6 ms·

Amazon Announces $100M Donated to Charities Through AmazonSmile

43 points by tareqak 8y ago

secfirstmd 8y ago
This would be more impressive if they stopped dodging taxes and milking local taxpayers all over the world for corporate handouts.
- warent 8y ago
  This is a gnarly kind of whataboutism. Charitable deeds are charitable and the people who were helped by them were helped. That's all there is to it.
  - eropple 8y ago
    It really isn't whataboutism, though, and "charity good" is a weak-tea defense. Taxes are how societies have decided addressing social good should primarily be done. You don't get credit for doing a little bit to offset the lot of damage you do. It's just not how it works.
    - rubyfan 8y ago
      Philanthropy is certainly a more direct way to contribute to a good cause of your choice than via taxes.
    - philwelch 8y ago
      > Taxes are how societies have decided addressing social good should primarily be done. The United States in particular has never had a broad social consensus that all charity and nonprofit organizations should be nationalized and controlled by the state. Given the broad scope of 501(c)3’s, including the fact that some of them work at cross purposes, such a move could only be described as totalitarian.
  - kadendogthing 8y ago
    >That's all there is to it. You can't force everyone else to ignore a glaringly obvious problem because it runs counter to a feel-good narrative. There's a lot more that's going on here, don't try to stifle the conversation.
    - jhall1468 8y ago
      That "glaringly obvious problem" is entirely unrelated to the discussion at hand. Burn your straw man elsewhere.
      - kadendogthing 8y ago
        >is entirely unrelated to the discussion at hand It is extremely relevant. You can't possibly pretend otherwise. >Burn your straw man elsewhere. Is it that time already? Where we randomly start listing off fallacies?
        jhall1468 8y ago
        > It is extremely relevant. You can't possibly pretend otherwise. Amazon following tax law and that pissing people off is entirely irrelevant to Amazon donating to charity. That's like saying your height is totally relevant to your favorite food. The only common point is you. > Is it that time already? Where we randomly start listing off fallacies? Yes, changing the subject from charity to Amazon tax dodging (which is absolutely false anyway) isn't a straw man, it's totally coherent conversation that would naturally take if you weren't agenda-driven.
        kadendogthing 8y ago
        >Amazon following tax law and that pissing people off is entirely irrelevant to Amazon donating to charity A tax system they helped create and perpetuate. So it's not exactly as simple as "following tax law" unless you just want to boil the conversation to irrelevancy. Wait, I think that IS What you're trying to do. >That's like saying your height is totally relevant to your favorite food. No it isn't. Please don't willfully misrepresent someone else's view point just so you can easily defeat it. I think there's a word for that actually... >changing the subject from charity to Amazon tax dodging (which is absolutely false anyway) isn't a straw man No one said they were dodging taxes. Why are you attempting to willfully misrepresent other people's arguments? >agenda-driven. What does this even mean?
- trothamel 8y ago
  What taxes are they dodging? I'm sure they're good at working things to minimize the amount they have to pay, but that's pretty much everyone on their tax return.
  - justinator 8y ago
    Read all about it, https://www.amazon.com/Great-American-Tax-Dodge-Destroying/dp/0520236106 https://www.amazon.com/Great-American-Tax-Dodge-Destroying/d...
    - justinator 8y ago
      Sorry, https://smile.amazon.com/Great-American-Tax-Dodge-Destroying/dp/0520236106 https://smile.amazon.com/Great-American-Tax-Dodge-Destroying...
beart 8y ago
There are extensions for all major browsers which will automatically redirect amazon links to the smile version. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/auto-smile/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/auto-smile/
- wrycoder 8y ago
  Sometimes I'm happy to have the link that sent me get the referral. When I want to go direct, I just hit splat-L, type sm, and up pops smile.amazon.com.
- slimsag 8y ago
  I don't understand why this is an extension and not just built-in functionality to their website, though.. it feels like a potentially crooked way to get me to install an extension.
  - jhall1468 8y ago
    Yes, they want you to install an add-on Amazon didn't make. You don't have to install it, just go to smile.amazon.com when you shop. They even do reminders every once in a while to help you remember. Or change your hosts file to redirection www.amazon.com requests to smile.amazon.com. Or raise your hands and claim it's all a conspiracy I guess.
    - slimsag 8y ago
      I understand that the GP's add-on is not Amazon's. But Amazon wants you to install their "Amazon Assistant" extension in order to get this functionality[1]. They are obviously using their Smile program to push this, otherwise they would just bake this functionality directly into their website. [1] https://smile.amazon.com/gp/chpf/dashboard/ref=smi_se_rspo_lyi_dshb https://smile.amazon.com/gp/chpf/dashboard/ref=smi_se_rspo_l...
      - jhall1468 8y ago
        Oh please. It's a link at the very bottom of the page. Amazon is forcing customers to be proactive to make sure their purchases qualify as donations. It can't be "baked into the website" as purchases from Smile don't payout for affiliate links. We do, however, remind you every once in a while once you start using the regular website. It wouldn't matter what they did there would be hard core naysayers finding issues with it.
azinman2 8y ago
This feels really small. That’s probably minutes worth of revenue flowing through them. I’m glad it’s 100MM and not 0 (kudos to amazon for doing this at all), but it doesn’t seem like a huge milestone given how long the program has lasted. I would have expected it to hit 1B by now.
