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Amazon has been historically very stingy with their donations. Internally, employees have begged for literally decades for an employee donation matching progra

Amazon has been historically very stingy with their donations. Internally, employees have begged for literally decades for an employee donation matching program (similar to Microsoft's donation matching) and have been stonewalled for years, with upper leadership not wanting to give a firm answer as to why. Meanwhile, most of the philanthropic endeavors that Amazon does offer its employees internally are in some way otherwise related to things that Jeff has a fiduciary tie to or where doing so was politically motivated to turn a blind eye to the rapid expansion of the Downtown/SLU Seattle Campus.

odysseus 4y ago
Other large companies are similar. I worked for one multinational where they only allowed employee donation matching in narrow cases: - certain large universities - certain large hospitals And that's it. I wrote to HR multiple times asking if my local health related charity could be part of their matching donations. Finally got a terse answer saying "no, only the ones on the list." Some enterprises are so scared of anything remotely resembling controversy that they severely restrict matching, and others just don't offer it at all. Meanwhile, Microsoft is fantastic about employee matching.
wombatpm 4y ago
And the smile program was another example of that. Had to use the correct url or nothing went to charity. They could have made it a setting for the user, or an option during checkout. I bet if the offered round up for charity in the checkout process the funds collected would dwarf those raised by the smile program.
- jen20 4y ago
  Was it even possible to do in the app?
  - rahimnathwani 4y ago
    Yes, for the app it's a one-off setting. If you only purchase via the app, no need to remember the smile URL.
    - gammarator 4y ago
      ... I tried to remember to use smile for years and never knew about the app setting :-(

odysseus 4y ago

Other large companies are similar. I worked for one multinational where they only allowed employee donation matching in narrow cases: - certain large universities - certain large hospitals And that's it. I wrote to HR multiple times asking if my local health related charity could be part of their matching donations. Finally got a terse answer saying "no, only the ones on the list." Some enterprises are so scared of anything remotely resembling controversy that they severely restrict matching, and others just don't offer it at all. Meanwhile, Microsoft is fantastic about employee matching.

wombatpm 4y ago

And the smile program was another example of that. Had to use the correct url or nothing went to charity. They could have made it a setting for the user, or an option during checkout. I bet if the offered round up for charity in the checkout process the funds collected would dwarf those raised by the smile program.

jen20 4y ago
Was it even possible to do in the app?
- rahimnathwani 4y ago
  Yes, for the app it's a one-off setting. If you only purchase via the app, no need to remember the smile URL.
  - gammarator 4y ago
    ... I tried to remember to use smile for years and never knew about the app setting :-(