Shopping Can Be Charitable

Spend as much as you want.

When you visit https://www.mycause.com before shopping online at one of its 20 affiliated merchants, a portion of your purchase is donated to charity.

Indicate your cause of choice--or let the site randomly select one for you--then visit any of the merchants linked to it. Once you make a purchase, MyCause donates a portion of the referral fee it receives from the online merchant to the organization you designate.

The donations, which range from about 0.6% to 15% of purchases, include: up to 9% on all items at Amazon, $3 on each order at L.L. Bean and $1.20 on each airline ticket purchased through Travelocity. Dell, Cooking.com, Buy.com and Brooks Bros. are among the other merchants listed on the site.

MyCause, based in Ithaca, N.Y., donates at least 60% of the referral fees it receives from each merchant. The for-profit company keeps the rest to cover its own expenses.

The site mails a check to an organization every time it accumulates $10 in donations. MyCause--which works with hundreds of causes, from Amnesty International to the Sierra Club--posts a running total of the amount of money designated for each.

Some of the most popular causes include the American Civil Liberties Union, the Corp. for Public Broadcasting, the U.S. Olympic Committee and the American Cancer Society.

Purchases are not tax deductible because you receive goods for your payment.

Only tax-deductible organizations registered with the Internal Revenue Service can be listed with MyCause. If your nonprofit is not on the site, visit https://www.mycause.com/addchurch.html to suggest its addition.