Apologies for beating this drum but I find it important.
Verify with the charitable organization that they registered to receive funds from Amazon!
Amazon's list of charities comes from GuideStar USA which compiled the information from the IRS, and includes organizations which may not have registered with Amazon and thus may never receive the donations. See the section "Charitable Organizations that Do Not Register" here: https://smile.amazon.com/gp/chpf/pd/ref=smi_se_saas_lpd_spd
Last I checked, there is no clear indication to consumers that a listed charity has actually registered.
The best way to verify this on your own appears to be to pretend you want to register that organization on Amazon's Org Central site[0] which will show if it's already registered. (An example search for Child's Play[1].)
As a shopper Amazon does not make this abundantly clear when you're selecting an organization. One thing to look for is the amount of information shown about the organization, specifically the incorporation year, as those that register have to fill out a profile.
According to the FAQ if a shopper selects an organization that is not registered and makes an eligible purchase they will track the donation. If the organization registers they'll get the donation, but if they have not after 2 years then Amazon will contact the shopper and give them 30 days to select a new charity. (I'm not sure if this then resets the 2 year clock or not.) If the shopper does not select a new organization then Amazon reallocates the donation across the registered organizations.
In any case the only way to be 100% sure is to inquire with the organization.
RE AmazonSmile: Be sure that the organization you wish to support is aware of the program and actually registered with Amazon to receive the funds.
The list of charities that Amazon shows are from GuideStar USA which has compiled the information from the IRS, but this includes organizations which may not have registered and thus may never receive the donations.
The best way appears to be to pretend you want to register that organization on Amazon's Org Central site[0] which shows which already registered. (An example search for Child's Play[1].)
As a shopper I do not believe Amazon makes this abundantly clear when you're selecting an organization. One thing to look for is the amount of information shown about the organization, specifically the incorporation year, as those that register have to fill out a profile.
According to the FAQ if a shopper selects an organization that is not registered and makes an eligible purchase they will track the donation. If the organization registers they'll get the donation, but if they have not after 2 years then Amazon will contact the shopper and give them 30 days to select a new charity. (I'm not sure if this then resets the 2 year clock or not.) If the shopper does not select a new organization then Amazon reallocates the donation across the registered organizations.
In any case the only way to be 100% sure is to inquire with the organization.
They do give you a breakdown of where your money went at the bottom of their website (when logged in): https://contributor.google.com
It would be nice if they offered to e-mail this to you once a week/month or provided more detail. Even better would be for them to show some of that information in the place of the ads you've purchased.
I've been trialing Contributor for the past month and there's two reasons I'm going to continue...
1. It works anywhere I can log into Google, which means I see less ads on my mobile device or in browsers where I might not have been able to install an ad blocking extension.
2. You can configure what you see in place of most ads. Thus my browsing now has more cats: http://imgur.com/fqF0YJb
The only reason I'm thinking about ditching Contributor at this point is because I'm more of a dog lover.
It's unfortunately only for Visual Studio but Microsoft created an extension called "Developer Assistant" which does precisely that using code from MSDN, StackOverflow, GitHub, and also local sources. They boast "over 21 million code samples".
https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/185833