
Amazon Announces $100M Donated to Charities Through AmazonSmile - tareqak
https://press.aboutamazon.com/news-releases/news-release-details/amazon-announces-100-million-donated-charities-through
======
Kaveren
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
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.

------
topkai22
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-
co...](http://fortune.com/2016/06/22/fortune-500-most-charitable-companies/)

------
azinman2
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
I seriously doubt $100 million is minutes worth of revenue, even for Amazon.

~~~
lucasmullens
Fair point, doing some quick math it takes them 5 hours.

~~~
warent
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
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
FWIW, I meant gross revenue... minutes was just a flippant guess.

------
beart
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/)

~~~
slimsag
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
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
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_l...](https://smile.amazon.com/gp/chpf/dashboard/ref=smi_se_rspo_lyi_dshb)

~~~
jhall1468
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.

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

------
TheQwerty
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)

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

~~~
dannyw
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
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.

