171–180 of 581 posts
> 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. What BS is this? Can we have the real reason?
The fun part of Amazon Smile was that it let customers decide how they wanted to change the world…but now they’ve decided they - Amazon - know better, thank you very much. This is surprisingly honest for corporatespeak and I think reflects the god-complex which tends to follow people who spend a lot of time taking in billions of dollars. The reality is there were a lot of charities - maybe even most of them - who wer…
> …but now they’ve decided they - Amazon - know better, thank you very much. Or, a less cynical take is that they really can have more impact by focusing on fewer charities. Another commenter posted Amazon Smile's Form 990 from 2018 [1], the most recent year on Pro Publica's website that has a full listing of all the charities that received funds. The total PDF is 2121 pages long, and the list of charities starts on…
Honestly, this seems rather impressive. A lot higher than I thought! That's great! The reason I expected lower is because these tend to follow power laws with a very steep decline. The 200th charity makes more than half what the 100th charity makes is pretty good. I had to go through 19 pages of charities (I counted 126 lines on one page, but I probably miscounted so +/- some) before I started to see them go below $1k. That's quite impressive though, there's over 2k charities getting over $1k
I never understood how Amazon decided which orders qualified for Smile -- but now (too late) I know. It turns out that I only contributed $1.29 -- but my charity (EFF) received over $1M. I guess that this indicates that they did some good outreach at one point.
Amazon doesn’t have any employee match programs, but they had AmazonSmile. This matched their Customer Obsession leadership principle in a very smart way. Rather than making their charitable giving be directed by a foundation or employees, it let customers decide what mattered to them. They highlight their charitable programs as a way of justifying the end of the Smile program. But those existed when Smile existed. I…
Well, it let customers decide as long as those customers enabled ads on their phone, remembered to visit smile.amazon every time, and re-enrolled in the program every year when it turned itself off. It was pretty clearly designed to stop you from using it.
Amazon doesn’t have any employee match programs, but they had AmazonSmile. This matched their Customer Obsession leadership principle in a very smart way. Rather than making their charitable giving be directed by a foundation or employees, it let customers decide what mattered to them. They highlight their charitable programs as a way of justifying the end of the Smile program. But those existed when Smile existed. I…
Well, it let customers decide as long as those customers enabled ads on their phone, remembered to visit smile.amazon every time, and re-enrolled in the program every year when it turned itself off. It was pretty clearly designed to stop you from using it.
I never understood how Amazon decided which orders qualified for Smile -- but now (too late) I know. It turns out that I only contributed $1.29 -- but my charity (EFF) received over $1M. I guess that this indicates that they did some good outreach at one point.
what, it wasn't uniform across the board for all sales? Qualifying orders, where was that detail ever communicated?
""" Your total orders The number you see here is the total number of eligible orders you’ve placed at smile.amazon.com on your web browser or with AmazonSmile activated in the Amazon Shopping app on your iOS or Android phone, since the first time you selected a charity at smile.amazon.com.
This total may take several days to update after your order ships.
Look for the AmazonSmile badge in Your Orders to see which of your orders have supported charity. https://smile.amazon.com/charity/my-impact?ref_=nav_cs_smile """
""" Which products on AmazonSmile are eligible for charitable donations? Tens of millions of products on AmazonSmile are eligible for donations. You will see eligible products marked “Eligible for AmazonSmile donation” on their product detail pages. Recurring Subscribe-and-Save purchases and subscription renewals are not currently eligible. https://smile.amazon.com/gp/chpf/about/ref=smi_se_dshb_leli_... """
Earlier quoted context omitted.
But smaller organizations will be missed entirely. My charity is a cat shelter in St. Louis. I’d rather they get my cut than a larger charity that means less to me and has bigger fundraising machinery.
Yes and small charities like this are generally volunteer-run and a very high percentage of their income goes to their charitiable purpose. Large charities leech off the existence of the problems they are claiming to solve. If they actually solved them, they wouldn't be needed any more. Name any large organization that has ever worked itself out of needing to exist. And their executives make a lot of money.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, it let customers decide as long as those customers enabled ads on their phone, remembered to visit smile.amazon every time, and re-enrolled in the program every year when it turned itself off. It was pretty clearly designed to stop you from using it.
I’m not sure what you’re talking about. Other than ordering from smile, which was admitted a naked attempt to drive down use, none of what you said occurred to me. I’ve been using smile since it started.
https://smile.amazon.com/b?ie=UTF8&node=15576745011
Ah, looks like it was only for the phone app. It makes you re-enroll twice a year.
On the website of course you have to remember to go there every time, unless you got a browser extension.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> …but now they’ve decided they - Amazon - know better, thank you very much. Or, a less cynical take is that they really can have more impact by focusing on fewer charities. Another commenter posted Amazon Smile's Form 990 from 2018 [1], the most recent year on Pro Publica's website that has a full listing of all the charities that received funds. The total PDF is 2121 pages long, and the list of charities starts on…
I volunteer for a charity where each and every $500 donation supports a kid going through a program. That program regularly changes kids' life trajectories in a way that has a difficult to quantify multiplier effect throughout the community. I am highly skeptical of wisdom of utilitarianism in charitable giving. No one has non-toy models so the math is all made up nonsense. More importantly, proximity between the giv…
The fun part of Amazon Smile was that it let customers decide how they wanted to change the world…but now they’ve decided they - Amazon - know better, thank you very much. This is surprisingly honest for corporatespeak and I think reflects the god-complex which tends to follow people who spend a lot of time taking in billions of dollars. The reality is there were a lot of charities - maybe even most of them - who wer…