Amazon’s charity program makes it to the app
If you’ve ever noticed, quite a few of our tagged links go to smile.amazom.com. If you’re not familiar with Smile, it’s a charitable giveback by Amazon to the charity or organization of your choice where about one half of a percent of your purchase gets redirected there.
In this case, I believe Amazon gets to write it off as their charitable donation for tax purposes, but the end result is whoever you’re supporting gets some income. Last year a school I work with made enough to do some needed work, so the money does get there.
Up until now Smile only worked in browsers and when you actually put “smile” in the URL. As of today you can turn it on for purchases from the app as well.
You’ll need to renew it twice a year as they don’t want you accidentally donating to charity (I’m sure there are reasons) but you can find it by opening the Amazon app, settings, AmazonSmile.
After a year or two I can tell you it doesn’t make a it of difference in pricing to the consumer, nor does it remove or decrease referral commission although you have to generate a long link as a blogger and manually change www to smile.
So, log in, pick your charity, and go. Or, you know, don’t shop at Amazon, support the little guy, and cut a check directly to those who you think need or deserve it.
