For three years at Amazon, Goldstein said, he helped nonprofits claim donations, which he said felt was personally rewarding. “They never got our input on how to make it more impactful.”Ī former Amazon employee, Adam Goldstein, said he, too, doubts how interested the company was in improving the program. “They certainly never listened to any of the emails that were sent or they never surveyed us,” she said. Among her suggestions were allowing users to donate without specifically going to and providing the option to donate when shopping on the Amazon app, something the company eventually allowed. Wagner said she contacted Amazon many times over the years to suggest improvements to the program. Malone said Amazon had notified customers of the program’s end and has no plans to share customer information with nonprofits. Now, she’s concerned that her organization doesn’t know the identity of those customers and wants Amazon to seek permission to share that information with nonprofits. Lauren Wagner, executive director of the Long Island Arts Alliance, based in Patchogue, New York, said she had encouraged the nonprofits she supports to sign up for AmazonSmile. Many nonprofits had promoted AmazonSmile in their own fundraising appeals because the program provided them with a passive revenue stream from Amazon customers. Taylor and other nonprofit founders say they are angry that Amazon didn’t give them an earlier warning about the program’s end.
Tenisha Taylor says she felt Amazon insulted her Chicago nonprofit’s work by saying its program hadn’t provided enough of an impact for its charitable beneficiaries. Some of the e-commerce giant’s competitors, including Walmart and Target, have their own community donation programs that somewhat resemble AmazonSmile. As of 2022, the company said it has donated $449 million to various charities.īefore it ends the program next month, Amazon says, it will provide a final donation to each of the 1 million-plus nonprofits that used AmazonSmile, equivalent to 25% of what the charity received from the program in 2022. The e-commerce giant had launched AmazonSmile in 2013, contributing 0.5% of every purchase made by participating customers to the charity of their choosing.
Amazon’s surprise decision to shut down its AmazonSmile donation program has left thousands of its nonprofit beneficiaries disappointed and concerned about finding ways to replace the funding.
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