Our Mission
Chuck's Tend & Keep 10%
"The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to tend and keep it."
Genesis 2:15
That verse is where the name comes from, and it is not decoration.
The whole idea in it is that the good stuff was handed to us on purpose, by the Lord's design, and that being handed something carries a responsibility. Not to own it. Not to use it up. To tend it and to keep it, and to hand it on to the next one in line in better shape than we got it.
That is the entire argument of this company. Everything else is a t-shirt.
What We Are Actually For
Chuck's exists to do three things, in this order.
Point at the Gospel. Every design, marketing strategy, Instagram post, anything we do should either say something true about our Creator, or say something about what He made. If a piece cannot do one of those two, it does not get made.
Do the work with excellence. Not perfection. Excellence. Sloppy work isn't a great witness and there is no version of this where we cut a corner and call it a job well done.
Build something that outlasts me. If this company only works because I am the one running it, then I built it for myself and did it selfishly. The goal is a thing that keeps going, keeps giving, and keeps pointing the same direction long after my name stops being the one on the paperwork.
Tend & Keep 10%
Ten percent of our profits go back out.
Not ten percent of a sale. Not ten percent of revenue. Profit. What comes in, minus what it costs to make and ship and run the business. Ten percent of whatever is left goes to organizations protecting the water, the land, and the people we care about.
We call it the Chuck's Tend & Keep 10% Foundation, or TK10 for short.
The number comes from two places at once. The first is Genesis, the command to tend and keep. The second is older than the company and older than me, the practice of setting aside a tenth of what you bring in before you decide what to do with the rest. That practice exists because giving is supposed to come first, not last, and not only when there is extra.
One thing worth saying plainly. This is not my personal tithe and it does not replace it. TK10 is a business structure. What I do with my own money is between me and the Lord, and this is a separate promise made by a separate entity that happens to have my grandfather's name on it.
We Built This Before We Had Anything To Give Away
That was on purpose.
Most companies add the giving later, once there is enough margin that it does not hurt. We wrote it in at the beginning, when the honest answer to "how much has gone out so far" is not very much at all, because we have not sold very much at all.
I would rather tell you that than pretend otherwise.
What I can tell you is that the structure is real, the math is set, and it does not depend on us getting big first. Ten percent of one shirt is a smaller number than ten percent of ten thousand shirts. It is the same promise either way.
Where It Goes
The list is built around the places and the work this brand actually came from. Organizations like CCA, FlatsWorthy, Bonefish & Tarpon Trust, Sea Turtle Inc., and Friends of Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge, alongside ministries and community organizations doing work we believe in.
It is a living list. Organizations come on when the fit is right and come off when it is not, and the current spread is published in full, including what percentage goes where.
When A Product Goes Somewhere Else
Most of what we make feeds TK10, which splits across the whole list.
Sometimes a piece exists because of one specific thing. When a design is built around a particular place, a particular disaster, or a particular community, the full ten percent from that piece goes to one organization instead of the spread.
When that happens, it says so on the product page. You will always know exactly where the ten percent from what you bought is headed before you buy it.
The Part That Is Not About Money
Ten percent is the easy part to measure, which is why it gets the headline.
The harder part is the rest of it. Telling the truth about a place instead of decorating it. Naming the fish and the river and the rig instead of writing generic outdoor copy. Putting a real story on a hang tag because the thing deserves to be remembered accurately. Picking up trash on a beach when nobody is watching, which is where all of this started and is still the whole point.
We take from the water. We give back to the water. And the reason we do either one is that neither the water nor anything in it belongs to us in the first place.
