I wanted to buy a Canon 850 IS Elph for my mom. She'd done some research online and decided it was a good camera for her needs. She found the camera on a number of sites for around $300, which is not bad, since the MSRP is $350 (November, 2007). She also found it on a site I've used before to purchase cameras for $245. This site was not one of our merchants, but I didn't want my mom to spend an extra $50 just to give a percentage to the school she chose to support.

I decided to shop our sites a little, and I found the camera at buy.com for $260. Pretty good, but I was hoping to do a little better. Our ad had a new member coupon of $10 off a first purchase. $250. The site also offered a free magazine subscription or another $10 rebate just before checkout. $240. Also, buy.com was offering $10 off for google checkout, which I did not use at the time. So, my mom paid $240 with free shipping. I could have had it for $230 if I'd had a little time to set up a google account for checking out.

The best part of the story is that she was able to support the school she chose. About $5.40 will be donated directly to the school, just for her one purchase. And that's from a 3% commission merchant. Many offer 10% or more! Sure, not everyone is going to find all of the deals for every purchase, but Innovative School Funding offers many sites to shop from and all of them lead to money donated back to where you want it to go.