Some of us do it more than others, some of us pay for the "Prime" membership with special prices on shipping and unlimited video streaming and all that jazz.
I'm a habitual Amazon shopper. I admit it.
The other day, I learned something really cool about Amazon. They have a campaign they call "smile" which donates 0.5% of the purchase price of the things you are buying anyway to a non-profit of your choice.
For example:
You were already going to buy that $1,000 1TB USB thumb drive because you "need it for work." (hah! yeah right).
When you choose the URL smile.amazon.com instead of just amazon.com - everything looks the same, Amazon works the same (including your Prime membership) - but now they donate $5 to the non profit organization you have chosen instead.
Yes, 0.5% is not a huge percentage - but considering Amazon makes about $75 BILLION in sales each year, they could be donating an awful lot of money to non-profits to make the world a better place. That's pretty great of them.
Oh yeah, and it doesn't cost you anything extra - so there is no reason for you NOT to do it!
So here's what you need to do.
1) Go to your smile.amazon.com and sign in with your regular amazon account.
2) Choose your charity! I am choosing Orchestra Northern Arizona, which is Flagstaff's community orchestra that provides FREE concerts to the public each month.
3) Shop on Amazon like you normally do. Some of your purchases will automatically generate cash for your favorite non-profit without costing you anything extra. Sounds like a win-win to me.
4) Change your browser's bookmark to smile.amazon.com, so you don't forget next time.
If you want to help support my non-profit-of-choice for this program (I will probably change it up every year or so) just enter "Orchestra Northern Arizona" when it asks you for a non-profit to support. If you have another organization in mind - just search their name! If they haven't signed up for this program yet, you can be the hero who gets them involved.
