The Catholic Way to Shop

Keeping a not-for-profit Catholic apostolate afloat on the turbulent, troubled waters in the current economic climate is no easy task. Still, we can’t remember a time when it’s been smooth sailing. Just when you think you’ve got one leak plugged up, another crack materializes — whether it be in the form of postal rate hikes (which crept up again in May), rising printing costs, canceled subscriptions, the banning of our ads, etc.

So we are always on the lookout for new ways to keep our struggling ship on the crest of the wave. To that end, we recently signed up with www.Good­Search.com, an Internet search engine that donates a percentage of its advertising revenue to nonprofit organizations like the NOR. (For more on how this works, see our New Oxford Note “Don’t Just Search, GoodSearch,” March.) GoodSearch operates an online shopping mall called GoodShop. When online shoppers make purchases after clicking through GoodShop, the nonprofit organization the shopper has chosen to support benefits by receiving a percentage of the sale.

The way this works is that the online merchant that makes the sale (Amazon.com, for example) pays a commission to the website (GoodShop) that directed the customer to the merchant’s website. GoodShop then passes a portion of that commission to the nonprofit organization the customer has chosen to support (the NOR, for example). This is what’s called affiliate marketing. And the best part is that you, the customer, pay nothing extra to support causes such as the NOR. Your ordinary online purchases can become a vehicle for charitable donation — with nothing extra coming out of your pocketbook.

We have been heartened by the support of our readers who have taken advantage of GoodSearch and GoodShop as cost-free ways to support our apostolate.