Amazon To Close Charitable Program AmazonSmile (thehill.com) 62
Amazon will be closing its charity program, AmazonSmile, in the coming weeks in order to "focus its philanthropic giving to programs with greater impact." Nexstar reports: In a letter sent to AmazonSmile customers Wednesday, Amazon explained the program "has not grown to create the impact that we had originally hoped." "With so many eligible organizations -- more than 1 million globally -- our ability to have an impact was often spread too thin," Amazon wrote.
AmazonSmile was launched in 2013. Through the program, Amazon would donate 0.5% of the price of eligible purchases to the shopper's charitable organization of their choice. According to AmazonSmile's website, over 1 million charities have benefited from the program. A spokesperson tells Nexstar those charities have received $500 million with the average annual donation being less than $230. Amazon now plans to "wind down" AmazonSmile by February 20, 2023.
Those charities that will be impacted by AmazonSmile coming to an end will receive a one-time donation worth three months of what they received in 2022, Amazon explained. Charities will still be able to receive donations until the program officially ends. After AmazonSmile ends, Amazon said charities can still create wish lists that customers can shop to support the organization. Slashdot reader cuncator shares an excerpt from the email they received announcing the discontinuation: Dear customer,
In 2013, we launched AmazonSmile to make it easier for customers to support their favorite charities. However, after almost a decade, the program has not grown to create the impact that we had originally hoped. With so many eligible organizations -- more than 1 million globally -- our ability to have an impact was often spread too thin.
We are writing to let you know that we plan to wind down AmazonSmile by February 20, 2023. We will continue to pursue and invest in other areas where we've seen we can make meaningful change -- from building affordable housing to providing access to computer science education for students in underserved communities to using our logistics infrastructure and technology to assist broad communities impacted by natural disasters.
AmazonSmile was launched in 2013. Through the program, Amazon would donate 0.5% of the price of eligible purchases to the shopper's charitable organization of their choice. According to AmazonSmile's website, over 1 million charities have benefited from the program. A spokesperson tells Nexstar those charities have received $500 million with the average annual donation being less than $230. Amazon now plans to "wind down" AmazonSmile by February 20, 2023.
Those charities that will be impacted by AmazonSmile coming to an end will receive a one-time donation worth three months of what they received in 2022, Amazon explained. Charities will still be able to receive donations until the program officially ends. After AmazonSmile ends, Amazon said charities can still create wish lists that customers can shop to support the organization. Slashdot reader cuncator shares an excerpt from the email they received announcing the discontinuation: Dear customer,
In 2013, we launched AmazonSmile to make it easier for customers to support their favorite charities. However, after almost a decade, the program has not grown to create the impact that we had originally hoped. With so many eligible organizations -- more than 1 million globally -- our ability to have an impact was often spread too thin.
We are writing to let you know that we plan to wind down AmazonSmile by February 20, 2023. We will continue to pursue and invest in other areas where we've seen we can make meaningful change -- from building affordable housing to providing access to computer science education for students in underserved communities to using our logistics infrastructure and technology to assist broad communities impacted by natural disasters.
So basically (Score:5, Insightful)
Like Walmart 25-30 years ago, they have extinguished or absorbed most of their real competition so I guess they no longer need this thin veneer any longer.
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To Amazon or in general?
Re:So basically[ it's the money, Lebowski!] (Score:2)
Got me to look at the AC brain fart. Negative thanks to you. I don't buy the excuses of "anonymous" donors. I think they have ulterior (and usually bad) reasons for hiding their charitable gifts.
On the FP line, I can't imagine anything that would get me to feed the Amazon corporate cancer at this point, so Amazon is right, the "donation" program (of OTHER people's money) was definitely too small to help. Way back when, I didn't know what a "corporate cancer" was, but I recognized Amazon as something I wante
Re:So basically (Score:5, Interesting)
It's not growing fast because it wasn't rolled into the ordinary Amazon experience.
If I were to be able to select my charity, and have all my eligible purchases go towards smile, rather than explictly go to smile.amazon.com -- they would have gotten countless more orders where I simply went to a one off purchase, or clicked on a product link.
But, amazon doesn't -really- want to help, just posture.
I can only imagine that the added plugins that force all visits to amazon.com to redirect to smile.amazon.com increasing adoption has made them question the program. That's profit they're losing.
Re:So basically (Score:5, Interesting)
The Smile site is on a separate domain because they save on paying click-through affiliates, which link to the main site. It's probably cost neutral for Amazon based on the savings they can make on that front.
Now, my guess is that there something changed in the commercial model and this no longer makes financial sense for them.
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Also, the app works exactly as GP described, you select the charity and it applies it to all your orders, so I guess where it was easy for them to do it by default, they did. Still disappointing they are winding it down, especially as I expect many charities had been depending on that income after all these years...
