Help a Worthy Cause While Doing Your Christmas Shopping

Online, December 1, 2013 (Newswire.com) - On 1 December, right in the middle of the Black Friday/Cyber Monday shopping frenzy, online retail giant Amazon released AmazonSmile.

Promoting Christmas goodwill, Amazon will donate 0.5% of almost all sales to shoppers' chosen charities, when they shop via smile.amazon.com.

Although 0.5% does not sound like much, Amazon has around 164 million users, each of which is valued at around $543 (Source: http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2012/08/27/how-much-is-a-user-worth.aspx), so the potential money donated to charity this Christmas is enormous.

After reading about Amazon's philanthropic venture, online entrepreneur Jenny Kellett thought there was potential for even more goodwill, so she created Jen's Gift.

Jen's Gift works in the same way as AmazonSmile except she is offering 2% of all purchases through her site to charity. The charity changes monthly based on user votes and this month money will be donated to UNICEF's Philippines Haiyan Typhoon appeal.

As well as Amazon, shoppers can donate up to 3% of their winning bids on ebay.com, ebay.co.uk and ebay.com.au.

'Considering a poll says that an average person will spend $770 on Christmas gifts, that's more than $15 per person to charity simply by doing what you were going to do already!' Ms Kellett said.

'Through the site, I hope that we can raise over $10,000 before Christmas to help victims of this year's devastating Philippines typhoon.'

Taking part is easy, shoppers simply click on the shop they want to go to on the Jen's Gift homepage, www.jensgift.org and their donation will automatically be deducted on their behalf.

For interviews and more information, contact Jenny Kellett, [email protected].