Where the Money Goes: How the Loads of Love Give-Back Works

September 10, 2026 By Love Brands

Love Brands calculates the Loads of Love give-back on eligible net sales — the product subtotal after discounts and refunds, excluding shipping and sales tax — not on the sticker price. Your organization's rate is set in its written agreement. Payouts run monthly, on or before the first of the following month, once the balance reaches $25, and never later than 90 days after the sale. Each partner receives a statement listing qualifying orders, deductions and the give-back amount.

Love Paks are pre-measured laundry detergent paks made by Love Brands, sold as a 39-pak refill pouch in two versions: Citrus Flower Blossom, which is scented, and Love Paks Dye & Scent Free, which has no dyes and no added fragrance. Loads of Love is the program that sends a share of what those pouches earn to a nonprofit, school or team. This page explains the arithmetic behind that share.

Two people usually land here, and both get an answer:

Shoppers want to know how much of their order actually reaches the cause, and whether it counts as a donation on their taxes.
Partner organizations want to know what qualifies, when the money arrives, and what the statement shows.

Eligible net sales, defined line by line

Orders placed through your organization's link give back on eligible net sales. That phrase does real work, so here is what each word covers.

Eligible net sales is the product subtotal on a qualifying order, reduced by any discount applied and by any amount later refunded. Shipping charges and sales tax are not part of it.

Sales tax belongs to the state, not to Love Brands. Shipping is excluded as well: the give-back is calculated on the product subtotal, which is the part of the order that pays for the paks themselves.

Here is one order, line by line. These are example figures chosen to make the arithmetic easy to follow. They are not current prices.

Line on the order	Example amount	Counts toward eligible net sales?
Product subtotal	$100.00	Yes
Discount code applied at checkout	−$10.00	Yes — it reduces the base
Shipping charged to the customer	$7.00	No — excluded
Sales tax	$7.65	No — excluded
Total the customer paid	$104.65	—
Eligible net sales	$90.00	This is the number the rate is applied to

So on a $104.65 order, the give-back is calculated on $90.00. A shopper comparing the two numbers is not being short-changed; the $14.65 difference is shipping and sales tax, which sit outside the calculation.

A few consequences worth knowing before you promote a link:

Discount codes cut both ways. A promotion brings more orders and lowers the give-back on each one. A 20% off code reduces eligible net sales by 20%.
Bundles are not treated differently. A multi-pouch bundle is one product subtotal like any other.
A refund reduces the base. If a customer returns a pouch, the refunded amount comes out of eligible net sales for the period in which the refund posts.
Attribution happens at checkout. An order counts when it is placed through your organization's link. An order placed later without the link is not attributed to you.

The one-time order rate versus the subscription rate

Love Brands applies a set percentage to eligible net sales. That percentage is fixed in your organization's written agreement, and where the agreement sets one figure for one-time orders and another for subscription renewals, both are printed on your monthly statement. This page describes the method. The figure itself lives in the agreement, which is the only source of truth for it.

The rate that applies to your organization is the one written in your partnership agreement and printed on every monthly statement. Ask for it in writing before you send your link to anybody. You will need the figure anyway: a responsible cause-marketing promotion tells shoppers what portion of the purchase reaches the cause, along with how long the campaign runs and any cap, which is the disclosure the BBB Wise Giving Alliance Standards for Charity Accountability ask for under Standard 19. You cannot make that disclosure from memory.

If a percentage quoted on a campaign page, a flyer or an email ever disagrees with your agreement, the agreement governs. Tell us, and the other page gets corrected.

For subscriptions specifically:

Every renewal is its own order with its own eligible net sales, so the give-back recurs for as long as the subscription runs.
Any discount applied to a renewal comes off the subtotal first, exactly as it does on a one-time order — and the renewal gives back again next month without any new promotion from you.
Check your agreement for how renewals of a subscription started through your link are attributed. If a renewal you expected is missing from a statement, flag it rather than assuming it lapsed.
When a subscriber cancels, future renewals simply stop. Nothing already paid is reversed.

An illustration of the arithmetic, not a forecast

The table below is an illustration only. It multiplies a made-up $90 eligible-net-sales figure by three order counts so you can see how the base grows. It deliberately quotes no percentage: apply the rate from your own agreement to the right-hand column. It is not a projection of your organization's results.

