The Philanthropic Shopper's Dream!

Are you on a tight budget and think giving is out of your reach?

Do you like to shop online?

Are you looking for an easy way to support The Red Thread?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, we want to (re)introduce you to a program that is a great vehicle to help your family or business reach its philanthropic goals for 2011.

For those of you who have specified The Red Thread Promise as your charity of choice and are already using it, grazi!

For those who aren't familiar with it, here's how it works. iGive is a website that connects you to your favorite online stores and supports your favorite charity, all at the same time and at no extra cost to you!

When you order anything offered by an iGive retailer, a portion of the purchase price goes to your charity of choice. It's that easy and it's all automatic! You don't need to enter any codes, notify the store, or iGive.

All you do is: 1) sign up, 2) choose your charity, 3) connect to your favorite online retailers through iGive, 4) iGive does the rest.

Here's how we put it to work this past week when booking airline tickets for our upcoming trip to Haiti. We went to iGive.com and clicked on PriceLine.com. This connected us to PriceLine's site. We went through all of the standard procedures for booking tickets. When we completed the process and paid for the tickets, PriceLine donated 1.6% of the purchase price to The Red Thread Promise. That's it. $26.01 will come to us next month from iGive. How cool is that?

(RedThreadSonya writes: Personally, I order most of the birthday and holiday gifts for my family this way. I just go to www.iGive.com, click on the link to Barnes & Noble—my favorite gift shop!—and B&N sends 2.4% of my purchase price to TRTP. It's a great way for me to give something extra to The Red Thread. I also use it when I order office supplies for my business or when I send flowers to my mother for Mother's Day. Speaking of which...)

The list of retailers is extensive.

If you'd like more info on how it works, check it out.

If you'd like to sign up and begin giving, follow steps 1 & 2.

We hope you'll consider supporting The Red Thread through iGive.