alonovo.com FAQs

General

"alonovo.com: Because you don't have to be a Democrat to want a blue sky and you don't have to be a Republican to want a growing economy." We are Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians, Greens and Independents. We are teachers, machinists, lawyers, truck drivers, doctors, nurses, students, authors and carpenters. We are moms, dads, sons, daughters, brothers and sisters. We are the new intelligent, ethical economy.

What is alonovo.com?

A free, Intelligent Marketplace for Socially Responsible Shopping (SRS). The basic service is free and there is no additional charges are added to the products you purchase. We get paid a commission from Amazon (between 6% and 8%), and we then share what we receive your cause you have selected as your beneficiary.

Why should I use alonovo.com?

Because alonovo.com is the only place you can get trusted company ratings integrated into your shopping experience.  Plus, we donate a minimum of 50% of revenue to a non-profit of your choice (100% with active partners) and you help begin the new, social values led economy. The more you use us (and tell everyone about us), the greater impact we have on corporate behavior, and the more we can reinvest into the alonovo.com experience to make it even better for you in the future.

What does alonovo mean?

Alo Novo is Latin for “sustaining or nurturing change, something new”.

Where is alonovo.com located?

We are a 21st century technology company, with people contributing from everywhere. Our physical mail address is 204 East 2nd Avenue, San Mateo, California, 94401.

Why should I register on alonovo.com?

We wanted to make it easy to use alonovo.com without having to register. Thus, you do not have to register on alonovo.com to shop with us. However, if you want to customize your values (see Rating System below) or post in our community forums, you do have to be a registered user. We dislike spam as much as you do (perhaps more as our founder is a vegetarian and just the word spam sets him off). We are privacy advocates and we will never sell our lists to anyone.

Business

Does it cost to use alonovo.com?

Nope.  It’s all free to use and best of all you get the same competitive pricing as you would by going directly to Amazon.com or other large online merchants.

Is alonovo.com a non-profit organization?

Yes..  alonovo.com is a project of Urban Logic, Inc., a 501(c)(3) non-profit corporation. After long reflection, debates and anxiety we ultimately felt a non-profit entity was best to protect the integrity and vision of the alonovo mission..

How does alonovo.com makes its money?

We've been privately funded by the founder since 2005. In the immediate future we will be creating several mechanisms to support our work, from tax-deductible donations, foundation grants, public/private partnership funding and advertising/sponsorship revenue.

Amazon.com

What is alonovo's relationship with Amazon.com?

alonovo.com is an associate of Amazon.com.  We use their web services to power our site.  alonovo.com gets a percentage of sales each time you shop with us. You get the same price and selection as Amazon.com, but with added Company Ratings and donations to your cause of choice.

Why do I get sent to Amazon.com when I check out?

This is part of Amazon’s requirements for associate sellers.  When you check out from alonovo.com, you are moved over to Amazon.com to finish checkout.  You use your existing Amazon.com account.  Amazon.com takes payment and then handles the fulfillment part of your purchase..

Why did alonovo choose to be an Amazon associate?

Amazon.com provides the price, selection, and trust people expect.  This allows us to bring you a social values rated integrated shopping experience and have the financial and fulfillment part of each transaction completed by a company that is excellent at the financial and fulfillment part.

Why don't you have size charts for your apparel?

Unfortunately, Amazon.com does not supply us with size charts for their individual clothing vendors. We have no way of knowing how individual companies size their clothes. We would rather leave that out than provide a generic chart that may be incorrect.

Do you plan to work with other vendors in the future?

Definitely.  Amazon.com is just the beginning.  Since diversity is our mission, we plan to build relationships with many vendors so that you get the widest possible selection of products.  If you’d like to sell your product with us, email merchant_relations@alonovo.com

Does Amazon.com influence alonovo.com ratings?

A resounding no!  Amazon.com has absolutely no impact on our Values Rating system.

Rating/Grade System

What do the grades mean?

We use a 0 - 10 scale to assign a grade to an attribute of company behavior. The chart below is directly from the program code used to show the grade ("A" represents excellent/outstanding ratings or scores, "F" represents very poor performance or scoring).

0 => 'F',

1 => 'F',

2 => 'D-',

3 => 'D',

4 => 'C-',

5 => 'C',

6 => 'B-',

7 => 'B',

8 => 'A-',

9 => 'A',

10 => 'A',

Do all users see the same score?

Unregistered users see the same baseline Values Rating.  Once you register, you can customize your values and Values Rating become My Values Rating.  Your values—Your Ratings.

How are the default values settings determined?

By default, all metrics are weighed equally as "important."

How were the Metrics and Impact Groups chosen?

