Caroline left a comment suggesting a site called Maatiam for shopping on line. The catch is Maatiam donates a portion of the purchases to charity and you get to pick the charity. As I’ve been doing this Internet thing a long time now I wanted to make sure this wasn’t a scam before I passed it along and did some digging. I couldn’t find anything negative about the project and people only had good things to say. It looks like Maatiam has been around at least 2 years and the best part of the idea is:

• You don’t pay any extra. You get to shop a top stores that you know and love like Amazon, Buy.com, Target, etc. and you get the same prices you normally would.
• You get to pick the charity! Maatiam has over 800,000 charities to choose from so you should be able to find one that works for you.

The way this works is pretty slick. The reason you don’t have to pay extra is that Maatiam has signed up to the affiliate programs for all these retailers and gets paid a commission on everything people buy. Maatiam donates approximately 7% of the sales to the charity of your choice keeping only about 3% for costs and overhead.

While this is slightly off topic here I think it’s a great cause and a great example of how to use the Internet and the affiliate marketing concept to do something that can have an impact on real peoples lives. I’m about to start doing the online portion of my Christmas shopping and I plan on using Maatiam.