The Season of Shopping, Gifts, and Giving

No matter what holiday(s) you celebrate this time of year, you’re likely buying gifts for someone. Family, friends, pets, co-workers, neighbors, bosses, caregivers, the Starbucks barista who always gets your order right and sometimes gives you a free scone – there’s someone you’re buying something for.

These wintery months have become our season of gifts, which also means it’s the season of shopping. Kick-started by Black Friday (really by the many pre-Black Friday sales), we shop ‘till we drop, empty our bank accounts, or cross everyone off our gift list. 

Being in a city like Morgantown, where my shopping options are rather limited, I tend to do quite a bit of online shopping…

So much so, in fact, that the girls who work in our apartment office (which is responsible for multiple properties and hundreds of tenants) don’t even ask for my name and unit number anymore. Embarrassing. 

And usually during the year I feel somewhat guilty about the number of packages I have to go in and sign for, but at least around the holidays I can claim I’m ordering gifts for others or receiving ones of my own.

Of course these aren’t all for me, Kate! These are all gifts for loved ones and absolutely not 12 new sweaters, 7 pairs of shoes, and 5 books for me.

But I recently came across another, even better way to assuage my shopping guilt: Giving Assistant. 

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Giving Assistant 

I’ve used cashback sites before where you can earn cashback on purchases at different participating online retailers, but Giving Assistant has changed the ballgame completely. Giving Assistant has created a platform that allows you to direct a percentage of your cashback earnings directly to a nonprofit of your choice. 

So now whenever I feel that little bit of shopping guilt rise up, I remind myself that I’m actually helping a nonprofit with every purchase – really an incentive to shop more if you ask me! 

This is the season of giving after all, and as anyone who’s ever watched any Christmas movie ever knows, the real gifts we give this season are how we reach out and help others. So the opportunity to help different nonprofits while doing what I’m already doing sounds pretty cool.

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Worth the Hassle?

I was contacted by a Giving Assistant rep and asked to try the platform out and share an honest review, so here you go…

If you’re not using any cashback site you need to rethink your shopping habits.

If you don’t choose Giving Assistant as that platform, you’re the ultimate Scrooge McDuck of the holidays.

Not convinced?

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7 Reasons I Quickly Fell in Love with this Platform

1. It’s free. Free to sign up. Free to use. Free to get your cash back. Free to donate your cashback. Free, free, free. 

2. It’s easy to use. Once you create your account, you just shop through their site or with their handy dandy toolbar button.

3. There are tons of companies to shop with. My concern with these types of cash back platforms is whether or not the sites I do the most shopping on will actually be included in the list of participating sites, or if I’d be stuck with random retailers no one has ever heard of. But not to worry, Giving Assistant has thousands of partners (in a ton of different categories!) we actually care to shop at, like:

• Anthropologie
• Sephora
• Lululemon
• Target
• Grubhub
• Mark and Graham
• Glossier
• Tory Burch
• booking.com
• Lufthansa
• Walmart
• Fandango

You can check out their full list of cash back stores here

4. There are tons of nonprofits to choose from. You can easily search from over 22,000 nonprofit organizations to select the cause you care about most, making giving back to them the easiest thing you’ll do all day. 

You can also go in and change your selected nonprofit super easily which I think is super awesome. Why not choose a different organization every month? Spread the cash back love.

You can search their full list of nonprofits here

5. You decide how much of your cashback you keep and how much you donate. You are never obligated to donate more of your cash back than you want and you can always go back in and adjust your settings.

6. Your cash back is automatically dispersed once the amount exceeds $5.99 so you don’t have to wait for monthly or quarterly payouts. 

7. You can help organizations that need it without giving it much thought.

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The only downside I’ve found so far is that there isn’t a browser toolbar button compatible with Safari right now.

But really, the extra step of going through the Giving Assistant site won’t slow my shopping down very much, and if it means I can support nonprofits I care about without really having to go out of my way to do so, I’m in. 

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If you’re finishing up (or just beginning, no judgement) your holiday shopping, try Giving Assistant out for yourself.

Like I said, it’s free and you’re already shopping. 

And bonus, if you do decide to try Giving Assistant, you can get $5 just for signing up with this link. The top of the page my referral link takes you to encourages you to support the nonprofit I’ve chosen to give back to, but if you scroll down you’ll see more info about the platform and can join and choose whichever nonprofit you wish.

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Happy shopping!

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Posted By: Clara · In: Life