Attributed orders	Eligible net sales at $90 per order	Give-back
50	$4,500	$4,500 × your agreed rate
100	$9,000	$9,000 × your agreed rate
250	$22,500	$22,500 × your agreed rate

The method is the part to take away: attributed orders × eligible net sales per order × your agreed rate. Substitute your own rate and your own average order and you have your own number.

What the give-back is not: the add-a-donation product

There are two separate mechanisms in the Loads of Love program, and conflating them causes real confusion at tax time.

	The give-back	The add-a-donation line item
What triggers it	A product order placed through an organization's link	A shopper deliberately adding a donation to the cart
Who pays it	Love Brands, out of its own revenue	The shopper, as an extra line on the order
How it is calculated	A set percentage of eligible net sales	The amount the shopper chose
Where it appears	Its own column on the monthly statement	A separate column on the same statement

Love Brands passes the full donation amount added through the add-a-donation product to the organization the shopper selected, and shows it as its own line so an organization can see the two side by side. It is not part of eligible net sales and no percentage is applied to it.

Never advertise the two as one number. "We give back a share of net sales" and "you can add a donation at checkout" are two true sentences; adding them together produces a third sentence that is not.

When organizations are paid, and the minimum balance

Give-back amounts accrue to a running balance as qualifying orders post. Payment follows a monthly cycle:

The month closes. Qualifying orders placed in the calendar month are totaled and refunds from that period are deducted.
The balance is checked against the $25 minimum. A balance of $25 or more is paid out. A balance below $25 rolls forward and is added to the next month rather than being forfeited — the minimum exists because the cost of issuing a very small payment can exceed the payment itself.
Payment is issued on or before the first of the following month, by the method recorded on your agreement.
The outer limit is 90 days from the sale. No qualifying give-back sits unpaid longer than that, including a balance that has been rolling below the minimum.

That 90-day ceiling is not arbitrary. Arrangements where a business advertises that purchases will benefit a charity are regulated in a number of states under names like charitable sales promotion or commercial co-venture. California Government Code section 12599.2, for example, requires a written contract with the charity before any public representation is made, requires funds to be transferred within 90 days of the representation and at the end of each successive 90-day period, and requires each transfer to be accompanied by an accounting the charity can use to verify that the representation was accurate. The monthly cycle and the statement described below are built to sit comfortably inside a rule of that shape.

If your organization's counsel needs Love Brands' registration status in a specific state before you launch a campaign, ask for it in writing before you promote your link rather than after.

What a monthly partner statement shows

A statement is the audit trail. Every partner organization receives one, and your agreement sets the format. What a statement has to let you do is reconcile what you promoted against what was paid, so expect it to identify:

Statement period — the calendar month covered, and the date the statement was generated.
Qualifying orders — order date, order number and eligible net sales for each attributed order.
Deductions — returns, refunds and chargebacks applied in this period, itemized by the order they relate to.
Rate applied — the percentage from your agreement, shown separately for one-time and subscription orders where they differ.
Give-back subtotal — eligible net sales multiplied by the rate.
Add-a-donation subtotal — donations shoppers added, listed apart from the give-back.
Opening balance, amount paid, closing balance — so a balance carried forward under the $25 minimum is visible rather than silent.

Check the statement against your own promotion records for the first two or three months. That is when a broken link or a mistyped campaign parameter shows up as orders you expected but cannot find.

Is my purchase tax deductible? Short answer: it is a purchase, not a gift

Buying Love Paks through an organization's link is a purchase, not a charitable donation, and Love Brands does not issue charitable-contribution receipts for product orders. The give-back is paid by Love Brands to the organization you chose. You are not the donor in that transaction.

The reasoning follows the definitions the IRS uses. IRS Publication 526 describes a charitable contribution as a voluntary gift to a qualified organization made without getting, or expecting to get, anything of equal value in return. A shopper who pays for detergent and receives detergent has received something of equal value, so there is no gift component to deduct.

Two related rules are worth knowing because they are often misapplied to purchases like this one:

The quid pro quo rule covers payments made to a charity that are part contribution and part payment for goods, and it limits the deduction to the excess over the value of the goods (IRS, Substantiating Charitable Contributions). A Love Paks order is not that: the payment goes to Love Brands, a for-profit seller, not to a charity.
Deductions require a qualified organization. Even a genuine gift is only deductible if it goes to a qualified organization, and how much of it a taxpayer can actually deduct depends on their own filing situation and on limits that change from year to year (IRS, Charitable Contribution Deductions).

