Online shoppers can help do their bit for charity at no extra cost. More than 4,700 food and fashion retailers have partnered with Easyfundraising, a charity shopping site, which is helping the British-Ukrainian Aid help those suffering from the ongoing war and humanitarian crisis in Ukraine.
Purchases made at your favourite online shops including Amazon, Sainsbury's and Tesco will be turned into free donations and the retailer will make a small donation in return. All you need to do is sign up to Easyfundraising and select the charity - then you can continue your shop as normal. Insurance and travel companies are also included - to find out which retailers are involved head to the Easyfundraising website, reports Birmingham Live.
James Moir, chief executive officer at Easyfundraising, said: "We are a charity cashback shopping site - customers are able to use our website or app to shop with any of our retail partners and they earn cashback doing that. The difference that we have is when you shop at one of our retailers via our website, the retailer will pay cashback and we turn that cashback into a donation.
"The business was established to help charities and good causes - raising funds in ways that are outside of the normal bake sale, donations. This is a way that anybody wants to raise money and help can do so, by doing what they were already going to do - it doesn't actually cost them anything."
He said: "You know you're going to do some shopping and you do it via us, you will get a few per cent of that back, which will go straight into a donation - it doesn't cost you anything. The retailer funds that commission - we work with all the retailers John Lewis, eBay, Amazon. It's as simple as that - a customer wants to shop, they shop via ourselves and the retailer pays the commission which we turn into a donation. It doesn't cost the customer anything, that's the beauty of it.
"It allows everybody to give - we know that lots of people would love to donate but there are struggles to make ends meet as it is, particularly with the cost of living crisis. But our platform means you can help, you can do good, but it doesn't cost you anything to do it."
Mr Moir added: "We, like everybody, is seeing the terrible, terrible news, seeing what is happening in Ukraine. How can we help, how we do our little bit to try and help this truly terrible situation. We are also going to match donations that are raised for this charity too. Any donations raised by our customers through our platform, as a business we will match.
"The situation that has occurred and the feeling of wanting to do something to help, the terrible plight of the Ukrainian people. As a fundraising business, we wanted to help. We wanted to do our little bit to help. This is money that can be raised without costing the customer anything."
To sign up to Easyfundraising visit www.easyfundraising.org.uk, where you can choose to support a charity, including the British-Ukrainian Aid.
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