- saagarjha 8y ago
  I seriously doubt $100 million is minutes worth of revenue, even for Amazon.
  - lucasmullens 8y ago
    Fair point, doing some quick math it takes them 5 hours.
    - warent 8y ago
      You're probably thinking if gross revenue. Looking at net revenue however, it comes out to about two weeks... Okay, still a very short period of time.
      - jjeaff 8y ago
        When you use the word revenue by itself, it almost always means "gross revenue". And technically, net revenue is not the same as profit or net income. Net revenue would be gross revenue minus discounts and a few other things. It seems like the figure you are using is probably net income.
        azinman2 8y ago
        FWIW, I meant gross revenue... minutes was just a flippant guess.
tedsanders 8y ago
Wow, that is fantastic! It's amazing what small amounts can do at scale. I already shop through AmazonSmile and this motivates me to continue doing so. Congrats to Amazon, its shoppers, and the employees who pushed for and built this feature.
koolba 8y ago
Are there any cons at all to purchasing through smile vs regular Amazon?
- dguo 8y ago
  Nope, the prices are the same on both sites.
- dannyw 8y ago
  Not for you, but if you click on any affiliate links, I believe they’re reset on Amazon smile so the site/whatever won’t get their slice.
  - koolba 8y ago
    Awesome. I buy everything in a cleared cookie browser so nobody was getting a dime of affiliate money from me anyway. Definitely going to set this up as my default.
- rabboRubble 8y ago
  The only con I've been able to find is a) it only works if you remember to start shopping at smile.amazon.com, and b) the sign up process funnels customers to picking the larger and already well-known non-profits -- it is possible to pick any registered 501c3, but find and setting the smaller non-profit is fiddly and requires special knowledge (tax ID number) to complete.
  - philwelch 8y ago
    Does it? I’ve managed to search by name for them.
    - rabboRubble 8y ago
      If the name is unique, name search is easy. When a TIN comes in handy is if there are two non-profits with similar names.
- 8y ago
greatamerican 8y ago
I highly recommend this addon for chrome to always smile https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/smile-always/jgpmhnmjbhgkhpbgelalfpplebgfjmbf?hl=en https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/smile-always/jgpmh...
Kaveren 8y ago
This is great and everything, I'll never criticize anyone giving to charity for PR gains. I'm wondering how something like Amazon Smile affects customer behavior. Amazon makes you really think about using Amazon Smile (doesn't just donate a portion of all sales to charity, no way to automatically make all direct amazon.com purchases automatically do this). You need to remember or use some tool to make everything through smile.amazon.com. Is consumer spending affected by this? How much better do users feel about themselves after purchasing on smile.amazon.com vs amazon.com? Are they less likely to return an item? Leave a more positive review? Obviously any money going to charity is great in the first place, and using smile.amazon.com to give that 0.5% is worth it. Just curious.
- BurritoAlPastor 8y ago
  Personally, I know it’s a factor in my not using their mobile app. I’ve also talked to somebody who uses the app to shop, but then went to web to checkout with Smile. On the other hand, I really don’t know how much Amazon cares if I use their mobile app. They don’t get pushy about it.
swampthinker 8y ago
Am I missing something? Does this mean $100M in donations since the beginning of Smile? That sounds astronomically low.
topkai22 8y ago
I use amazon smile and am happy it exists, but I’d challenge Amazon to do even more. Walmart does $300M a year in giving; Target, Microsoft, and Google do around $150M each. http://fortune.com/2016/06/22/fortune-500-most-charitable-companies/ http://fortune.com/2016/06/22/fortune-500-most-charitable-co...
TheQwerty 8y ago
Apologies for beating this drum but I find it important. Verify with the charitable organization that they registered to receive funds from Amazon! Amazon's list of charities comes from GuideStar USA which compiled the information from the IRS, and includes organizations which may not have registered with Amazon and thus may never receive the donations. See the section "Charitable Organizations that Do Not Register" here: https://smile.amazon.com/gp/chpf/pd/ref=smi_se_saas_lpd_spd https://smile.amazon.com/gp/chpf/pd/ref=smi_se_saas_lpd_spd Last I checked, there is no clear indication to consumers that a listed charity has actually registered. The best way to verify this on your own appears to be to pretend you want to register that organization on Amazon's Org Central site[0] which will show if it's already registered. (An example search for Child's Play[1].) As a shopper Amazon does not make this abundantly clear when you're selecting an organization. One thing to look for is the amount of information shown about the organization, specifically the incorporation year, as those that register have to fill out a profile. According to the FAQ if a shopper selects an organization that is not registered and makes an eligible purchase they will track the donation. If the organization registers they'll get the donation, but if they have not after 2 years then Amazon will contact the shopper and give them 30 days to select a new charity. (I'm not sure if this then resets the 2 year clock or not.) If the shopper does not select a new organization then Amazon reallocates the donation across the registered organizations. In any case the only way to be 100% sure is to inquire with the organization. [0]: https://org.amazon.com/ https://org.amazon.com/ [1]: https://org.amazon.com/npo/search?q=Child%27s%20Play&p=1 https://org.amazon.com/npo/search?q=Child%27s%20Play&p=1

