How Funds Are Used
Who you are buying from, exactly what share of profit is allocated to financial assistance, how profit is defined, and how the owner benefit is disclosed.
Who you are buying from
Alongside Market is a privately owned drop-shipping business run by a member of the cancer community. Our financial-support mission includes helping the owner's household and other cancer patients and families.
We are not a nonprofit or a 501(c)(3) organization. Purchases and voluntary contributions to us are not tax-deductible charitable contributions, and we do not issue charitable tax receipts.
Owner benefit disclosed up front
Part of the assistance allocation goes to the owner's household. The owner is living with cancer, and that family support is a stated part of this program rather than an incidental effect.
No nonprofit, charitable trust or charity affiliation exists today. Nothing on this site implies that nonprofit status is pending, applied for, approved or guaranteed.
The retail split: available retail profit
Alongside Market allocates 90% of available retail profit to cancer-related financial assistance and retains 10% in the business.
Available retail profit is the positive amount remaining from retail sales after refunds and chargebacks, documented business costs, and a reasonable documented provision for income and self-employment taxes attributable to those retail earnings.
Of available retail profit, 18% supports the owner's household, 72% supports other cancer patients and families, and 10% is retained by the business. Within the assistance pool the same split is 20% to the owner's household and 80% to other patients and families.
These percentages apply to available retail profit, not the purchase price or total sales revenue. Available retail profit is our disclosed allocation measure; it is not necessarily the same number as IRS taxable net profit.
How available retail profit is calculated
Available retail profit is calculated for each calendar month from consistently recorded revenue and costs, then reconciled for estimates and adjustments.
- Start with earned retail revenue actually collected, net of discounts, refunds and chargebacks, counted once.
- Include earned retail shipping charges consistently with the associated shipping costs.
- Exclude sales taxes collected for remittance, and exclude all voluntary contributions from the retail revenue base.
- Deduct documented product costs, fulfillment and shipping, payment-processing and platform charges, advertising, supplies and other identified ordinary store operating expenses.
- Do not count unsold inventory purchases again as cost of goods sold, do not deduct a cost twice, and do not use an unspecified catch-all line.
- Do not treat the owner's own withdrawals, personal living or medical expenses, assistance distributions or retained profit as store operating expenses.
- Deduct a reasonable documented provision for the income and self-employment taxes attributable to those retail earnings, limited to the estimated incremental taxes.
- Do not deduct assistance payments themselves before computing the 90% allocation.
- If the result is zero or negative, there is no sales-funded allocation for that period.
Worked example
If $100.00 of available retail profit remains after documented costs and the documented tax provision, that period allocates $18.00 to the owner's household, $72.00 to other cancer patients and families, and retains $10.00 in the business.
That is $100.00 of available profit, not a $100.00 purchase. Examples published before this version were calculated before a tax provision existed; this definition applies from the effective date below and is not deducted retroactively from amounts already promised under the earlier formula.
Revenue, profit, allocated and paid are four different numbers
Sales revenue is what customers pay. Profit is what is left after defined costs. Assistance allocated is the share of profit assigned to the program. Assistance paid is money that has actually left the business. Allocating money, holding money and distributing money are separate steps and are reported separately.
Timing, tax reserve and reconciliation
Each calendar month is closed on consistently recorded revenue and costs, estimates are reconciled, and adjustments are recorded in the period they belong to.
The tax reserve is reviewed quarterly and reconciled after the applicable tax return is finalized. Unused provision is released into the available retail profit allocation rather than quietly becoming owner or business income; any shortage is recorded and funded without reversing assistance already paid or already committed to other families.
Refunds and chargebacks are reflected once, in the period they occur. A later refund on an earlier period is handled as a documented adjustment and is never a retroactive deduction from amounts already promised under an earlier version of this policy.
Zero profit and losses
Zero positive profit produces no sales-based assistance allocation for that period. New losses do not silently cancel assistance already accrued under an approved earlier policy. If a period is later found to have been overstated, the correction is published as an adjustment rather than applied retroactively to prior commitments.
Voluntary contributions use a different formula
After payment-processing fees, 90% of each voluntary contribution is allocated to assistance for other cancer patients and families, and 10% is allocated to the household that owns and operates Alongside Market. No portion of the net contribution is retained for ordinary business operating costs.
A net contribution is the completed contribution less actual payment-processing fees, adjusted for refunds or chargebacks. Product costs, general store expenses and the retail tax reserve are not subtracted from it, the retail assistance-pool 20/80 split does not apply, and contributions stay outside the retail-profit calculation.
Example (hypothetical, fee illustrative only): a $100.00 contribution with a $3.00 processing fee leaves $97.00; $87.30 is allocated to other families and $9.70 to the owner's household, with $0.00 retained for business operations.
Contribution collection is not switched on: no payment link is configured and no contribution has been received.
Recipient selection and scope
The owner selects recipients and sets individual assistance amounts, exercising reasonable discretion within the published purposes and allocation ranges. That discretion is not permission for unrelated spending or for retroactive changes to published commitments.
No recipient names, medical details, amounts raised or amounts distributed are published without that person's separate, voluntary written permission. Assistance is never conditioned on publicity or marketing consent.
Not tax-deductible
Purchases and contributions are not tax-deductible charitable contributions. Whether any payment to an individual is deductible, and how the business and the owner report income, are questions for a CPA.
Policy version v1.0 · Effective 26 October 2026. Earlier orders keep the policy that applied to them. This page is general information about how the store operates and does not create any right to a specific assistance payment.