Idaho Humane Society's Facebook post usefully reminds people that they can help charities like their animal shelter by purchasing products online via AmazonSmile. I was aware of it but I had not become involved with it which is careless because you simply purchase on Amazon in the usual way and can select a charity to which Amazon will donate. They say that they have donated $355 million to charities under the scheme so far.
AmazonSmile is a separate portal from their main website but it offers the same products and prices as their normal website. There is one difference: when you purchase on AmazonSmile, the retailer's foundation contributes 0.5% of the price of eligible purchases to the charity of your choice.
It doesn't cost anything for the charities to receive money this way and 100% of the donation goes to the charity. If you are a regular Amazon user as I am it's a great way to give to charities without any effort.
I regret to say that up until now I have not used AmazonSmile. I will do so from now on. Amazon has a webpage which provides instructions how to set up your Amazon smile purchases (click here to read it - note sometimes external links stop working). It is available on smile.amazon.com.
And they say that "you'll find the exact same low prices, vast selection and convenient shopping experience as on Amazon.com". Tens of millions of products are eligible for donations. They are marked "Eligible for AmazonSmile donation". And there are over 1 million 501(c)(3) public charitable organizations registered with this program.
A NEGATIVE VIEWPOINT: It might be useful to also include a negative viewpoint about this scheme. Some cynics state that the scheme is a method of promoting Amazon because they are a very wealthy company with almost a monopoly on online purchases and therefore, they want to soften this image by saying that they give to charity which they do.
But a purchaser who wants to use this scheme has to fiddle around a little bit to set it up and on a purchase of about $20 very little goes to charity at 0.05% of the purchase price excluding VAT and other add-ons. So, yes, that is a negative. You have to be committed to set it up and there is this slight lack of genuineness about the scheme but I still think is worthwhile because even doing a very small amount is doing something for animal welfare if you choose an animal welfare charity as I would. It's worth the effort I would say.
But the fact is that if you spend $5000 over a couple of years, you'll be giving $25 to charity; money that you would not have donated normally. If a million people use the scheme that's $25m.
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