In these weird times, you may find yourself ordering online more often than you did before. With all the stores closing down, Amazon is still going strong for purchasing goods. Did you know, however, that you can donate to charity every time you shop at Amazon, with no additional cost to you? The donations won’t be too extravagant, but if you’re an Amazon fanatic, it’s a good way to give to charity without much effort.
Also read: 11 Strategies to Find Great Deals and Save Money
How to Donate to Charity via Amazon Purchases
To get started, you need to tell Amazon which charity you want to donate to. To do this, you need to use Amazon Smile.
Amazon Smile is a branch of the main website which handles charitable donations. It looks identical to the normal Amazon website, bar the URL and the word “Smile” appearing in the logo. You need to use Amazon Smile to buy your items, or the donation won’t count.
To visit Amazon smile, take the “www” part of the Amazon URL and replace it with “smile” instead. For example, if you’re in the US, your Amazon URL will be www.amazon.com. Delete the www, replace it with “smile,” and you get smile.amazon.com – the Amazon Smile website for the U.S.
Selecting a Charity with Amazon Smile
When you first visit Amazon Smile, it will ask you which charity you want to donate to. On the right, you’ll see a readily-chosen selection of the major charities in your country. Feel free to go through them and select one that rings true with you.
If you want to support a smaller charity, there’s a good chance you won’t find it in the charity picker. If you can’t find it, don’t fret: you can use the charity locator to find it. Enter the name of the charity to find it, or type in your location to find charities in your area.
Donating to Charity with Amazon Smile
Once you’ve picked out a charity, you’re free to start donating. To do so, go ahead and buy an item from the Amazon Smile store. Every time you do, 0.5% of the price goes to your selected charity. This does mean that only 5 cents of every $10 you spend is donated, but given it’s at no extra cost to you, why not donate it?
Fortunately, Amazon Smile has access to your accounts. Even though you are not using the normal Amazon page, you can still access your wishlists and order history. There’s no reason to swap back to the regular website.
If you shop a lot on Amazon, why not try these hacks to save yourself some money as well as give something back using Amazon Smile? The donation amount isn’t huge, but it’s better than nothing. Best of all, it comes at no additional cost to you.
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Simon Batt
Simon Batt is a Computer Science graduate with a passion for cybersecurity.
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