43 points by tareqak 8y ago

This would be more impressive if they stopped dodging taxes and milking local taxpayers all over the world for corporate handouts.

warent 8y ago
This is a gnarly kind of whataboutism. Charitable deeds are charitable and the people who were helped by them were helped. That's all there is to it.
- eropple 8y ago
  It really isn't whataboutism, though, and "charity good" is a weak-tea defense. Taxes are how societies have decided addressing social good should primarily be done. You don't get credit for doing a little bit to offset the lot of damage you do. It's just not how it works.
  - rubyfan 8y ago
    Philanthropy is certainly a more direct way to contribute to a good cause of your choice than via taxes.
  - philwelch 8y ago
    > Taxes are how societies have decided addressing social good should primarily be done. The United States in particular has never had a broad social consensus that all charity and nonprofit organizations should be nationalized and controlled by the state. Given the broad scope of 501(c)3’s, including the fact that some of them work at cross purposes, such a move could only be described as totalitarian.
- kadendogthing 8y ago
  >That's all there is to it. You can't force everyone else to ignore a glaringly obvious problem because it runs counter to a feel-good narrative. There's a lot more that's going on here, don't try to stifle the conversation.
  - jhall1468 8y ago
    That "glaringly obvious problem" is entirely unrelated to the discussion at hand. Burn your straw man elsewhere.
    - kadendogthing 8y ago
      >is entirely unrelated to the discussion at hand It is extremely relevant. You can't possibly pretend otherwise. >Burn your straw man elsewhere. Is it that time already? Where we randomly start listing off fallacies?
      - jhall1468 8y ago
        > It is extremely relevant. You can't possibly pretend otherwise. Amazon following tax law and that pissing people off is entirely irrelevant to Amazon donating to charity. That's like saying your height is totally relevant to your favorite food. The only common point is you. > Is it that time already? Where we randomly start listing off fallacies? Yes, changing the subject from charity to Amazon tax dodging (which is absolutely false anyway) isn't a straw man, it's totally coherent conversation that would naturally take if you weren't agenda-driven.
        kadendogthing 8y ago
        >Amazon following tax law and that pissing people off is entirely irrelevant to Amazon donating to charity A tax system they helped create and perpetuate. So it's not exactly as simple as "following tax law" unless you just want to boil the conversation to irrelevancy. Wait, I think that IS What you're trying to do. >That's like saying your height is totally relevant to your favorite food. No it isn't. Please don't willfully misrepresent someone else's view point just so you can easily defeat it. I think there's a word for that actually... >changing the subject from charity to Amazon tax dodging (which is absolutely false anyway) isn't a straw man No one said they were dodging taxes. Why are you attempting to willfully misrepresent other people's arguments? >agenda-driven. What does this even mean?
trothamel 8y ago
What taxes are they dodging? I'm sure they're good at working things to minimize the amount they have to pay, but that's pretty much everyone on their tax return.
- justinator 8y ago
  Read all about it, https://www.amazon.com/Great-American-Tax-Dodge-Destroying/dp/0520236106 https://www.amazon.com/Great-American-Tax-Dodge-Destroying/d...
  - justinator 8y ago
    Sorry, https://smile.amazon.com/Great-American-Tax-Dodge-Destroying/dp/0520236106 https://smile.amazon.com/Great-American-Tax-Dodge-Destroying...