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I was involved in helping get a 501(c)(3) going, and Amazon Smile, while only resulting in a few hundred dollars in the first year, was really helpful in bridging some early gaps, enough for us to build up a membership that was self-sustaining. Many charities run on only a few thousand or even a few hundred dollars in donations every year, often to offset costs that would be put in by people who also put in a lot of time. If you look on various sites that are talking about this, you'll see stories of small
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Yeah, it may only be a few hundred dollars a quarter, but it can really help. I volunteer with a no-kill, all-volunteer, all-cat animal shelter that operates on a shoestring budget. The funds coming from Amazon Smile weren't huge, but they will be missed.
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Amazon discontinuing the program makes me sad. For years, I've had Amazon Smile donating money to Black Cat Rescue (https://www.facebook.com/BlackCatRescue/) to help save little house panthers. For all-volunteer cat rescue organizations, a few thousand dollars per year is a lot of money.
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Interesting, but still a pain. I used to put stuff in my basket on the main site and then switch to smile for the checkout, if I remembered. It really felt like they didn't want me to use this service.
I feel amazon as really gone down hill, prices are significantly higher than else where now. The UK site is now listing most stuff with old imperial measurements - something that hasn't really been used that widely in 40 years. I find ebay a much better experience, I site I had previously avoided.
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This was my feeling too, they made it a pain. Even with the app you had to give up permissions, such as notifications, to qualify, and also had to re-qualify it every so often. A far cry from set and forget. I liked supporting a local organization here, it was a little extra on top of what I donate to them.
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Came here to say the same thing.
Implementation was poor....
Too hard to give away money (Score:3)
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Maybe donations to USA Abortion Clinics, Climate activists, Amnesty International , EFF , healthy eating etc became a 'problem' . Much better causes would be 'Cayman Island' homeless entrepreneur fund, 'Monaco and Rhode Island' sailing club, and airfares to fly homeless Texan people to Portland.
Other way around. Look at what Amazon touted as what they are going to do moving forward.
They don't like people choosing their own preferred charities ... now it just be all woke, all the time.
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Well played.
Come to think of it, that sounds right up Amazon's alley: empowering future entrepreneurs to mistreat their customers.
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I would happily donate to causes if I could see that huge huge list
It's not a list like you seem to think. Charities signed up to be in the database, and then you picked an individual charity for your purchases.
Want local? Hit the "select charity" link and search for your city. Want a particular issue like affordable housing? Search for "affordable housing" and pick one you like.
As for US centric, well a program only available to US users, and is really an attempt to exploit US tax law, had mostly US charities.
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Your preferences regarding non-profit operations are shared by many, but research has shown time and again that these attitudes are detrimental to effectively meeting the missions of many non-profits.
That being said, there are services you can use to filter for things like that e.g GiveWell and GuideStar.
Re: Too hard to give away money (Score:1)
Here's one on the huge list:
Fanconi Anemia Research Fund (FAR)
http://www.fanconi.org/ [fanconi.org]
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I work with a nonprofit that has a reasonably large reach (we probably have 5000+ people who are reasonably affluent who care about us. We also made it known that we could be beneficiaries of “Amazon Smile”.
Over the entire course of the program, I think we received maybe a thousand bucks. It was really quite meaningless.
The best thing from Amazon was the bubble wrap which made our 4th of july fireworks more fun (we’re located in a National Forest, so real fireworks are verboten, so instead
Sounds like they want to control the charity (Score:5, Interesting)
I can understand this, being in control of a charity brings political power and the ability to reward your people with paid positions in the charity. If you are just one giver amongst many, you don't have those abilities.
It's a shame to see this go. There were many good charities that benefited. I had mine directed towards the Leukemia Society, it's a horrible thing to see kids die young.
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Bout I do not know if this is an issue of charity versus philanthropy. There is a cost associated with the program, and if a cause was receiving only a few hundred dollars, and if the overall cost of the program meant that Amazon was heavily subsiding that donation, I
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I can understand this, being in control of a charity brings political power and the ability to reward your people with paid positions in the charity. If you are just one giver amongst many, you don't have those abilities.
It's a shame to see this go. There were many good charities that benefited. I had mine directed towards the Leukemia Society, it's a horrible thing to see kids die young.
I am disappointed as my Smile charity was St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. Amazon would send me yearly emails telling me how much they sent to St. Jude and it was surprisingly low for such a well known charity. It would be a little over $1 million a year. That's not nothing and it helps, but it's a reflection of how little Amazon promoted the site. By the way, I actually know a guy who got helped by St. Jude when he was about 6 years old and decades later, he's married, never had a recurrence
The fundamental problem Amazon has (Score:4, Insightful)
With the money being spread across a million organizations, there's no opportunity for a good photo op. It's not worth Andy Jassy's time to deliver a quarterly check for $264 to our local food bank, for instance - with that size check, the local newspaper isn't even going to cover it.
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Yep, that was my exact impression of the email...the charity wasn't visible enough for them benefit from any publicity. By amazon's way of thinking, I probably shouldn't volunteer in scouts anymore because I'm only helping a few dozen kids in my community, which isn't enough impact.
