Use AmazonSmile To Give To Your Favorite Charity While Doing Your Holiday Shopping

This year, as with other recent years, more people will be buying more of their Christmas and Holiday gifts online from Amazon. Did you know that AmazonSmile lets you give a portion of your purchases to your favorite charity without you spending any more money than your normally would? Just go to Smile.Amazon.com today and pick your charity. Then, instead of going to Amazon.com to do your shopping, go to Smile.Amazon.com. You’ll find almost all of the same prices and deals you normally would, but your favorite charity will make money with every purchase you make.

There are currently about one million 501(c)(3) public charitable organizations participating in the AmazonSmile program, according to Amazon. Not every single item sold on Amazon is eligible for the program, but many sold by Amazon are. For every eligible purchase made, the AmazonSmile Foundation will donate .05% of the purchase price to your designated charity.

Once you sign up for AmazonSmile and designate your charity, you’ll see it at the top of the page when you’re logged into the site. You can change your charity at any time. You can also easily see how much you have generated personally for your charity with your purchases and how much the program has donated. As of November 2016, AmazonSmile has given a total of $37,903,623.82 to the various charities in the program.

How do you know if an item is eligible for the program? Eligible items will say “Eligible for AmazonSmile donation” on their product detail page.

Buying a Kids Edition Fire tablet? It’s on sale for Black Friday and eligible for AmazonSmile. Buying a Kindle Paperwhite? Also eligible. Bose QuietComfort 2.0 Acoustic Noise cancelling Headphones? Eligible.

The AmazonSmile program is completely embedded in the Amazon experience you are accustomed to. You use your same Amazon or AmazonPrime account. You still have access to your same Shopping Cart, Wish Lights, Wedding or Baby Registry and other settings.

Need more details on the Smile program? Check out the program details page.

How do you pick a charity? Amazon highlights five charities as Spotlight Charities. Below that, there’s a search bar where you can search by charity name or location. Select a charity and if they aren’t already set up to receive AmazonSmile donations, Amazon will reach out to them to get them set up to take your money.

Don’t have a favorite charity of your own yet? I have my account set up to benefit Unchained Melodies Dog Rescue out of Columbia, Missouri. The organization rescues dogs from lives of being chained up or penned and helps them find a better life.

Be sure to follow AmazonSmile on Twitter for the latest on the program.

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