Amazon’s Smile program was one of the few good things Amazon did… kind of. It allowed users to specify a charity who would receive a donation, taken from a small portion of each sale. Amazon likely saw it as a way to increase goodwill towards the brand and get a bit of a tax write-off. However, to the charities receiving funds, it could be tens of thousands of dollars pouring in every year. Over the years I’ve given to a few charities through Amazon Smile, and they’ve consistently, even the smaller charities, gotten over a thousand dollars every quarter from users. Larger ones received tens of thousands each quarter.
Amazon’s killing the program. Perhaps they realized no one would abandon their Amazon Prime membership no matter what, that Amazon had become too big to fail, ubiquitous in our lives. Maybe they just weren’t getting the tax breaks they wanted. Either way, they’ve decided that the millions of dollars they gave to charities was just too much, and they’ve decided to end the program. According to Amazon, it’s because they weren’t giving enough… because giving nothing is better than giving something?
Is it?
Every Penny Counts
Between July 1st and September 30th of 2022, NARAL Pro-Choice America received $3,874.43 from Amazon Smile. At that point, Amazon had given $44,476.07 to NARAL Pro-Choice America to date. I had switched to NARAL after the dismantling of our basic human rights under a corrupt Supreme Court. Prior to that, I was giving to the American Cancer Society. Between January 1st and March 31st of 2022, the American Cancer Society received $97,814.38. To date, they had received $1,920,437.88 from Amazon Smile donations. Hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, and nearly $2 million over their time with Amazon Smile.
Amazon had donated over $449 million to charities around the world. After February, 2023, that number will never increase again. Charities rely on regular donations. Even the smaller ones I donated to at least saw a few thousand every quarter. Many saw tens of thousands each quarter. They needed those regular donations to help them staff and plan out expenses for the year. Without a steady revenue stream, planning for the year is extremely difficult for a charity. That’s why so many ask for small recurring gifts, rather than large one-time donations. Amazon Smile was a wonderful source of repeated, regular, and reliable donations.
Now it’s gone.
As a result, charities will likely have to cut back spending. They may have to lay people off. They will help fewer people.
Thanks to Amazon’s selfish decision.
Smiles to Frowns
It seems like Amazon Smile was just a scheme so Amazon could buy some goodwill. Amazon likely realized it wasn’t helping much—people hate them anyway—and the tax write-offs really don’t matter when you dodge taxes anyway. Amazon knew few people—if anyone—would cancel their Prime membership over the end of Smile, and goodwill doesn’t really matter when everyone has just accepts Amazon as a necessary evil. Where else will you shop online? Small businesses have shut down, main street died when the highway went in and the sidewalks were torn out, the malls are extinct, and a large percentage of online retail just goes through Amazon anyway. We need legislation to topple these tech giants, so competition and innovation can flourish again. Until then, Amazon will continue to be all but inevitable for most U.S. consumers, so they really won’t care if you think they’re evil or not. You’re buying from Amazon anyway.