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Amazon Closing AmazonSmile

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Re: Amazon Closing AmazonSmile

#531

Post by nulbyte »

darth_avocado wrote: post #519
smcin wrote: post #414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Use CharityNavigator.org or GuideStar to verify charities' overhead %s, at least in the US! The information is only a click away. There are good charities that do spend 70-99% of their revenues on their cause. And there are high-profile charities that don't.

Right but those numbers are wrong too. 70-99% gets spent on the cause but I’ll tell you how. If you’re a charity that say collects for homeless people, even if the charity says they spend 90% on the cause, the actual benefits to the homeless people is actually close to maybe 30-50%. They creatively spend money “for the cause” like printing pamphlets or spending on a fundraising event or hiring a “consultant” to strat…

> They creatively spend money “for the cause” like printing pamphlets or spending on a fundraising event or hiring a “consultant” to strategize on how to fix homelessness or plenty of others.

Printing and distributing pamphlets that educate those with means of influence to make things better does support the cause. Fundraising expenses are overhead and reported as such. Hiring a consultant to help an organization carry out its mission also supports the cause. Just because the organization isn't giving 100% of its receipts into the hands of the homeless directly doesn't mean they aren't helping the homeless.

That said, there are probably plenty of organizations with suspicious claims. Take charity: water's 100% claim. They like to use it to appear like they have no overhead, but it's just wordsmithing. It's also a rather egregious example of how being to focused on eliminating overhead can be harmful.

https://thefundraisingauthority.com/fundraising-ideas/charit...

Re: Amazon Closing AmazonSmile

#532

Post by ss108 »

andirk wrote: post #524
themagician wrote: post #512

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people either forget or were too young to remember the time when Walmart was king. Despite their many, many faults Amazon was (and still is) considerably better for almost everyone than Walmart was in the 90's and early 00's. Walmart would destroy communities, bankrupt manufactures, and paid their employees so little on average that many of them still needed food stamps. The damage that Walmart did in the period…

People are completely addicted to Amazon. Some of my friends and neighbors get things from them literally daily without thinking twice about where to shop. I do not get the allure of cheap Chinese product on my doorstep in 2 days nor do I understand getting overly charged fine dining on my doorstep upside down and cold. But everyone else is addicted to those services. Sadly, I don't see Amazon losing any steam, but I…

It's not any more "cheap Chinese product" than anywhere else. CoolerMaster keyboard is made where it's made whether one buys from Amazon or Best Buy.

Personally I get stuff from Amazon almost daily because I don't want to go to, e.g., Walgreens to buy toothpaste and dishwasher detergent. For a large number of items, there is no benefit to inspecting the item prior to purchase. Going to store for such items would be a waste of time.

Moreover, I can buy the thing immediately ftom my phone. No need to set up going to buy x as some chore in the future.

Re: Amazon Closing AmazonSmile

#533

Post by thelock85 »

whoopdeepoo wrote: post #454
CodeWriter23 wrote: post #352

I think this is a little short-sighted on Amazon's part. PTA/PTOs were onboarding loyal Amazon customers via Amazon Smile because of the fundraising. In the last PTO I was involved with, Smile accounted for about 2% of our donations ($3000/year = ~$150K in household spending from our school). To put that in perspective, about 90% of our $150K annual fund raise was direct donations from parents and local businesses, A…

Kinda off topic but why do grade school kids need a MacBook air?

Do the majority of MacBook Air users or customers need them?

Though it feels wasteful (making assumptions about the use-cases) I’m guessing grade school kids need them for the same reasons or non-reasons as mostly everyone else.

That these are coming from a PTO fundraiser and not a tax-funded budget makes it okay in my book (setting aside the reality that other kids might attend schools with much less productive PTOs —a problem I think for a public system).

Re: Amazon Closing AmazonSmile

#534

Post by edmundsauto »

whoopdeepoo wrote: post #454
CodeWriter23 wrote: post #352

I think this is a little short-sighted on Amazon's part. PTA/PTOs were onboarding loyal Amazon customers via Amazon Smile because of the fundraising. In the last PTO I was involved with, Smile accounted for about 2% of our donations ($3000/year = ~$150K in household spending from our school). To put that in perspective, about 90% of our $150K annual fund raise was direct donations from parents and local businesses, A…

Kinda off topic but why do grade school kids need a MacBook air?

OP didn’t say they were required. Maybe they are just beneficial. They are light, have a great battery life, connect without many issues to the sum of humanity’s explicit knowledge, etc.

“Why do people need xyz” deserves its own form of Betteridges headlines.

Re: Amazon Closing AmazonSmile

#535

Post by luisapic »

xyzelement wrote: post #390
darth_avocado wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unpopular opinion, but charities are like carbon credits. Most of the money goes into people’s pockets and very less percentage of the donations actually make it towards helping the cause they run on. Very few legitimately use the money in the way we expect it to be used. So I’m okay with them losing $400M.

I upvoted your unpopular opinion but it doesn't have to be that way. You can be involved in the community and get to know local organizations and how they run, then give to them with more certainty. In our case, the bulk of our charitable donations goes to organizations we know first hand, which are mainly local. Eg: helping the local preschool, our houses of worship, etc. The most 'remote' org we give to is the Isra…

[dead]

Re: Amazon Closing AmazonSmile

#536

Post by sbaiddn »

whoopdeepoo wrote: post #454
CodeWriter23 wrote: post #352

I think this is a little short-sighted on Amazon's part. PTA/PTOs were onboarding loyal Amazon customers via Amazon Smile because of the fundraising. In the last PTO I was involved with, Smile accounted for about 2% of our donations ($3000/year = ~$150K in household spending from our school). To put that in perspective, about 90% of our $150K annual fund raise was direct donations from parents and local businesses, A…

Kinda off topic but why do grade school kids need a MacBook air?

Are you asking why they need a Mac or why they need a laptop?

Re: Amazon Closing AmazonSmile

#537

Post by stevenwoo »

babyshake wrote: post #276
dbg31415 wrote: post #275

It's weird that corporations have philanthropic arms, isn't it?

It's mostly just tax avoidance, right?

There's a comment on reddit by someone who claimed to be working on this when it was started - the entire program was to avoid paying money to Google for searches resulting in sales on Amazon, by making Amazon the first place to go instead of Google. https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/10ft5iv/amazon_...

Re: Amazon Closing AmazonSmile

#538

Post by judge2020 »

hyperhopper wrote: post #529
unsupp0rted wrote: post #513

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They couldn’t say that because saying it explicitly would hurt their core business

Which is ridiculous. Why would clear communication like that hurt their business? Because that would lead to more customer outrage than this? What a ridiculous point we've reached as a society if we can't take clear communication and we give incentives to lie to us.

It's not that society, or even we as HN commenters, have decided that "this is fine" because they weren't as blunt as they could have been, but they're minimizing the overall negative emotions. By having excuses and saying they're still donating $x a year, some percentage of readers who would have started to look for products elsewhere will instead go "sad, but the impact is minimal" and likely won't second-guess using Amazon for purchases.

Re: Amazon Closing AmazonSmile

#539

Post by wpietri »

hyperhopper wrote: post #529
unsupp0rted wrote: post #513

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They couldn’t say that because saying it explicitly would hurt their core business

Which is ridiculous. Why would clear communication like that hurt their business? Because that would lead to more customer outrage than this? What a ridiculous point we've reached as a society if we can't take clear communication and we give incentives to lie to us.

What if we legitimately object to the truth about their motives and/or behavior? Why would it be on us to coddle zillion-dollar corporations? It's not my job to make it easy for them to be terrible.

Re: Amazon Closing AmazonSmile

#540

Post by UberFly »

themitigating wrote: post #500
trompetenaccoun wrote: post #497

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You may see it differently having profited but I think good riddance. Shoppers shouldn't get the false sense they're doing something good by buying at Amazon. We spend $100 and they donate 50 cents but the remaining 99.5% of the money is spent in ways that do not benefit us common folk, often to the contrary. Better to be mindful what and where you buy, shopping at Amazon and then letting them do a small donation see…

People could donate before Amazon Smile existed why would that increase now it's gone? I'm sure many people like the ease of donating through this program. Finally the last part of your comment is so disturbing. "I doubt the average customer looks much into if what they do with the money even aligns with their own vision of a better world."

How is that even disturbing? Can you elaborate?
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