March 18, 2012 | Read Time: 2 minutes
As more and more charities use the online retailer Amazon’s Wish List feature to solicit donated goods from supporters, one organization has figured out a way to double the program’s benefits.
The Wish List, an online gift registry that allows charities to ask donors for specific products, has been a big asset in the growth of Child’s Play, a Seattle charity founded by the video-game industry.
Kristin Lindsay, a foundation coordinator at the organization, which donates video games, books, and toys to children’s hospitals, started using a wish list in 2004. Last year, about a third of its total donations, or about $1-million worth of noncash gifts, came from Amazon’s Wish List program.
“Honestly, we owe a large amount of our success to Amazon,” she says. For the first year, the group distributed toys to five hospitals; it now has 75 hospitals in its worldwide network that receive donated products from Amazon.
Benefits From Referrals
Each hospital in the Child’s Play network helps create a wish list of toys and video games that it wants for its young patients. Child’s Play takes the idea a step further than many other charities though. It has signed up to be one of the organizations that drives traffic to Amazon, and in exchange, it gets a share of the money Amazon receives from the clients it refers.
Here’s how it works: Child’s Play embeds a special link on all its promotional messages about the wish list that includes a code identifying the charity as the source of the traffic to Amazon. When supporters click on the link, they are sent to Amazon’s Web site. The charity then gets a cut, of up to about 15 percent, depending on the product, each time a donor enters the Amazon site and buys goods through that link.
Even if the goods purchased aren’t for the charity, the organization gets credit for directing the customer to Amazon. Ms. Lindsay says the money generated that way directly benefits the charity, which receives the payments monthly or quarterly.
“There’s no reason not to get this added benefit,” she says. In November and December, the charity received about $300,000 worth of products for its member hospitals; it later received an additional $30,000 through the referral bonus from Amazon.
