Here’s why teachers should break up with Amazon’s wish lists — and where to find better alternatives.
Teachers routinely spend their own money on school supplies. With public school district budgets being slashed nationwide, over 90 percent of public K-12 teachers now pay for classroom supplies out of their own pockets, spending an average of $895 annually. It’s no surprise, then, that tens of thousands of teachers post online wish lists for their classrooms, asking parents and other community members to help them out.
But every time teachers post a classroom wish list on Amazon, they’re essentially voting against their next pay raise.
It’s elementary math: Money spent buying supplies from Amazon leaves the community and goes to Amazon and its investors. Fewer local sales mean less tax revenue. Less tax revenue means less money for schools and for teacher salaries. But money spent buying supplies from local, independent businesses remains local, supporting jobs, sustaining a local business network — printers, cleaning services, accountants, and more — and generating some of the tax revenue that pays teachers’ salaries.
When a community loses an independent business, it also loses the direct support — economic and social — that they provide. An astonishing 90 percent of small businesses provided financial support to school and youth programs in their communities in 2023, plus in-kind support and volunteer labor. Losing this support deprives students of opportunities to gain first-hand experience working for an independent business. And, perhaps most crucially, communities lose the accountability that independent businesses provide. Their success depends on maintaining a good reputation in the community. If a school has a time-sensitive need, many local businesses will do everything possible to get the product there on time — but Jeff Bezos isn’t going to lose any sleep over late or lost orders.
Drained local economies lead to drained school budgets, fueling a surge in teacher wish lists that are becoming almost synonymous with Amazon. Even wish list platforms that appear neutral are often intertwined with the online giant. For example, TeacherLists.com, which aggregates teachers’ wish lists and student supply lists, claims to have almost two million lists on its platform, which it then shares with major retailers, including Amazon. The wishlist website GetYourTeachOn had hosted 68,000 wish lists by October 2024; in response to a question from us, one of the site’s representatives wrote, “ALL of our wish lists on our site go to Amazon links!”
Here are good options that teachers can use instead of going to Amazon.
Use a freeform platform to link to local and regional suppliers. Look for a wish list platform that has no affiliate relationships and no direct connections to Amazon, then add products from local suppliers.
Create classroom wish lists and student supply lists with independent school supply dealers. A growing number of office supply stores, art supply stores, bookstores, and toy stores offer wish lists on their websites.
Seek outright grants that you can use to buy supplies from independent businesses in your area. Rather than steering sales directly to Amazon, some platforms serve as go-betweens for cash donations. Hundreds of teachers have used crowdfunding platforms, like GoFundMe, to buy classroom supplies. AdoptAClassroom accepts dollar donations on behalf of teachers and their schools, then purchases the requested items from its own marketplace vendors — and Amazon is not one of them. To cover its operating expenses, AdoptAClassroom retains ten percent of all donations.
For platforms that buy supplies for teachers, check to see where they buy them. Ostensibly to prevent rogue purchases, several wish list platforms buy items from teachers’ lists themselves and ship them directly to schools. But the odds are good that those school supplies are coming from Amazon. Even DonorsChoose, which teachers use at almost 90 percent of all public schools in the United States, steers teachers to its 21 “integrated vendors,” including Amazon. If a teacher wants something that isn’t offered by one of those vendors, they can submit a special request — but, given that Amazon’s platform contained roughly 600 million items as of July 2024, it’s unlikely that a teacher wouldn’t find a product there, so local businesses are almost certain to lose out.
Ask independent businesses to host teacher wish lists. If there is a local office supply dealer, art supply store, bookstore, sporting goods store, toy store, or other store that might sell things that teachers need, ask them to host teacher wish lists. Locally owned businesses are often happy to do so, and they almost always offer faster delivery than Amazon. Many offer special benefits, also. Riverside, California’s CM School Supply, a family-owned business since 1972, offers teacher discounts. East Texas Educational Supplies, in Longview, offers a frequent shopper rewards program.
Look for free classroom supplies. Some community foundations and other community-based nonprofits underwrite or subsidize the cost of school supplies. For example, the Education Foundation of Palm Beach County’s Red Apple Supplies program donates free classroom supplies to Title 1 schools, and Teacher Store, in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, distributes free school supplies throughout eastern Iowa.
But do some research. Some of the organizations that offer free school supplies simply buy them from Amazon. For example, in addition to accepting supply donations, Huntsville, Alabama-based Free 2 Teach has three Amazon wish lists (one for general supplies, one for its STEM program, and one for its Free 2 Learn program) through which supporters can buy supplies that the organization then offers to teachers within a four-county area. Ironically, its work is supported primarily by local, independent businesses.
When we rethink what we buy, we rethink the kind of community we create. Choosing community-based wish lists is one small way to strengthen local businesses — not distant corporate balance sheets — and to give back to the places that students call home.
Amazon has quietly captured a growing share of government purchasing. This major report explains how, and what to do about it.
ILSR's virtual briefing on Amazon’s growing capture of your local public dollars — and what you can do about it.
You know why your local and state governments shouldn't be buying from Amazon. Here's what you can do about it.
Looking to protest The Washington Post's decision to pull their Kamala Harris endorsement and considering cancelling Amazon Prime? This cheat sheet makes it easy.