4 ms·

Amazon donates 0.5% of the price of your purchases to the charity of your choice

46 points by Reltair 13y ago

t0 13y ago
Is this forever? Why are we just hearing about this now - and from a mallard?
- cleverjake 13y ago
  Its a really new program - it seems to bea l ong term thing. http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20131030005299/en/Amazon-Launches-AmazonSmile-%E2%80%93-Simple-Automatic-Customers http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20131030005299/en/Amaz...
- ars 13y ago
  From a mallard? A duck?
  - jared314 13y ago
    It showed up, on Reddit, 6 hours ago as a meme, using the Actual Advice Mallard image. http://www.reddit.com/r/AdviceAnimals/comments/1pu5wh/a_simple_way_to_help_the_world/ http://www.reddit.com/r/AdviceAnimals/comments/1pu5wh/a_simp... http://i.imgur.com/SRIGLBb.jpg http://i.imgur.com/SRIGLBb.jpg
  - nrbafna 13y ago
    This suggestion was recently posted an "Actual Advice Mallard" meme on Reddit.
martinald 13y ago
FWIW, I work helping the non-profit site www.thegivingmachine.co.uk. We give 2.25% of purchases tracked through our site from Amazon (plus some other retailers). We also have a lot of other merchants signed up.
jared314 13y ago
Previous Discussion (4 days ago): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6643676 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6643676
lincolnq 13y ago
This is fantastic! To save the most lives, select Against Malaria Foundation as your charity. It's the current top recommendation from Givewell (http://www.givewell.org http://www.givewell.org), an excellent charity evaluation organization. They focus on proven cost-effectiveness and transparency. AMF can save lives at a rate of $2500 or so per life saved, which vastly outperforms most other giving opportunities, at least if you require a high standard of evidence. Givewell's evaluation of AMF is here: http://www.givewell.org/international/top-charities/AMF http://www.givewell.org/international/top-charities/AMF
codex 13y ago
Amazon may be making more profit on these purchases, rather than less--utilizing the potent marketing skills of non-profit organizations to direct more dollars to Amazon without Amazon having to pay higher affiliate fees. I'm not an expert, but I think Amazon's affiliate fees can be as high as 10% of the purchase price. 0.5% is a 20x cheaper customer acquisition cost.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- stp-ip 13y ago
  One reason why they axed down socialvest.com and aflattr.com support and started doing smile. Nothing new, but cheaper.
kimonos 13y ago
This is great news! Keep it up!
shliachtx 13y ago
There's a catch... It only works if you go to http://smile.amazon.com http://smile.amazon.com, using the regular amazon won't do anything.
lifeisstillgood 13y ago
Errr, out of 1 million eligible 501c's how many are "controversial"? as in political shills or fronts for religious nut jobs? I wonder how Amazon plans to deal with the inevitable "why did you donate to a charity supporting / opposing $ISSUE? Edit: well kids that's what happens if you comment before coffee - a negative take on something that has a decent potential to up the level of giving USA wide by a huge margin. Visit givewell.org and choose your favourite. may as well make that prime account count - let me know when the UK can join in too.
jessepollak 13y ago
The first thing I thought when I saw this was awesome! The second thing I thought was that I'd never remember to use it. Just whipped up a tiny little chrome extension that will always redirect you to smile.amazon.com when you go to Amazon. It's not well tested, so could screw you up a bunch, but figured I'd share. https://github.com/jessepollak/smile https://github.com/jessepollak/smile
charlysisto 13y ago
yup that's also the amount of taxes amazon's paying in europe
dingaling 13y ago
I wouldn't expect it to be too difficult to incorporate one's own charity these days. A 0.5% effective rebate on everything you purchase on Amazon is better than many bank accounts offer...

46 points by Reltair 13y ago

t0 13y ago

Is this forever? Why are we just hearing about this now - and from a mallard?

cleverjake 13y ago
Its a really new program - it seems to bea l ong term thing. http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20131030005299/en/Amazon-Launches-AmazonSmile-%E2%80%93-Simple-Automatic-Customers http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20131030005299/en/Amaz...
ars 13y ago
From a mallard? A duck?
- jared314 13y ago
  It showed up, on Reddit, 6 hours ago as a meme, using the Actual Advice Mallard image. http://www.reddit.com/r/AdviceAnimals/comments/1pu5wh/a_simple_way_to_help_the_world/ http://www.reddit.com/r/AdviceAnimals/comments/1pu5wh/a_simp... http://i.imgur.com/SRIGLBb.jpg http://i.imgur.com/SRIGLBb.jpg
- nrbafna 13y ago
  This suggestion was recently posted an "Actual Advice Mallard" meme on Reddit.

martinald 13y ago

FWIW, I work helping the non-profit site www.thegivingmachine.co.uk. We give 2.25% of purchases tracked through our site from Amazon (plus some other retailers). We also have a lot of other merchants signed up.

jared314 13y ago

Previous Discussion (4 days ago): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6643676 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6643676

lincolnq 13y ago

This is fantastic! To save the most lives, select Against Malaria Foundation as your charity. It's the current top recommendation from Givewell (http://www.givewell.org http://www.givewell.org), an excellent charity evaluation organization. They focus on proven cost-effectiveness and transparency. AMF can save lives at a rate of $2500 or so per life saved, which vastly outperforms most other giving opportunities, at least if you require a high standard of evidence. Givewell's evaluation of AMF is here: http://www.givewell.org/international/top-charities/AMF http://www.givewell.org/international/top-charities/AMF

codex 13y ago

Amazon may be making more profit on these purchases, rather than less--utilizing the potent marketing skills of non-profit organizations to direct more dollars to Amazon without Amazon having to pay higher affiliate fees. I'm not an expert, but I think Amazon's affiliate fees can be as high as 10% of the purchase price. 0.5% is a 20x cheaper customer acquisition cost.

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
stp-ip 13y ago
One reason why they axed down socialvest.com and aflattr.com support and started doing smile. Nothing new, but cheaper.

kimonos 13y ago

This is great news! Keep it up!

shliachtx 13y ago

There's a catch... It only works if you go to http://smile.amazon.com http://smile.amazon.com, using the regular amazon won't do anything.

lifeisstillgood 13y ago

Errr, out of 1 million eligible 501c's how many are "controversial"? as in political shills or fronts for religious nut jobs? I wonder how Amazon plans to deal with the inevitable "why did you donate to a charity supporting / opposing $ISSUE? Edit: well kids that's what happens if you comment before coffee - a negative take on something that has a decent potential to up the level of giving USA wide by a huge margin. Visit givewell.org and choose your favourite. may as well make that prime account count - let me know when the UK can join in too.

jessepollak 13y ago

The first thing I thought when I saw this was awesome! The second thing I thought was that I'd never remember to use it. Just whipped up a tiny little chrome extension that will always redirect you to smile.amazon.com when you go to Amazon. It's not well tested, so could screw you up a bunch, but figured I'd share. https://github.com/jessepollak/smile https://github.com/jessepollak/smile

charlysisto 13y ago

yup that's also the amount of taxes amazon's paying in europe

dingaling 13y ago

I wouldn't expect it to be too difficult to incorporate one's own charity these days. A 0.5% effective rebate on everything you purchase on Amazon is better than many bank accounts offer...