Amazon Fundraising can still work for you

How to leverage Amazon Prime Days as Fundraisers for your Cause after the close of AmazonSmile.

If your charity, school, team, club or organization is suffering after the close of AmazonSmile there are still ways for you to leverage Amazon Fundraising as part of your bread and butter donation stream with the bonus of income being allocated toward unrestricted revenue. In order to do this, you should focus on programs and marketing efforts that will help you draw your donors and supporters to act on Amazon Prime Days, the next of which are this October 10-11, 2023.

Who…

If you are a charity, school, team, club or faith-based organization you are likely working with an email database that you’ve (painstakingly) built over time which includes your entire audience of current, past, and lapsed donors and likely volunteers and supporters as well. Amazon Prime Days are an excellent time to tap into these lists.

A large portion of your audience should be familiar with online shopping and likely relies on services like Amazon to cross off items on their everyday household lists. The great benefit about Amazon Fundraising is that you’re not asking your valued supporters to do anything they wouldn’t normally do. It just happens to be that they can do those things and earn money for your cause without spending anything extra.

What…

Amazon Fundraising during Prime Days is an untapped opportunity that could get your donors very excited about giving to your organization without spending any extra money. They are likely already building a list of items they need for their households as we speak.

TechCrunch reports that “Us consumers spent $6.4 billion on the first day of Amazon’s Prime Day event” earlier this year alone! What a happy day it would be for your organization if they were able to benefit from some of those sales.

Where…

Your most likely return on the investment of your, your staff’s, or your volunteers' time is to utilize effective email communications regarding Amazon Fundraising opportunities. An email built via a what you see is what you get (WYSIWYG) service such as Mailchimp or Constant Contact can easily be put together to remind your donors about Amazon Prime Days.

If you are a very small organization, or a parent working with a club, team, or faith-based organization of volunteers that doesn’t have an email service, you can still use your personal Gmail, Outlook, or any mail provider of your choice to get out the word. Be sure to use an engaging and direct subject line to encourage your constituents to open the email and learn more.

If you have a large or particularly engaged social media following be sure to schedule posts to let your audience know how they can participate in your Amazon Prime Day Fundraiser across all of your channels. You may even consider boosting posts or turning them into ads the day before and of the events (October 10 and 11).

When…

We recommend that you strike a balance between giving your audience a heads up that the Amazon Prime Days are coming (shoot for the Thursday before to help give donors time to plan when they might have extra bandwidth) and remind them again the day of the sales. It’s fine to reach out both days if your audience has a high tolerance for receiving communications from you. If you find that too frequent communications drive opt-out rates consider sending an email the week before and the first day of the sale. Because social media is so immediate, you may consider posting starting on Friday and continuing through until the 11th.

How…

Gift cards are the easiest way to capitalize on Amazon Fundraising since their Smiles program has closed down. Think outside of how a traditional gift card works: in this case you can give a gift card to anyone you want, but you can also purchase gift cards for yourself and then use them to pay for your Amazon Prime Days purchases (just like a normal Amazon gift card).

First you’ll want to create a ShopRaise account. It only takes a few moments to set up your account. If you would like your account customized, simply send us your logo and an image and we’ll populate it for you. We’ll also send you images and text that you can use to spread the word to your supporters via email and social media.

Do reserve a bit of time to wrap your head around the process of how gift card fundraising works in our comprehensive guide. If you have any questions, our team is always here to help. Contact Rebecca Fowler, our Vice President of Business Development or schedule a free demo with her to learn more. We’re very transparent in letting you know that our program is always free to you and your organization. There are no hidden costs or fees–all it costs is your time.

If you’re not ready to take the leap yet, visit our FAQ page to read up on how ShopRaise works and when you’re ready to learn more, we’ll be here to help.

Why…

It’s been eight months since AmazonSmile shut its doors leaving many organizations in a hard place. At ShopRaise, we want your organization to continue to thrive and we understand how challenging raising funds (and especially unrestricted revenue and new income streams) can be.

There are myriad programs similar to ours online, but they can be frustrating for an organization to adapt, and you might not receive the services you need to make your program a success. They are also generally limited to one form of giving–just gift cards, or just direct donations–while we are a comprehensive service that provides all of that and more. Additionally, we will provide you with marketing tools that you can easily post or email all year long to ensure you don’t have to do the heavy lifting. And there will always be a person there to help when you need it.

Raise on!

The ShopRaise Team