Monday, February 18, 2008

Give 'til You Can't Feel It.


I'm going to try to describe something even though I have no memory of doing it and I'm not entirely sure how it works.

At some point, probably as a result of seeing it in a newsletter, I signed up with igive.com.

It would appear that if I make purchases online, a donation of some kind is created. During unrelated online trips to ebay and Canadian Tire, I got a pop up stating that a certain percentage of my purchase will be donated to the charity of my choice.

Since I'm not certain about how it works, we'll let them speak for themselves:

How does iGive.com work?
When we say 12.5% or 8% or 10% to your cause next to a merchant at the Mall, each and every penny goes directly to your favorite cause. No administrative costs, no fees, nothing -- 100 percent to your cause. iGive.com is paid a sales commission (over and above the charitable contribution percentage) when our members make purchases, allowing us to continue to expand our services. Also, many merchants pay us to advertise on our Web site.

Somehow, I selected the Animal Alliance of Canada as my charity of choice. I don't recall doing so. On the other hand, I have no objection to it either. No doubt if I wanted to change it I could.

Earlier today, I received an e-mail telling me that a cheque was being sent on behalf of myself and the other AAC suporters to the charity. It's an accumulation of the dollars and cents gathered here and there from our collective online shopping.

Oh. Good!

Well, I'll just keep on going then! And if you're the online shopping type, you might want to sign up and raise funds for your favourite charity.

2 comments:

Lynn Sinclair said...

Did they tell you how much was being donated? Sounds like a wonderful way of getting the money into the right hands, but I don't do a lot of online shopping.

T.H.I.T. said...

They say "up to" 26% but I would say that this is a small minority. It's probably usually closer to 2% to 5%. Not world-changing individually, but...

When I went to Canadian Tire's site, it was to scope out the cost of a windmill. That bad boy is about $800 so for large items like that (or when I bought my computer, you can create a nice little donation.

clickgreener.com is another option but it seems you have less input as to where that donation goes.