What is a charity counter?
A charity counter is an app or an add-on to your eCommerce site that enables you to earn money for charity. An online counter for donations is akin to brick-and-mortar stores asking for donations when you're at the cash register. This just happens to be online! Add-ons like a charity counting app allow you to
- align your mission with a charitable organization
- track donations to show on your homepage
- demonstrate that a portion of specific product sales have gone to a good cause
How do charity counters work?
These counters work by allowing you to add a tool to your eCommerce site. Once you have chosen an organization that aligns with your business, you can allow site visitors and shoppers to
- donate additional money
- round to the nearest dollar
- pledge a dollar amount or percentage from each sale to charity
The money is collected when a visitor makes a purchase on your eCommerce store. Within a certain timeframe, the app adds all the donations given and this amount can be passed along to the chosen charity.
Where can I find charity apps?
If you head over to the Shopify app store, you can search by 'charity' or 'donation' to see the apps that allow you to make charitable donations on your eCommerce site.
What do donation/charity apps do?
Some of these apps will allow you to display the amount raised. This is helpful if your team or company collects donations outside of your eCommerce site. You can also use these apps to
- display how much has been raised
- show your visitors the causes you support
- how much you (and them) have been able to help
Popular sites like tentree do this by showing how many trees have been planted worldwide thanks to purchases from their customers. What you choose depends on the giving needs of your site and your business.
Where and how should you add charity counters?
If your company is green, you could show how much wildlife you've saved, or how many trees you've planted with a counter widget. Otherwise, you can add roundups to specific products or collections. For a percentage, this would be on the cart page, and it would take a percentage of the overall sale to donate to a given charity.
Where to donate?
Do some research about what charity you want to align your business with. You could match the items you sell to a charity, for example, if you sell outdoor patio furniture, maybe your brand should align with a tree-planting charity!
Or maybe you want to support a charity based on the time of the year. For Earth Day, it would be a great opportunity to support a charity focused on habitat conservation. Check out this Awareness Days Calendar for some ideas.
