Supporting Mono Lake with online shopping
November 17th, 2012 by Arya, Communications Director
Of all people who struggle to choose between large online retailers and small independent bookstores, I think it’s fair to say that the Mono Lake Committee staff qualifies.
The Mono Lake Committee Information Center & Bookstore is an independent bookstore that has to compete with the ebooks, infinite selections, and impossible-to-compete-against prices of online retailers like Amazon. All of our staff members work shifts in the bookstore, keep our eyes out for new products to sell, write staff recommendations, dust the bookshelves, and shop here ourselves. We love and are deeply invested in the bookstore for lots of reasons—the great book selection, the handcrafted gifts, the Mono-Lake-ness of it all, and, of course, the fact that all of the revenues from bookstore sales go to our efforts to protect Mono Lake.
A few years back, when Amazon offered to partner with the Mono Lake Committee so that 5% of all sales made by using the link www.shopformonolake.org go to the Committee, we thought long and hard before entering the program.
The 2012 Mono Lake Committee staff. Photos by Arya Degenhardt.
As people living in the remote Lee Vining area, we’re pretty familiar with buying things online. When the cost, both environmental- and expense-wise is greater to drive to a metropolitan area for things you need, than it is for the items themselves, you learn the ropes of online shopping pretty quickly. That being said, we’re steadfastly dedicated to supporting as many local entrepreneurs as we can … from having Community Supported Agriculture shares to shopping for the things we can locally, to good old-fashioned bartering—we’re there. But there are still things that you can’t procure locally that are readily available from web retailers like Amazon.
As a non-profit organization, we must be financially prudent at every turn. We’re always weighing costs—financial and environmental—with the benefits for Mono Lake. We use the most environmentally friendly materials we can afford in our publications, we have purchased solar panels, and we carpool whenever possible, to name a few of these choices.
What it comes down to is this: if you’re already shopping on Amazon, and could choose to have 5% of your total purchase price go to Mono Lake, we’re guessing that you would want to. In fact, we’re pretty sure that most of the 16,000 Mono Lake Committee members would want that money to go to Mono Lake. We’re projecting that 5% of the purchases of even a fraction of Committee members could make enough money to hire several summer intern naturalists to share Mono Lake with visitors, or to fund supporting science for our restoration negotiations with DWP, or more important things that we really care about! If it’s money that is already being spent, and would otherwise just go to Amazon, why not?
We want to be very clear here: we are in full support of your local hardware store, the market down on the corner, the shoe store downtown, and every independent bookstore out there … including ours! We put a lot of energy into making our store’s special items available to you wherever you are, and we hope that you’ll continue to think of the Mono Lake Committee’s online store as your first place to shop for gifts. We support you in voting for the things that you value with your dollars whenever you can.
So, if that includes using the www.shopformonolake.org link every time you shop Amazon, you can be sure that we’ll put those dollars to the best work we possibly can for Mono Lake.
Directions for how to make it super easy to have 5% of your Amazon purchases go to Mono Lake:
- Just remember www.shopformonolake.org.
- Or, even easier, follow the tips on www.shopformonolake.org to add direct links to your web browser.
- Don’t forget, you have to follow the special link to assure that the Mono Lake Committee receives 5% of your purchase dollars spent on Amazon.
