Amazon Smile is Ending February 23, 2023

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Just received this email yesterday. It seems to be more greed from the big companies. I enjoyed them sharing profits with my favorite charity. so long Amazon Smile.

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.

To help charities that have been a part of the AmazonSmile program with this transition, we will be providing them with a one-time donation equivalent to three months of what they earned in 2022 through the program, and they will also be able to accrue additional donations until the program officially closes in February. Once AmazonSmile closes, charities will still be able to seek support from Amazon customers by creating their own wish lists.

As a company, we will continue supporting a wide range of other programs that help thousands of charities and communities across the U.S. For instance:

  • Housing Equity Fund: We’re investing $2 billion to build and preserve affordable housing in our hometown communities. In just two years, we’ve provided funding to create more than 14,000 affordable homes—and we expect to build at least 6,000 more in the coming months. These units will host more than 18,000 moderate- to low-income families, many of them with children. In one year alone, our investments have been able to increase the affordable housing stock in communities like Bellevue, Washington and Arlington, Virginia by at least 20%.
  • Amazon Future Engineer: We’ve funded computer science curriculum for more than 600,000 students across over 5,000 schools—all in underserved communities. We have plans to reach an additional 1 million students this year. We’ve also provided immediate assistance to 55,000 students in our hometown communities by giving them warm clothes for the winter, food, and school supplies.
  • Community Delivery Program: We’ve partnered with food banks in 35 U.S. cities to deliver more than 23 million meals, using our logistics infrastructure to help families in need access healthy food – and we plan to deliver 12 million more meals this year alone. In addition to our delivery services, we’ve also donated 30 million meals in communities across the country.
  • Amazon Disaster Relief: We’re using our logistics capabilities, inventory, and cloud technology to provide fast aid to communities affected by natural disasters. For example, we’ve created a Disaster Relief Hub in Atlanta with more than 1 million relief items ready for deployment, our Disaster Relief team has responded to more than 95 natural disasters, and we’ve donated more than 20 million relief products to nonprofits assisting communities on the ground.
  • Community Giving: We support hundreds of local nonprofits doing meaningful work in cities where our employees and their families live. For example, each year we donate hundreds of millions of dollars to organizations working to build stronger communities, from youth sport leagues, to local community colleges, to shelters for families experiencing homelessness.
We’ll continue working to make a difference in many ways, and our long-term commitment to our communities remains the same—we’re determined to do every day better for our customers, our employees, and the world at large.

Thank you for being an Amazon customer.
 
It carefully doesn't say they will expand any of the nominal other charitable activities, so yes the net net is less money from Amazon to charity.

And that stuff is really really nominal for a company and CEO of that size and wealth.
 
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Amazon made it more difficult than necessary for people to use Smile. You literally had to order from the Smile webpage, otherwise there was no donation if one made an Amazon purchase the usual way. Why didn't they make it so you could just toggle Amazon Smile with an account setting, so all your purchases created a donation without the hassle of going to a separate webpage?
 
Well, I will certainly trim my Amazon expenditures accordingly (far more than the 0.5%), and send the full amount to my charity of choice; Code Of Vets.

Last time I looked, $300M+ to charities is no small drop in the bucket, and if Amazon is complaining about “lack of impact”, it’s their own fault for not making the Smile part a mandatory use. I agree this is pure profit motive, and that they’re likely eliminating it because they felt they were sending too much money to charities that didn’t bow to the current liberal ideology.
 
I donate through their program to non-profits that truly appreciate every penny they receive.

Seems like Bezos has a dislike for causes that aren't big ticket or splashy. There are quite a few organizations and governments too that work on affordable housing but they aren't contributing to my local charities.

This is extremely short sighted by Bezos.
 
The program seemed disjointed. There are literally thousands of charities, some of which are questionable. So, this makes good sense to me.
Yeah and anyone can send a few dollars to their favorite cause, it doesnt have to be a lot, own a country of 350 million it can really add up.
St Jude that someone mentioned in here really gets to the core of my emotion of a good cause. (if that makes any sense)
Of course there are many others.
 
It's a tax write off. Wall Street looks at that favorably compared to (ugh) paying taxes.
 
It makes no sense for companies to donate anything; that should be up to the individual. Buy company stock and donate the profits. Or do people not want to sacrifice and want others to do the sacrificing...
 
The economy is going to get worse before it gets better and it probably took a lot of administration to donate to all those charities. Amazon just got rid of like 10k employees. A lot of companies are buckling down for a bump ride.
 
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