We’ve chosen our beginning metrics and impact groups based on what data is currently available and what we felt consumers are concerned about.  While our Impact Groups will remain as is, our Metrics list will continue to grow as we get feedback from the consumer community.  Let us know the values you care about» feedback@alonovo.com

What if some Metrics have no ratings?

This is true of almost all companies -- we have information about some aspects of their work, but not all of them.  In all cases we weigh in only the information that we have.  Therefore, to better glean the reliability of an overall valuableimpact score, it's important to notice not only the score itself but also the number of metrics and categories used in the calculation.  Registered users can view the company detail page at any time to see the whole of Metric ratings available.

How does "weighted averaging" work?

In normal averaging, you add up a bunch of scores and divide by the total number of scores.  In weighted averaging, you multiply each score by its weight (or importance), add up the results,and then divide by the total of all the importances. Basically, when you're doing “weighted averaging”,saying a score is more important is like saying it has a stronger vote in what the average turns out to be.

Are ratings permanent?

Not at all.  Ratings can change any time shoppers alter their settings, sources add updated data, or alonovo.com adds new sources.  Companies can change, and so can their ratings.

Do you rate the vendor or manufactures of a given product?

We currently rate the manufacturers of the products.

Can companies influence their ratings through alonovo.com?

Definitely not. alonovo.com takes no bribes. Scores are generated by combining trusted third-party data with users’ values – alonovo doesn't interfere.  Of course, if a company is interested in improving its social impact, then we can certainly help point them in the right direction.

Company Research

Who provides the research data on company social responsibility?

Currently all impact data on alonovo.com is provided by KLD Research and Analytics, Inc, a highly trusted research firm that provides social research for socially screening investment portfolios and and the Federal Elections Commission, which monitors and regulates contributions to US electoral campaigns; As the alonovo.com community grows, we will continue to add more data sources, and shoppers will be able to decide which data sources they wish to include in their ratings.

How good is the coverage of your current Company Ratings?

Increasing our research coverage is an ongoing mission of alonovo.com. 
Due to factors like industry consolidation, branding strategies, amazon.com data integrity, and corporate transparency, it's much harder to connect company information to products in some departments than others.

How many companies does alonovo cover currently?

We currently have information about a little over 4000 companies, and the number keeps growing. 

Why is there so much more research about some product categories than others?

There are several reasons:

• industry consolidation -- most of the data currently available involves large, publicly traded companies, and some kinds of products are more likely than others to be made by big companies
• branding strategies -- some products are sold under the parent company's name, others are sold under unrelated brand names.  The latter are much harder to connect to social information.
• data integrity – alonovo.com makes use of Amazon's web services, which has more helpful company information in some categories than in others.

How does alonovo connect the third-party data with the products?

We use whatever hints we can (UPC information, name matching, addresses), but ultimately alonovo researchers confirm that a product is correctly mapped to the company that produced it.

The Future of alonovo.com

Where is alonovo.com going next with the Values Rating System?

Already, the Values Rating system provides shoppers unprecedented access to information about the roles companies play in the world, but we want to make the system better still.  We're continually striving to bring in more information about more companies from more sources.  We're also working to give users finer control over the ratings calculation. Most importantly, we're searching for ways to harness the wonderful resources of the alonovo.com user community for finding, digesting, and integrating important information about social impacts related to the products we buy.

What other kinds of information sources will be available in the future?

Our mission is to be an essential resource for informed consumers.  We plan to roll out an ongoing array of trusted and relevant consumer information, including:

• Consumer Reporting
• Product Certification Reporting
• Company News Articles
• Buying Guides
• Consumer Activism Opportunities

Will you include more third-party data sources in the future?

As the alonovo.com community grows, we will continue to add more trusted data sources, and shoppers will be able to decide which data sources they wish to include in their ratings. Currently all company data on alonovo.com is provided by KLD Research and Analytics, Inc, a highly trusted research firm that provides social research for socially screening investment portfolios.

Will you soon have Product Ratings?

Absolutely. We understand that social impact can vary as much from product to product as it does from company to company.  In the future, we will be offering not only finer grain data on products, but also mechanisms for integrating this information with the company data.  We’ve started with Company Ratings because of that data that is available through the Socially Responsible Investing (SRI) community.

Will I soon be able to sort products by the Company Ratings?

Yes.  For technical reasons associated with the Amazon.com’s web service, this is more challenging than you might think.  It is vital to alonovo's mission to make the shopping experience as easy as possible, so we are working hard to develop easy sorting and filtering mechanisms to help you quickly connect to the products that support your values.

Will I soon be able to see more of the Source information
that the Metric scores are based on?

Yes -- at least some of it.  Naturally, all of our sources will have some proprietary data that they choose not to share, but any information made available to us will be made available to you.