Your Amazon Guide to Giving Tuesday

Updated December 2020.

As your nonprofit develops its strategy for #GivingTuesday and end-of-year fundraising campaigns, take a look at ways Amazon can help support your organization to make this your most successful year yet.

Meet the demands of increased web traffic

On big fundraising days like #GivingTuesday, your nonprofit can experience surges in web traffic for which your website may not be prepared. Many nonprofit websites crash due to increased visits, causing you to lose valuable dollars to downtime and miss out on the benefits of a major fundraising day.

Instead of spending money on hardware to adjust for this capacity on only one or a few days out of the year, AWS can help you prepare for spikes of usage, paying for technology services only when you need them. AWS infrastructure can grow and shrink to fit your needs so that your nonprofit does not have to pay for hardware that sits unused. Learn more about nonprofit #GivingTuesday success stories and contact us to get started hosting your website on AWS so you’re ready for #GivingTuesday and beyond.

Make getting donations easier and set up recurring gifts

Donating on #GivingTuesday can be as easy as talking by saying, “Alexa, make a donation to <your Nonprofit name>.” Engaging your donors with their Alexa-enabled devices using Amazon Pay offers an effortless payment experience by using the information already stored in your donors’ Amazon accounts.

Enable your nonprofit to gain more support by making the donation experience secure. You can reach and acquire new donors by tapping into the expanding Alexa user base of tens of millions of donors who own Alexa-enabled devices. You can give your donors the option of setting up a recurring gift and integrate an Amazon Pay button directly on your website.

Learn more and get started on this creative way to expand your reach on #GivingTuesday, with no Alexa skill development or expertise required.

Showcase your brand and go further with merchandise

Fundraising with branded merchandise is another way to diversify your organization’s efforts on #GivingTuesday. Merch by Amazon is a print-on-demand program that makes it easy for your nonprofit to create merchandise without the added complexities of managing inventory and handling production, shipping, and customer service. Amazon does those for you with no upfront costs.

Simply upload your artwork, choose a product type and color, set your price, and add a product description. We will create a product page on Amazon.com for customers to buy your product.

Save throughout the year and receive donations for purchasing items you know your organization needs

We know that nonprofits can’t afford to waste a single dollar. Built on the Amazon shopping experience, Amazon Business provides business-only pricing and discounts, tax-exempt purchasing on hundreds of millions of products, convenient and free shipping options, and business analytics that will help your organization stay on budget.

The best part? Amazon will donate a portion of every purchase made on Amazon Business to your nonprofit when you log in via AmazonSmile. Simply go to smile.amazon.com from the web browser on your computer or mobile device before logging in with your Amazon Business username and password.

Tell your story and understand its influence on donors and supporters

Amazon Advertising can help your nonprofit understand the relationship between your paid marketing and what happens when a customer donates to or interacts with your brand, which is key to making your paid marketing more effective. A benefit of working with Amazon Advertising is our ability both before and after campaigns to provide audience insights, allowing your nonprofit to learn more about your donors through audience discovery and robust performance analytics.

When customers come to Amazon to discover, research, consume content, and to share their feedback with other customers, this creates billions of shopping patterns that can turn into actionable insights to inform your nonprofit’s approach.

Interested in getting started with Amazon Advertising? Submit an inquiry here to get started.

Reach your donors where they’re already shopping

AmazonSmile is a website operated by Amazon that lets customers enjoy the same wide selection of products, low prices, and convenient shopping features that they have become used to on Amazon.com. The difference is that when customers shop on AmazonSmile (smile.amazon.com), the AmazonSmile Foundation will donate 0.5% of the price of eligible purchases to the charitable organizations selected by customers.

AmazonSmile has donated over $90 million and more than 280,000 charities have received donations. 501c3 charitable organizations can register at org.amazon.com to receive donations and enable their donors to purchase with purpose by shopping at smile.amazon.com.

On #GivingTuesday and beyond, Amazon values all of our nonprofit customers and their missions. Learn more about the #GivingTuesday movement and the power of giving to make a difference in your community. And learn how nonprofits can reduce the burden associated with fundraising activities.