As most of you already know, Amazon offers two forms of commissions on sales through associated or affiliated blogs. When readers buy things in the ordinary way, using the precise link they see on this web site, Amazon adds a small commission to my for-profit account. Readers can, however, shop for the same items at smile.amazon.com, which directs the commissions to the charities of bloggers' choice.
When you click on the Amazon links at this web site, they usually open the page for what Amazon wanted you to see first at the time of posting. That was days or years ago. There's a high probability that another seller on Amazon is offering a better deal by now. As a result, even when you buy things to which I've linked, I don't get a commission. That's not a problem so long as you remember to type the "smile" in front of "amazon.com" before buying that item that's a better deal. Then you should, in theory, get a choice of which charity you'd prefer to receive the commission.
Most links at this web site go to my for-profit account but I also link to two charities: Heifer International, in memory of the blogger known as Ozarque (ozarque.livejournal.com), and the Adventist Disaster Relief Agency, in honor or memory of the occasional writer known as Grandma Bonnie Peters.
Heifer is so called because it places farm animals, such as a heifer, a female calf, with poor farm families. A poor farmer who invests the work in rearing a heifer for a few years will soon have a cow who repays the farmer with milk. There are other ways this Arkansas-based charity supports small businesses in poverty zones like Ecuador and Cambodia--you can give a goat or chickens, or vegetable seeds, or tuition for a needy student. They have a "gift catalogue" at www.heifer.org. This is a legitimate, well established poverty and disaster relief organization.
Despite their focus specifically on disaster relief, ADRA actually offers similar benefits in areas where people are recovering from physical disasters. Their "gift catalogue" at giftcatalog.adra.org looks similar to Heifer's, with options for donating the cost of chickens or chicken coops, vegetable seeds, tuition, shelter meals, and so on.
(Today's Amazon book link is an ordinary for-profit link, unless you browse around to Amazon Smile.)
In a 1960 book called The Seventh Day, Booton Herndon described a recent ADRA mission after an earthquake in Mexico: "Most of the damage was in the nice part of town where people were used to new things, and the Adventists did not let them down," having previously been blessed with shiny new plastic-wrapped bedding. As a child I remember hearing people ask GBP whether ADRA raised money to deliver brand-new stuff to the rich. Actually the gift catalog doesn't even discuss shelter supplies. Adventist churches generally collect, refurbish, and redistribute store overstock and gently used stuff through a separate, volunteer-run, local-church-managed program they (used to) call the Dorcas Society. Let's just say that when they do hand out clothing it's likely to have all of its original buttons.
Both charities support ongoing missions in some parts of the Southern Hemisphere; both web sites display those familiar images from poverty pockets in Africa and India. Both are, in fact, global. There has never been and will never be a charitable organization that didn't "lose" a fair bit of donated money on operating expenses, and in many countries on bribes to local honchos; Heifer and ADRA are two of the most efficient.
So when I get an Amazon giftcard, I personally like to run it through Amazon Smile and give a few pennies on the dollar to one of these two beloved elders' favorite charities.
Today Amazon started a new thing. Amazon always reports on the tiny amount of commissions this web site has earned on for-profit sales. They mail out the check when affiliate site commissions reach US$100 and this web site is...actually quite ambivalent...to report that, at the current rate, this web site should receive a check in approximately 75 years. (I'm already over 50 years old; GBP is over 80--and we're going to split that check.) But today they also e-mailed out reports on the amounts our charities have earned. According to Amazon, Gentle Readers, you've raised over US$2,500 for ADRA and over US$23,000 for Heifer.
Presumably Amazon Smile aggregates funds directed to these charities through all uses of Amazon Smile, not only those referred by this web site, to calculate these figures...
Anyway, you have been most generous in supporting two legitimate charities that don't promote a political agenda or build up a handout culture. Thank you. Thank you all.
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