beart 8y ago

There are extensions for all major browsers which will automatically redirect amazon links to the smile version. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/auto-smile/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/auto-smile/

wrycoder 8y ago
Sometimes I'm happy to have the link that sent me get the referral. When I want to go direct, I just hit splat-L, type sm, and up pops smile.amazon.com.
slimsag 8y ago
I don't understand why this is an extension and not just built-in functionality to their website, though.. it feels like a potentially crooked way to get me to install an extension.
- jhall1468 8y ago
  Yes, they want you to install an add-on Amazon didn't make. You don't have to install it, just go to smile.amazon.com when you shop. They even do reminders every once in a while to help you remember. Or change your hosts file to redirection www.amazon.com requests to smile.amazon.com. Or raise your hands and claim it's all a conspiracy I guess.
  - slimsag 8y ago
    I understand that the GP's add-on is not Amazon's. But Amazon wants you to install their "Amazon Assistant" extension in order to get this functionality[1]. They are obviously using their Smile program to push this, otherwise they would just bake this functionality directly into their website. [1] https://smile.amazon.com/gp/chpf/dashboard/ref=smi_se_rspo_lyi_dshb https://smile.amazon.com/gp/chpf/dashboard/ref=smi_se_rspo_l...
    - jhall1468 8y ago
      Oh please. It's a link at the very bottom of the page. Amazon is forcing customers to be proactive to make sure their purchases qualify as donations. It can't be "baked into the website" as purchases from Smile don't payout for affiliate links. We do, however, remind you every once in a while once you start using the regular website. It wouldn't matter what they did there would be hard core naysayers finding issues with it.

azinman2 8y ago

This feels really small. That’s probably minutes worth of revenue flowing through them. I’m glad it’s 100MM and not 0 (kudos to amazon for doing this at all), but it doesn’t seem like a huge milestone given how long the program has lasted. I would have expected it to hit 1B by now.

saagarjha 8y ago
I seriously doubt $100 million is minutes worth of revenue, even for Amazon.
- lucasmullens 8y ago
  Fair point, doing some quick math it takes them 5 hours.
  - warent 8y ago
    You're probably thinking if gross revenue. Looking at net revenue however, it comes out to about two weeks... Okay, still a very short period of time.
    - jjeaff 8y ago
      When you use the word revenue by itself, it almost always means "gross revenue". And technically, net revenue is not the same as profit or net income. Net revenue would be gross revenue minus discounts and a few other things. It seems like the figure you are using is probably net income.
      - azinman2 8y ago
        FWIW, I meant gross revenue... minutes was just a flippant guess.

tedsanders 8y ago

Wow, that is fantastic! It's amazing what small amounts can do at scale. I already shop through AmazonSmile and this motivates me to continue doing so. Congrats to Amazon, its shoppers, and the employees who pushed for and built this feature.

