Every holiday season Americans spend hundreds of billions of dollars. More than $120 billion comes from online sales. On Cyber Monday last year—a single day—online sales reached $3.39 billion. The average household plans to spend nearly $1,000 over the holidays.
Meanwhile, people who have faithfully served the Kingdom for decades are making tough financial choices. While the average American family hunts for the perfect gifts, many aging pastors, missionaries, and other ministry professionals ask questions such as, “Can I buy groceries, or will that mean I can’t afford my prescription?” Such financial crises are often brought on by the minimalistic lifestyle and sacrifice so common in these professions.
But we’re not here to make you feel guilty—or even to tell you to spend less money on gifts. Because now there’s a way that those gifts can do more, without costing more.
The Kairos Benevolence Fund partners with individuals and churches to assist Kingdom servants when they need it most through benevolent grants. The generosity of donors makes these grants possible. And thanks to AmazonSmile, your generosity toward your own friends and family can now overflow to these ministers, missionaries, and widows in need.
Enter AmazonSmile
Everyone knows about Amazon, the behemoth of Internet shopping.
Fewer know about AmazonSmile, its charity-focused counterpart.
AmazonSmile is the same as the regular Amazon store, with one key difference: when you shop on AmazonSmile, Amazon donates 0.5% of your purchases to a charity of your choice.
The Kairos Benevolence Fund is an eligible charity on AmazonSmile, which means you can help Kingdom workers in need without giving up the prices or shopping experience you expect from Amazon.
It takes fewer than five minutes to set up your AmazonSmile preferences, and once everything is set up, all you have to do is shop from Smile.Amazon.com instead of Amazon.com. Whenever you make a purchase, Amazon sends 0.5% to the Kairos Benevolence Fund.
How to set up AmazonSmile to benefit the Kairos Benevolence Fund
Step 1: Visit Smile.Amazon.com
Smile.Amazon.com is the same as Amazon.com. There’s only one difference: purchases made through AmazonSmile directly benefit an organization of your choice.
Once you reach Smile.Amazon.com, you’ll see a search bar asking you to identify the charity you’d like to support. (If you’re not already signed into an Amazon account, you’ll have to do that first.)
Step 2: Search for “Kairos Benevolence Fund”
There should only be one result, but to be 100% certain, make sure you’re choosing the one from Irvine, CA.
Step 3: Accept the prompt
After you complete the search and select Kairos Benevolence Fund, you’ll see a popup stating that only purchases made on Smile.Amazon.com will benefit your charity. Accept this checkbox, which brings us to step 4.
Step 4: Set yourself up to shop on Smile.Amazon.com
It’s hard to remember that you have to return to Smile.Amazon.com. (Even if you remember, it can be a hassle to recall the exact URL.)
Depending on how you use your web browser, there are a couple of things you can do to make it easier. For one, consider adding Smile.Amazon.com as a bookmark.
But you may not use bookmarks very often. And lots of times, you end up getting to a site like Amazon through a link. In that case, a bookmark to Smile.Amazon.com isn’t going to be much help.
Another option: install a browser extension that redirects Amazon.com pages to their Smile.Amazon.com counterparts. It takes seconds to set up.
Once you do this, you’ll never have to worry about shopping on the wrong site again! A few different extensions offer this functionality. Follow the instructions to install them in your browser, and then every Amazon link will become an AmazonSmile link.
Here are links to extensions for several major browsers:
Step 5: Start shopping (and see your impact!)
Now that you’re all set up, your regular purchases also have a charitable impact.
Amazon remembers your preferences, so you won’t have to go through this setup process every time. Just visit AmazonSmile and shop as you normally would, knowing that each purchase will help make a small difference.
Once you’ve made some purchases, you’ll be able to track your impact through the AmazonSmile dashboard. On this dashboard, you can see how much you’ve generated for a charity, the amount that charity has received overall, and how much has been raised for all charities through AmazonSmile.
To see your dashboard, click the link below the search bar.
Isn’t that awesome? More than $62,000,000 has already been generated for charities across the globe through AmazonSmile!
And you can start adding to that number today.
Go set up AmazonSmile now
It’s estimated that Amazon accounts for nearly 40% of Internet sales over Thanksgiving, Black Friday, and Cyber Monday. That’s almost $5 billion. And 0.5% of that is $25,000,000.
If you and everyone you know can take a few seconds to set up AmazonSmile, that’s a lot of money Amazon is willing to help us raise for ministers in need.
To learn more about KBF: