> All US charities have received $400,026,236.70 as of December 2022. $400 million in donations to charities and Amazon has the gall to say "the program has not grown to create the impact that we had originally hoped."
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Amazon Closing AmazonSmile
181–190 of 581 posts
Re: Amazon Closing AmazonSmile
#182There were seemingly odd hoops for customers to jump through to have their purchases qualify for Smile. Didn't type in the 'smile' URL? Too bad, no donation for you. One of the oddest was requiring push notifications in order for mobile purchases to count ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21233815 ).
I've personally used chrome extension "Smile Always". It automatically converts all amazon links to amazon smile links. This is sad. I am currently at $417.30 in donations to my local charity. Amazon is in denial if they think this hasnt had an impact.
I don’t so much think it doesn’t have an impact, as much nothing on the list has any PR pizzazz.
$316.62 to a grade school? Lame.
$100,000 novelty check to a board member’s favorite charity that happens to be run by his son? Now that’s pizzazz with a capital P!
Re: Amazon Closing AmazonSmile
#183Earlier quoted context omitted.
SPLC, like most non-profits, is a scam https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-reckoning-of-mo...
I can't decide which is funnier, the fact that you think a fifteen-year-old experience is relevant now, or the fact they had to update the story multiple times because the author kept getting facts wrong. Not exactly a slam dunk on backing up the "most non-profits are a scam" claim.
The SPLC is one of the non-profits that is most responsible for this general assumption. The only one that might be more of a household name as a bad non-profit is Komen.
Re: Amazon Closing AmazonSmile
#184Earlier quoted context omitted.
Honest question: why would tech companies oppose those charities in particular?
A lot of people really, really hate guns, and some of those charities really, really love guns. (and one has the reputation among ~half the US population of really, really loving guns, and a reputation in the other half as "Negotiating Rights Away") The people who really, really hate guns are more likely to work for tech companies than their counterparts, at least in my experience. Also, Amazon in particular has long…
> The people who really, really hate guns are more likely to work for tech companies than their counterparts, at least in my experience.
Depends on the company, I have worked at a Defense Contractor for example, the sentiment towards guns was pro-guns despite the diverse political views of everyone there.
Re: Amazon Closing AmazonSmile
#185It's amazing to look at the AmazonSmile form 990. It's a 2000 page pdf with a list of every charity that received a donation along with the amount: https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/display_990/46262...
It's pretty cool that there are 19 pages with charities getting over $1k/yr. Each page has over 100 charities too! That's an insane amount of charities getting help. $1k might not seem like a lot, but for some of these groups it is, especially since it is likely in addition to other avenues of funding.
Re: Amazon Closing AmazonSmile
#186The 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…
Who is the “they” in “They would have bigger impact”, by what criteria, and why does this “they” have any relevance to the effectiveness whatsoever?
Seriously. Amazon is literally just writing a check, or just as likely, putting store credit in an account.
Where do they figure in to donating at all beyond a middle man?
Seriously, how does Amazon differ than GoFundMe in this context? And as a follow up, if this is such a good move for “effectiveness” why shouldn’t GoFundMe do they same thing?
Re: Amazon Closing AmazonSmile
#187Canceling the program bothers me a little, but replacing it with "donating" to four in house charities, only two of which are properly labeled as such, that clearly help Amazon makes it so much worse. The first is about building houses in areas near Amazon offices. The second is training future Amazon employees. The third is delivering food that I'm sure won't use existing Amazon delivery solutions at all. And the fo…
The 20,000 families benefitting from housing in the Seattle metro area as a result of Amazon's investments in the community might define charitable vs. non-charitable differently than you. I've personally met the women and children benefitting from the $100M Amazon and its employees have donated to Mary's Place -- their lens is not yours. Your comments about AFE are a bit underdeveloped. File under no good deed goes unpunished, I suppose.
Re: Amazon Closing AmazonSmile
#188It's amazing to look at the AmazonSmile form 990. It's a 2000 page pdf with a list of every charity that received a donation along with the amount: https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/display_990/46262...
If anyone's wondering why this PDF is taking a while to load, it's 262MB.
Re: Amazon Closing AmazonSmile
#189It's amazing to look at the AmazonSmile form 990. It's a 2000 page pdf with a list of every charity that received a donation along with the amount: https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/display_990/46262...
The vast majority of those 1 million organizations received less than 100 dollars.
I suppose, it does bring me joy that a local no-kill shelter got $42,631.17 and I was able to get about $30 into that, its not ground breaking, but that's kind of the point of smile right. I guess I can donate out of my own pocket to the same shelter moving forward.
Re: Amazon Closing AmazonSmile
#190Earlier quoted context omitted.
Tomato potato You might be confusing correlation as something more substantive
the point is there's not really a way for us to tell which is the "substance". It's all just correlations and it's all just a matter of what aspect you choose to highlight
You don’t think you can isolate variables and analyze effects? For example, you can’t study the opinions of people with high education who live in rural areas?