Amazon has a little known program where they donate a percentage of your purchases to your favorite charity, all at no cost to you. Their match is 0.5% (that’s ½ of 1%) of your eligible purchases. They claim they have already donated $237 million as a consequence of this program.

We are letting you know about Amazon Smile as CRW is a Section 501c3 under Federal law, was approved by the IRS as a charitable organization, and is therefore an eligible charity under Amazon rules. In Amazon’s words: “The AmazonSmile program offers customers the benefit of making a donation to your favorite charity. We're able to provide this benefit to you when you choose to start your shopping at smile.amazon.com or with AmazonSmile turned ON in the Amazon Shopping app on your mobile phone, in part because we expect AmazonSmile to grow primarily through word of mouth instead of paid advertising—and this enables us to fund donations to our customers’ favorite organizations.”

Signup is easy and we hope you select Charles River Wheelers. When you shop at smile.amazon.com, eligible purchases are automatically assigned to your selected charity. We note that as of mid-January, CRW contributions reached $56.88, not a large sum but a start. If you have any questions about Amazon Smile, feel free to amybarnumwilson [at] gmail.com (email )me.