I recently discovered that you can filter search results on eBay to show only items that benefit charities. I don’t buy much stuff online these days – to qualify that, I don’t buy much of anything these days except for food and a few occasional items that I need. There’s no excuse for continuing life as normal* right now but, despite all the news on climate change, this normality continues. Anyway, I digress… let’s get back to shopping, lolz.
*Our association of fulfillment with material possessions is hardly normal, but that’s a discussion for a different post.
I’ve always favored eBay over retailers like Amazon, for the obvious reason that eBay largely deals with used items. Obviously, buying used items significantly reduces the impact (carbon and material footprints, social impact) over buying brand new items. For the things that I do need to buy (clothes, mainly) I try to buy them used in thrift stores that support charitable organizations. This has a double positive – it’s a low-impact used item and also supports a charity (local animal shelters, Goodwill, etc.).
So, I was recently happy to discover that it’s possible to filter results on eBay that show items that support charities. This is really useful when searching for specific items that you’re not likely to find in a local charity store.
How to support charities on eBay
If you’d like to support charities on eBay, here are a couple of different ways to do it.
Method 1: Shop in specific charity stores in eBay
Go to the eBay for charity site on the eBay site that you use. For example:
- eBay for charity on eBay.com (main site, US)
- eBay for charity on eBay.co.uk (UK website)
On the eBay for Charity page, you’ll see a list of featured charities that have individual stores on eBay (ASPCA, RSPCA, Children in Need, etc.). You can also use the left sidebar to search within all charities by category (art, fashion, etc.). These methods may be best when you’re not sure what you’re looking for but just want to find a gift that benefits charity.
Method 2: Search for specific items and filter results to “Benefits charity”
This method is best when you know what you’re looking for. Do a regular search for specific items on eBay and then filter the results to show only those items that benefit a charity. It’s not obvious how to filter results in this way, so I’ll explain how to find it (this is on a computer):
Search for whatever you want to buy (e.g., Bluetooth speaker) and then, keeping an eye on the left sidebar, scroll down until you see Show only, and then click on the see all link, as shown here:
That opens a new window and the second last item in this window is a checkbox for Benefits charity. Click the Apply button and now the results will show only the items that benefit charities.
If you are using the Ebay mobile site on your phone, do a search and then select Filter under the search bar and toggle on the second last button: Benefits Charity.
So if you do need to buy gifts for the holidays or generally, whenever you need to buy stuff, bear this in mind!
The Green Stars Project 