Back in June I had a promotion on Alex's Coupons where we donated 100% of our commissions from Onlineshoes.com for the month to charity, and Onlineshoes.com matched it with their own donation.

I'm in the process of putting together a similar promotion for Christmas this year and have started contacting a few select merchants to gauge their interest. A friend of mine suggested that I contact Overstock.com since they're one of our larger merchants. Here is the response that I got from the affiliate manager at Overstock.com:

"Our experience has shown most of those programs only achieve brand recognition and we have establish (sic) our brand as a major online retailer."

So that's why people and companies donate to charities - to achieve brand recognition, not to help those less fortunate than ourselves. I did not know that!

Needless to say Overstock.com is off my Christmas Card list! ;-).