A Somali frankincense harvester collecting resin from a Boswellia tree in the arid highlands of the Sanaag region at golden hour
Co-Impact Sourcing About dōTERRA · Ethical sourcing

Co-Impact Sourcing®: ethical and sustainable ingredient partnerships.

Where your essential oils come from — and who benefits from their sale.

What Co-Impact Sourcing exists to do

Relationships, not transactions.

dōTERRA is committed to making a positive difference in the lives of farmers, harvesters, and distillers who contribute to dōTERRA's oil production.

Co-Impact Sourcing® is dōTERRA's ethical sourcing framework for building long-term partnerships with farming and distillation communities that produce essential oil ingredients.

This framework exists to ensure ingredient quality while creating sustainable economic opportunities in the communities where plants are grown and harvested. It focuses on relationship-based sourcing rather than short-term or extractive procurement models, and applies across more than 40 countries — including 23 developing nations where dōTERRA's demand creates employment, infrastructure investment, and community development.

How Co-Impact Sourcing works in practice

A partnership model.

Co-Impact Sourcing is a partnership model, not a transactional purchasing system.

  1. 1

    Direct relationships with growers and distillers

    Multi-year agreements with farming cooperatives and distillation facilities in optimal growing regions.

  2. 2

    Fair and timely payment

    Producers receive predictable income on agreed schedules — not commodity-market pricing subject to speculation.

  3. 3

    Infrastructure investment

    Equipment, training, and facility improvements that increase production capacity and product quality.

  4. 4

    Community development

    Beyond direct economic impact, the dōTERRA Healing Hands Foundation supports education, healthcare, and essential services in sourcing communities.

  5. 5

    Quality assurance integration

    Local partners are trained in proper harvesting timing, distillation methods, and quality standards that preserve therapeutic plant compounds.

This framework applies to essential oil sourcing only — it does not govern finished product manufacturing or non-plant ingredients.

For clarity

What Co-Impact Sourcing is — and is not.

What it is
  • A sourcing philosophy that prioritises long-term partnerships over lowest-cost procurement.
  • An economic development strategy that creates stable employment and income in agricultural communities.
  • A quality commitment — working with expert growers in optimal regions produces superior essential oils.
What it is not
  • Not a certification program — it's dōTERRA's internal framework, not a third-party standard like Fair Trade.
  • Not charity work — these are commercial partnerships where both parties benefit.
  • Not applicable to all ingredients — it applies to botanically sourced essential oils, not capsules, fillers, or packaging.
Why Co-Impact Sourcing matters to you

Inverting the race to the bottom.

Most essential oil companies treat ingredients as commodities — purchasing from brokers who source from the lowest bidder, with no visibility into growing conditions or distillation quality. This creates a race-to-the-bottom dynamic where farmers cut corners to compete on price, quality suffers, and rural communities remain economically vulnerable.

By establishing direct relationships with expert growers in optimal regions, Co-Impact Sourcing inverts that model:

  • Quality improves — plants grown in their native habitat produce oils with superior chemical profiles.
  • Consistency increases — multi-year partnerships allow standardised harvesting and distillation protocols.
  • Communities thrive — predictable income enables families to invest in education, healthcare, and business expansion.
  • Transparency emerges — you can trace your oil back to the specific country and often the specific cooperative.
Three women growers at a Co-Impact Sourcing partner farm, holding freshly harvested lavender bundles at golden hour
A concrete example · Somali Frankincense

Somalia produces some of the world's finest Frankincense (Boswellia carteri) — but decades of conflict left harvesting communities economically isolated. Harvesters would travel for days, live in caves protecting their trees, then return without enough payment to buy food for their families. Because of unfair payment from broker networks, only 40% of available frankincense trees were being harvested.

Through Co-Impact Sourcing, dōTERRA established direct relationships with harvesting cooperatives, providing fair, guaranteed purchase agreements that bypass exploitative brokers; training in sustainable harvesting that preserves tree health; payment in food and commodities where money has limited value; and healthcare access through the Sanaag Specialty Hospital (funded 2021), serving 600,000 people.

The outcome: harvesters now receive fair, predictable compensation that feeds their families, tree populations are sustainably managed, and dōTERRA receives Frankincense oil with chemical consistency impossible to achieve through commodity broker networks. This pattern repeats across sourcing regions — from Bulgarian Rose to Madagascan Vanilla to Guatemalan Cardamom.

How it relates to product quality

Ethics and quality reinforce each other.

The connection between ethical sourcing and product quality isn't coincidental — it's structural. Expert growers produce superior oils because they understand optimal harvesting timing, use proper distillation protocols, cultivate plants in native habitats, and preserve traditional knowledge through direct partnerships.

For the Sleep Well Pack specifically

The Lavender essential oil in your Sleep Well Pack comes from Bulgarian and French farms where dōTERRA has established Co-Impact Sourcing partnerships. Most comes from farms within a small radius of the Esseterre distillery in Dobrich, Bulgaria, where the sunny, dry climate near the Black Sea and well-drained sandy soil create ideal growing conditions for high-quality lavender.

Co-Impact Sourcing ensures the farmers growing this Lavender receive fair compensation, invest in proper harvesting timing, and maintain the quality standards that make dōTERRA Lavender consistently effective for sleep support.

Explore the Sleep Well Pack
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Where to find more information.

Always read the label and follow the directions for use.

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