I had my donations going to my elementary school PTA. Looks like they've received about $750 from amazon. That doesn't sound like much, but they get a bit from amazon, and a bit from kroger, and a bit from busch's, a bit from box
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Yep, that was my exact impression of the email...the charity wasn't visible enough for them benefit from any publicity. By amazon's way of thinking, I probably shouldn't volunteer in scouts anymore because I'm only helping a few dozen kids in my community, which isn't enough impact.
It's like that old Seinfeld episode where George is complaining that every time he leaves a tip after picking up a calzone, the counter man is busy elsewhere and doesn't notice.
George: What's the point if they don't notice?
Jerry: So, you don't make a habit of giving to the blind then.
George: Well, not bills!
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What in heaven's name made you think Bezos has a grand scheme to control charities to his will? Do you have an example where he has asked a charity to change it's behaviour to suit his ideals? Why would you think that more likely than the simple answer, that larger donations to fewer charities provides better optics?
Seems like your apparent dislike of Bezos has spilled into your critical thinking a little too much.
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A case in point of this that comes to mind is the ACLU. A LOT of people don't like the way the ACLU seems to have gotten a lot softer on their whole "free speech" stance [nytimes.com], including some of their own members. There is little to stop ACLU lawyers, paralegals, and other staffers who don't like how their organization is going from starting a new one, as far as I know, apart from having to come up with a different name. Perhaps they can start a new one and call it, "UCLA," the Union for Civil Liberties of America... or maybe not THAT one, as I think there's already some other thing or group called, "UCLA," but you get the idea.
A separate note: this is absolutely absurd. It takes time to start something new. It takes marketing to make money to fuel it. It takes backers. It takes decades to get to where the ACLU is. Meanwhile, the ACLU, having benefited from those decades of donations and growth, changed their tune. That's not a right they ever had. That's infiltration by an antithetical force. For the core ethical group which was a part of the ACLU values to spin off into the "UCLA," as you portray it, or whatever else, wo
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What in heaven's name made you think Bezos has a grand scheme to control charities to his will?
The fact all billionaires do. I can pretty well guess your economic class from the fact you don't understand that once base needs are met, you are open to recognizing that wealth isn't about a dollar value in some perpetually-inflated currency, it's about the wealth you control the flow of; it's about sorting your pet projects by for-profit and non-profit to optimize your influence. Go back to sleep and stop thinking yourself fit to talk to adults.
Charities: set up an amazon affiliate link (Score:4, Interesting)
Charities who want to continue to get money from Amazon should set up an Amazon affiliate link.
Note that anything you buy within 24 hours of clicking on an Amazon affiliate link goes to the affiliate, unless you clicked on another affiliate link since. This means that a charity can set up a website link to some product with their affiliate ID, and then you buy that or whatever else you want, and the charity gets the affiliate cut - which is a lot more than the "Smile" 0.5%.
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That's even more of a hassle than remembering to use smile.amazon.com. I'm sure it'll generate just as much for the charities in question.
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Yeah... why didn't they just make donations automatic? It was a neat idea but I remembered to use smile all of 4 times... isn't that why it failed -- because people forgot to use it?
They must need the money. (Score:2)
After all, they've gotta pay that $60,269 fine for endangering their serfs - sorry, I mean warehouse workers.
Obligatory (Score:1)
Translation (Score:2)
We did a bunch of virtue signaling, but for some weird reason people keep focusing on us being slave drivers and the whole money wasted doesn't make us appear any more likable, so why bother?
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Well... isn't that reasonable? Ultimately they're a ruthlessly for-profit business. If they aren't getting the social capital they hoped for, it makes perfect sense to discontinue it. Smaller number of larger donations looks better. They aren't, and have never claimed to be, a charity. They aren't moving the goalposts.
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No, never claimed that. I'm just a fan of terse, direct speech.
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I'm with you. I would prefer that people answered directly most of the time. Unfortunately the finessing of human interactions of all sorts are incompatible with this idea. All "politics" - and by that I don't mean governmental, I mean all fine-tuning needed to steer a social outcome - constitute some avoidance of plain statements. "The wedding dress you're looking at right now would look like shit on you." Try finding the stylist/salesperson who will say that. "Politics".
Actual governmental politics are th
Taking my money elsewhere (Score:2)
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Too bad (Score:2)
My most recent report card from Amazon Smile was dated 20 DEC:
"This is the quarterly notification to inform you that AmazonSmile has made a charitable donation to the charity you’ve selected in the amount of $7,451.47 as a result of qualifying purchases made by you and other customers between July 1st - September 30th." ...so not a huge amount but better than nothing.
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Who chooses the charities now? (Score:3)
One nice thing about the Smile Program, with it's variety of charities, which charities received funding was dependent on the customers.
I had mine set up for a small, mostly local organization that I knew did good work.
It wasn't much that they got, but they could use the money.
Now, even assuming that charitable giving remains the same, who will choose the charities?
In other words, it was evil. (Score:2)
I question your true motives.
Translation (Score:2)
"We want charitable donations to be directed to areas that benefit Amazon."
A Step Back for America’s Non-Profit World (Score:1)