My jaw literally dropped when I saw that online store Buycause.com is actually, gasp, giving away a substantial percentage of their profit to charities.
The rumors were confirmed when I visited Buycause.com, which according to the site’s representatives is a revolutionary online store created with the needs of every consumer in mind. E-commerce sites such as Amazon.com and Overstock.com should be trembling.
Buycause is uniquely designed to put money back into the account of shoppers who purchases items on the site. The amount of the financial contribution that the user receives varies from product to product, and Buycause contributes 5 to 25 percent of product sales into the account of the user.
Once money is in the account of the user, they have three options on how to spend their savings including charity, education, and credits towards future purchases.
Should the account holder choose to donate their savings to a charity, Buycause will aid them in selecting the right one for them. “When you decide to make a contribution to a cause you can simply chose from our list of more than 700,000 nonprofit organizations,” say site representatives.
With the ever increasing cost of living, the site’s creators believe that it is becoming increasingly more difficult for families to set money aside. They go on to say that, “By making your everyday purchases through Buycause.com you are able to save money while you shop.”
Certainly for families, education costs for their children are the second greatest expense to buying a home. Buycause’s “education” option allows the account holder to put their savings into a tax deductible 529 plan for their children’s education.
You might be asking yourself how a company can afford to give away up to 25 percent of it’s profits and still stay afloat. The answer lies in the fact that Buycause does not mark up their products, which most online stores do on an average of 24 percent. Although Buycause gives away up to 80 percent of its profits, yet it still retains about 8 percent.
The truly benevolent founders, Ed Thompson and Jason Pinto, said they created it to, “give back to those who indirectly gave to us.”
Hopefully this retailer-for-a-cause will give other greedy e-commerce sites a run for their money.
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Autmn Davis is a staff writer for murdok covering ebusiness and technology.