koolba 8y ago

Are there any cons at all to purchasing through smile vs regular Amazon?

dguo 8y ago
Nope, the prices are the same on both sites.
dannyw 8y ago
Not for you, but if you click on any affiliate links, I believe they’re reset on Amazon smile so the site/whatever won’t get their slice.
- koolba 8y ago
  Awesome. I buy everything in a cleared cookie browser so nobody was getting a dime of affiliate money from me anyway. Definitely going to set this up as my default.
rabboRubble 8y ago
The only con I've been able to find is a) it only works if you remember to start shopping at smile.amazon.com, and b) the sign up process funnels customers to picking the larger and already well-known non-profits -- it is possible to pick any registered 501c3, but find and setting the smaller non-profit is fiddly and requires special knowledge (tax ID number) to complete.
- philwelch 8y ago
  Does it? I’ve managed to search by name for them.
  - rabboRubble 8y ago
    If the name is unique, name search is easy. When a TIN comes in handy is if there are two non-profits with similar names.
8y ago

greatamerican 8y ago

I highly recommend this addon for chrome to always smile https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/smile-always/jgpmhnmjbhgkhpbgelalfpplebgfjmbf?hl=en https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/smile-always/jgpmh...

Kaveren 8y ago

This is great and everything, I'll never criticize anyone giving to charity for PR gains. I'm wondering how something like Amazon Smile affects customer behavior. Amazon makes you really think about using Amazon Smile (doesn't just donate a portion of all sales to charity, no way to automatically make all direct amazon.com purchases automatically do this). You need to remember or use some tool to make everything through smile.amazon.com. Is consumer spending affected by this? How much better do users feel about themselves after purchasing on smile.amazon.com vs amazon.com? Are they less likely to return an item? Leave a more positive review? Obviously any money going to charity is great in the first place, and using smile.amazon.com to give that 0.5% is worth it. Just curious.

BurritoAlPastor 8y ago
Personally, I know it’s a factor in my not using their mobile app. I’ve also talked to somebody who uses the app to shop, but then went to web to checkout with Smile. On the other hand, I really don’t know how much Amazon cares if I use their mobile app. They don’t get pushy about it.

swampthinker 8y ago

Am I missing something? Does this mean $100M in donations since the beginning of Smile? That sounds astronomically low.

topkai22 8y ago

I use amazon smile and am happy it exists, but I’d challenge Amazon to do even more. Walmart does $300M a year in giving; Target, Microsoft, and Google do around $150M each. http://fortune.com/2016/06/22/fortune-500-most-charitable-companies/ http://fortune.com/2016/06/22/fortune-500-most-charitable-co...

TheQwerty 8y ago

Apologies for beating this drum but I find it important. Verify with the charitable organization that they registered to receive funds from Amazon! Amazon's list of charities comes from GuideStar USA which compiled the information from the IRS, and includes organizations which may not have registered with Amazon and thus may never receive the donations. See the section "Charitable Organizations that Do Not Register" here: https://smile.amazon.com/gp/chpf/pd/ref=smi_se_saas_lpd_spd https://smile.amazon.com/gp/chpf/pd/ref=smi_se_saas_lpd_spd Last I checked, there is no clear indication to consumers that a listed charity has actually registered. The best way to verify this on your own appears to be to pretend you want to register that organization on Amazon's Org Central site[0] which will show if it's already registered. (An example search for Child's Play[1].) As a shopper Amazon does not make this abundantly clear when you're selecting an organization. One thing to look for is the amount of information shown about the organization, specifically the incorporation year, as those that register have to fill out a profile. According to the FAQ if a shopper selects an organization that is not registered and makes an eligible purchase they will track the donation. If the organization registers they'll get the donation, but if they have not after 2 years then Amazon will contact the shopper and give them 30 days to select a new charity. (I'm not sure if this then resets the 2 year clock or not.) If the shopper does not select a new organization then Amazon reallocates the donation across the registered organizations. In any case the only way to be 100% sure is to inquire with the organization. [0]: https://org.amazon.com/ https://org.amazon.com/ [1]: https://org.amazon.com/npo/search?q=Child%27s%20Play&p=1 https://org.amazon.com/npo/search?q=Child%27s%20Play&p=1