most of our giving comes through churches."

Wooler, who is based at Grace Brethren International Missions in Winona Lake, Ind., has been spending several months each year in Africa.

She was in Lancaster County last week to visit her parents, who live in New Holland, and to give a presentation at Grace Brethren Church of Lititz on the orphan center.

The orphan center that Project Hope & Charité runs in Bangui, the capital of the Central African Republic, is not an orphanage.

"In Africa, they have a wonderful system of orphan care," Wooler said.

The culture puts so much emphasis on the family, she explained, children almost always have a place to live within the extended family if something happens to their parents.

It's a system that worked well until the onset of AIDS, she said, which has created so many orphans, families now need assistance to care for all the children.

That's where Project Hope & Charité comes in. Most of the 550 children in its program live with their extended families but come to the orphan center during the day.

"We feed them at the orphan center, clothe them, provide their medical care and educate them," Wooler said.

The company
Walker said Higher Call's primary purpose has always been philanthropic.

"About nine or 10 years ago, I started a ministry" to high school and college students, he said. "I did not want to seek donations, so I said, 'Why not start a business?' "

Before striking out on his own, Walker had been director of the center for youth and family ministry at Lancaster Bible College, he said.

His ministry and the business have evolved since then.

Walker is now on the staff at Lancaster County Bible Church between Mount Joy and Manheim. He said the church's sponsorship of an African village beset by the AIDS epidemic inspired him to look for a similar way for Higher Call to help out.

He said the connection with Project Hope & Charité has changed the way Higher Call intends to do business on the Internet.

"What we've ended up doing, we've stripped the whole thing down," Walker said.

For instance, Higher Call's old e-commerce site, www.amishfamilyrecipes.com, now directs customers to the new Web site.

Instead of simply showcasing the products, the new Web site emphasizes the object of the company's philanthropy.

The list price of products on the new site, which range from $3.15 for Johnny's Apple Butter to $5.20 for Abe's Pickled Asparagus, is lower than it was on Higher Call's old site, although Walker says it's actually about the same if the free shipping that used to be offered is factored in.

He said each jar of product costs Higher Call about half the list price. After $1 is taken out for the child, about half the remainder goes to pay warehouse and handling costs, with what's left over available to develop the business.

In addition to the Internet sales, Higher Call wholesales Amish Family Recipes products to about 70 vendors, Walker said, mostly in such settings as Dutch Haven, Root's Country Market and Markets at Shrewsbury, but also as far afield as Texas and Florida.

Two of those vendors, the stands in Central Market and the Lebanon Farmers Market, are owned by Walker separate from Higher Call and are run by his family.

Right now, Walker's son Joel is managing Higher Call's warehouse and making the deliveries. The warehouse is beneath Gall Laminating at James and Mulberry streets in Lancaster.

"We're not employing a ton of people," Walker said. "There's a minimum of overhead."

But at the same time, Walker and his partner, Kurt Yordy, are prepared to expand the business as much as necessary.

"As we believe the e-commerce site can grow, we've made a commitment to grow along with it," Walker said.

Walker and Yordy, who works full time as a customer service representative for PPL, have been sharing responsibilities for Higher Call.

Yordy said he became partners with Walker because he had "always enjoyed business and had always wanted to have a business."

But Higher Call was more than that. "Having strong base values was very important when we originally started," Yordy said.

As he and Walker learned how many orphans AIDS was creating in Africa, it became apparent that the time was ripe to do something about it through their business.

"We said, 'Let's erect a vehicle now to give back,' " Yordy said. "That's our duty as Christians — to step in and help."

Yordy said he thinks getting the consumer actively involved in the project will be a big advantage.

"I look at Microsoft. They have the Bill and Linda Gates Foundation. But as a consumer, I don't know how much I'm contributing."

At www.FeedYourFamilyFeedTheWorld.com, by contrast, people can see their contributions add up on the counter.

Embedded giving
The idea of redirecting a portion of sales directly to a charitable cause, called embedded giving, is not new.

According to a recent article in The New York Times, "Embedded giving can be traced from the early 1980s, when American Express developed an effort to raise money for the restorations of the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island by donating a penny for every purchase charged to its credit cards, generating $1.7 million."

Since then, the practice has grown so much, a bill is before the U.S. Senate to regulate embedded giving by requiring retailers to notify charities when their names are being used and to disclose how much they are actually giving to charity.

"We need to ensure that charity is not being used solely as a sales pitch," Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., the bill's sponsor, said in a statement.

Walker said it's understandable that some people might question the motive for his company's new Web site, but he believes Higher Call is being up front in what it's doing.

"We don't feel like there's much to hide," he said.

Launching the new Web site, Walker said, was "the most significant thing to have happen to me in the business world.

"It's so real to us, once you get in to that [Web] page and see those children."

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Dennis Larison is editor of the Business section and can be reached by telephone at 291-8753 or by e-mail at dlarison@lnpnews.com.