I can’t think of any reason at all NOT to do this.

Last updated on: June 12, 2019 at 11:07 am by Dan Peterson

I can’t think of any reason at all NOT to do this. 2019-06-12T11:07:49-06:00 Dan Peterson

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Contrary to the insinuations of some anonymous internet critics, I did not buy Neuschwanstein Castle with funds donated to the Interpreter Foundation. (Wikimedia Commons public domain image)

Just this morning, I received the latest quarterly AmazonSmile donation notification for the Interpreter Foundation. I’m happy to say that Interpreter recently received a quarterly donation — for, I believe, the period January-March 2019 — of $270.08 from AmazonSmile, all of it owing to customers shopping at smile.amazon.com.

Now, obviously, this isn’t a huge amount. We’re plainly not in the same league as the Red Cross, the Sierra Club, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and the American Cancer Society. Our annual expenses — excluding the Witnesses film project — run something on the order of $100,000, which cover such things as page layout, servers, source-checking of articles, and so forth. (See here for details of the Interpreter Foundation’s expenditures.)

Despite repeated allegations from certain anonymous critics, no officer of the Foundation draws a salary from it. (We have two or three part-time contract workers engaged in production of our journal, none of whom is an officer of the Foundation.) More to the point, and notwithstanding continuous claims from certain anonymous critics, none of Interpreter’s budget goes to me. Not a penny. My wife and I are, ourselves, donors to the Interpreter Foundation. My fleet of Lamborghinis, my Rolls Royce Phantom, my platinum-plated bathroom fixtures, my Bavarian castle, my private Gulfstream G650 jet, my Bahamian retreat, my modest 18,000-square-meter chalet in the Bernese Alps, my shiny collection of vintage gold bars, my various motor yachts and my sailing schooners — these are all paid for on the basis of surreptitious money transfers from a quite separate organization that’s based in Salt Lake City, in exchange for my apologetic efforts.

To date, AmazonSmile has donated a total of $3,024.34 to the Interpreter Foundation.

Plainly, we rely for our existence and our productivity on other sources of income, chiefly (by far) actual donations. But $3,024.34 is still a tidy sum, and it’s expecially pleasant to contemplate because the money comes entirely from Amazon.com. It costs those who make their purchases through AmazonSmile nothing. Absolutely nothing. (Of course, since it’s not actually our supporters’ or donors’ money, it also earns them no IRS tax benefits, and we still seek donations.)

Enrolling and buying through AmazonSmile is quite painless, and I hope that you’ll do it. I hope that you’ll do it whether you designate the Interpreter Foundation as the beneficiary of your purchases or, instead, select some other worthy charity from among the many on the AmazonSmile list.

Here’s a really impressive number: To date, according to the quarterly report that I read just this morning, AmazonSmile has donated a total of $134,890,393.33 to all charities.

Not bad!

Here are a couple of easy guides to signing up with AmazonSmile and directing that Amazon.com send a portion of its revenues to Interpreter or to some other charity of your choice:

“How to use Amazon Smile to Make Donations”

“Donate to Interpreter via AmazonSmile Purchases”

Please don’t delay doing this. Please don’t forget about it. If you ever purchase through Amazon.com, or ever imagine yourself doing so, this is a painless and cost-free way for you to benefit a cause in which you believe.

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