AmazonSmile Charitable Donations

How many of us could not live without Amazon?  It definitely has made my holiday shopping less stressful and enabled me to comparison shop while keeping a watchful eye on dollars spent.  As with the internet, I wonder how I ever lived without it!

As often as I shop via Amazon  though, I always forget to login through the AmazonSmile link which allows a user to select a charity to which Amazon will donate 0.5% of the purchase price of eligible items.  This came to mind recently when I read an article urging Planned Parenthood supporters to select Planned Parenthood as their charity of choice when shopping via Amazon.  Of course, I immediately considered cutting ties with Amazon but then realized that I should take the time to see if any Pro-Life charities were among the one million organizations partnering with Amazon.  To tell the truth, I was somewhat skeptical but was pleasantly surprised to find quite a few when doing a “pro-life” or “right to life” charity search.

While 0.5% is a relatively small percentage ($5.00 for every $1,000), it is still free money that perhaps can benefit a pregnancy crisis center or a Pro-Life education group (you can change your charity of choice at any time).  The donation amounts generated by your purchases are combined with the donation amounts from all other customers that selected the same organization and are tallied quarterly with an electronic payment issued to the organization about 45 days after quarter end.  Since its inception in 2013 AmazonSmile has donated $46,126,473.56 to its customers’ charities.  All the specific details of the AmazonSmile program can be found here.

Please consider investigating this option the next time you visit Amazon.  I plan to login through AmazonSmile and select a Pro-Life charity prior to placing my next order.   Isn’t it ironic that a Planned Parenthood supporter article had the unintended consequences of monies now being donated to a Pro-Life cause!