Amazon.com and Katrina - good but not great

First, the good news is that as of this minute, nearly 100,000 Amazon.com customers have donated more than $10,000,000 to the Red Cross for Katrina relief. This is good, but not great, and it could easily be great with 2 Amazon.com improvements.

First, Amazon.com let me add Red Cross charity donations to my Amazon.com "wish list." I'd gladly clear out all of my Simpsons, Futurama, and Ren & Stimpy DVDs and other assorted junk from my wish list and replace it with 1 item - "donations to the Red Cross" if I could. Amazon probably doesn't want me to do this though because if some lost soul buys me Simpsons "Tree House of Horror" Amazon makes $. But they don't make $ for donations to the Red Cross.

Second, Amazon should let me (us, anyone) pay for a donation with an Amazon.com gift certificate. I had a $46 gift cert for Amazon last month (from my whopping Q2 associates revenue) and wanted to donate it to one of the Amazon non-profit innovation award groups (www.amazon.com/nonprofitinnovation) but no can do. I emailed Amazon support and got a canned "you can only pay by credit card" response? Why? Another obvious answer. Gift certs (especially from associate revenue) are funny-money for Amazon. If I paid Red Cross with this, Amazon would have to give them $46 of real money versus sending me $46 worth of books at retail, which probably cost them on the order of $30, a $16 swing. (BTW, I've since changed my associate payment options to a bank deposit so I can more freely use it as I please, giving it to Katrina relief as promised. Buying books and DVDs at Amazon is suddenly a lower priority.)

Lastly, on the topic of wishlists here's another Katrina money raiser idea: with Christmas coming up in a few months, we'll all start to be deluged with consumer/retail pleas for our money. Tell your friends and relatives "no gifts for me this year, what I'd really like is for you to donate to [insert the charity of your choice here] on my behalf, that will bring me more joy than anything you can put under a tree." We've done that with selected relatives the last few years for other charities, I'm telling everyone that this year. Or if you set a budget for holiday gift giving, set it, then cut it in half and give the first half to charity. Ditto for birthdays, anniversaries, Valentines day, and any other holiday where gift giving is expected.