The add-a-donation line item is a different situation, and the answer still is not automatic. That amount is collected by Love Brands and remitted to the organization the shopper selected. Whether a shopper can deduct it depends on their own circumstances and on the IRS substantiation rules that apply at the amount they gave — ask your tax professional.

Love Brands does not provide tax advice. Ask your own tax professional about your own situation, and if you are a partner organization, ask yours before telling supporters that anything is deductible.

Refunds, cancellations and chargebacks

Money that comes back out of the business comes back out of the give-back. The mechanics:

A refund inside the same statement period reduces eligible net sales before the give-back is calculated, so the amount is simply never accrued.
A refund after a payout is deducted from the next statement rather than clawed back from the organization. Your agreement sets out what happens if a deduction is larger than the balance it lands in.
A partial refund reduces the base proportionally — only the refunded portion comes out.
A chargeback is treated the same way as a refund.
A cancelled subscription reverses nothing. Renewals that already shipped and were paid for stay on the record; future renewals stop.

Refund eligibility itself is governed by the store's return and refund policy, not by the Loads of Love program.

Who to contact about a missing order or payout

Check your organization's balance in the partner dashboard first, then open the statement for the period in question: it lists which orders were counted and what was deducted, which answers most questions before they need asking.

A missing order is usually an attribution problem, and attribution problems are fixable when they are reported early.

Use the Love Brands contact page and include:

Your organization's name as it appears on the agreement.
The order number, or the order date and approximate total if the supporter will share it.
The exact link the supporter used, copied and pasted rather than retyped.
The statement period the order should have appeared in.

For a payout question, say which statement period you are asking about and what the closing balance on that statement was. Both facts are on the statement itself, which makes the question answerable in one round trip instead of four.

One housekeeping note for partners producing their own materials: LOVE PAKS is a registered United States trademark, USPTO registration number 8371488 in class 003, registered on July 28, 2026. How your organization may use the name and marks in fundraising materials is covered by your written agreement — check it before printing anything.

Frequently asked questions

What does "a percentage of net sales" actually mean?

It means the percentage is applied to the product subtotal after discounts and refunds, with shipping and sales tax excluded — not to the total the customer paid. On the worked example above, a $104.65 order produces $90.00 of eligible net sales, and the rate is applied to the $90.00.

How much of my purchase actually goes to the charity?

A set percentage of the eligible net sales on your order — the product subtotal after discounts and refunds, with shipping and sales tax excluded — paid by Love Brands to the organization whose link you used. The percentage is fixed in that organization's written agreement, and the organization running the campaign is the one that publishes it: a cause-marketing promotion is expected to state what portion of the purchase reaches the cause before you buy, so look for that figure on the campaign page, flyer or email you arrived from, and ask the organization to confirm it if it is not there. This page does not print a single rate because the rate is set per agreement, and the agreement governs.

Is my Love Paks purchase tax deductible?

No. It is a purchase, not a donation, and Love Brands does not issue charitable-contribution receipts for product orders. The IRS treats a charitable contribution as a voluntary gift made without receiving anything of equal value in return, and a detergent order does not meet that description. Love Brands does not provide tax advice; ask your tax professional about your own situation.

When does my organization get paid?

Monthly, on or before the first of the following month, once the balance reaches $25 — and never later than 90 days after the sale.

What happens if our balance is under $25?

It rolls forward and is added to the next month. Nothing is forfeited, and the 90-day outer limit still applies, so a balance cannot sit below the minimum indefinitely.

Do subscription orders give back every month?

Yes. Each renewal is its own order with its own eligible net sales, and any discount applied to that renewal comes off the subtotal first, exactly as it does on a one-time order. Where your agreement sets a different rate for renewals, the statement shows both. The give-back recurs without any new promotion from you.

Is the add-a-donation product the same as the give-back?

No. The give-back is paid by Love Brands out of eligible net sales. The add-a-donation line item is an amount a shopper chooses to add at checkout, which Love Brands passes in full to the organization the shopper selected. They appear as separate columns on the statement and should never be advertised as one combined figure.

An order is missing from our statement. What should we do?

Report it through the contact page with the order number or date, the exact link the supporter used, and the statement period it should have appeared in. Attribution is recorded at checkout, so a missing order usually points at a broken or altered link — worth catching in month one rather than month six.