AmazonSmile brings to mind the observation of late great media critic A.J. Liebling about The New York Times’ fundraising campaigns on behalf of its Neediest Cases. “Readers are invited to send in money,” Liebling wrote, “while the newspaper generously agrees to accept the thanks of the beneficiaries.”
AmazonSmile is bit like that. The website, created by Amazon.com in 2013, offers
the same products, prices, and shopping features as Amazon.com. The difference is that when you shop on AmazonSmile, the AmazonSmile Foundation will donate 0.5% of the purchase price of eligible products to the charitable organization of your choice.
Nice, right? Well, yes, but not nearly as a nice as it could be.
Two questions need to be asked about AmazonSmile.
First, what has it done to increase the quantity of charitable giving?
Second, what has it done to increase the quality of charitable giving?
The answer to both: Not much.
Let’s begin with the numbers, starting with that 0.5 percent figure. If you spend $20 at Amazon.com, that’s 10 cents. Spend $2,000 and $10 goes to charity–provided, that is, that you remember to bookmark or navigate over to https://smile.amazon.com before making a purchase. Predictably, most shoppers don’t. It’s hardly worth the bother to surf over to a new URL to give away a dime.
The results reflect that friction: In 2015, the AmazonSmile Foundation, which administers the program, donated $12,867,013 to charity, according to the foundation’s latest Form 990-PF filed with the IRS. That’s less than 0.5 percent of Amazon.com’s retail sales.
How much less? In 2015, Amazon generated about $99.1 billion in U.S. and international retail sales, its annual report says. (See p. 68). If my math is correct, that means that the $12,867,013 in charitable giving amounts to 0.00012 percent of sales. That’s $1.20 in donations for every $10,000 of sales.
Now, you could argue that this is the fault of shoppers (and, admittedly, I’m one of them) who are less than rigorous about finding their way to the AmazonSmile portal every time they make a purchase. Instead, I want to make the case that the low numbers are the product of a deliberate effort by Amazon.com to depress, rather than increase, giving.
After all, it would be a trivial matter for Amazon.com’s software designers to allow shoppers to make a one-time request to have 0.5 percent of their purchases go to charity, and make that the default option every time a customer visits the Amazon.com site.
As one perceptive Amazon shopper wrote on the company website back in 2014:
This is a wonderful program with a big BUT! Here’s the ‘BUT’: Why do shoppers have to go to the smile link in order for donations to kick in? Why can’t the contributions simply be linked to the shopper’s account? I want to support a nonprofit, but i frequently forget to go to smile. Is Amazon trying to get organizations to encourage their members to use Amazon, but secretly hoping they will forget to go to the smile link so Amazon doesn’t really have to make a donation? A truly noble approach would be to make it automatically link to the shopper’s account.
Exactly.
Further evidence of Amazon.com’s intentions come from the the fact that there are no cell phone or tablet apps for AmazonSmile. Users have asked for AmazonSmile apps, which is no surprise, given the growing share of e-commerce purchases made by phone. One survey found that about 40 percent of all e-commerce was conducted on phones or tablets last Thanksgiving, ReCode reported. It’s not impossible to buy from AmazonSmile over the phone, by using the phone’s browser to reach the website, but it’s clunky so few people bother.
It’s sure looks as if Amazon.com wants to make it hard, not easy, to use AmazonSmile.
To put the $12.9 million donated by the AmazonSmile Foundation in a broader context: The Walmart Foundation made $166 million in donations in 2015. Microsoft, its Seattle neighbor, donated about $500 million last year. Amazon makes other donations as well, but they don’t add up to much and the company won’t release numbers, GeekWire reports.
Laziness, stupidity, indifference or caution?
What about AmazonSmile’s influence over the quality of giving? By that, I mean the potential for AmazonSmile to recommend charities that do the most good, or at least those that are more transparent than their peers about their performance. As it happens, there’s an easy and useful metric to identify such charities–the Platinum designation awarded by GuideStar, which I blogged about last year. Alternatively, AmazonSmile could boldly turn to trusted evaluators such as The Life You Can Save, a nonprofit that recommends charities, based on evidence, that help the world’s poorest people. The Center for High Impact Philanthropy at the University of Pennsylvania also does a fine job of identifying effective nonprofits.
This wouldn’t limit consumer choice. AmazonSmile permits shoppers to choose from nearly 1 million charities, it says, and it could continue to do so. But, since its early days, AmazonSmile also has nudged shoppers to give to what it calls Spotlight Charities. The company says:
We do this to make it easier for customers to choose an organization to support from the almost one million available, but we do not endorse any particular organization or the causes they support.
The five current Spotlight Charities are the ASPCA, charity: water, Doctors without Borders, The Nature Conservancy and the American Red Cross. A less interesting list is hard to imagine. These choices can be explained only by some blend of laziness, stupidity, indifference or an abundance of caution. Since the people who work at Amazon.com are neither lazy or stupid, we can chalk this up to indifference or caution.
Of AmazonSmile’s five spotlight charities, only one, the American Red Cross, has a Platinum Rating from Guidestar. If you believe Pro Publica (here) or Senator Charles Grassley (here), the Red Cross is a disaster charity in every sense. Giving to The Nature Conservancy, for all of its good work, is like giving to Harvard: It had nearly $6 billion in net assets and brought in $786 million in revenue last year. The ASPCA has never been ranked among the most effective advocates for animals by Animal Charity Evaluators. As for charity: water, it is at core a fundraising platform, and a very good one, but most of the work it funds is carried out by partners, some better than others.
These recommendations have enormous impact. In 2014, which is the latest year for which grantee data is available, Spotlight Charities outpaced the rest by huge margins. AmazonSmile gave $602,495 to St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital–more than 10 percent of all the money that passed through the foundation that year. It also gave $436,338 to the Wounded Warrior Project (!), $265,557 to the American Red Cross and $167,316 to The Nature Conservancy. All were Spotlight Charities. The vast majority of charities brought in less than $100 apiece. (I pulled these numbers from AmazonSmile’s 575-page Form 990, and might have overlooked a big recipient or two. The document isn’t searchable.)
Finally, consider the possibility that AmazonSmile could ultimately lead to less, not more, charitable giving. If it leaves shoppers feeling that they have done their part, they may be less likely to respond to a direct appeal from a nonprofit, as Brady Josephson, a fundraising consultant, wrote on Huffington Post back in 2013.
What, then, is AmazonSmile? It’s marketing, dressed up as altruism. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of charities put the AmazonSmile logo on their websites (here, here, here and countless other places). They’re promoting Amazon.com. It’s revealing that the president of the AmazonSmile Foundation, according to its latest Form 990, is Steven Shure, who is vice president of worldwide marketing at Amazon.com. Shure doesn’t mention the AmazonSmile Foundation on his LinkedIn profile. His only visible nonprofit experience is as a board member of US Rowing.
In the end, though, to understand the purpose of AmazonSmile, all we need to do is the math. Imagine that you spend $1,000 this year on AmazonSmile. Amazon gets $995. Your favorite charity gets $5. Someone’s doing well, and it isn’t the charity.
No wonder Jeff Bezos is smiling.
Nonprofit Chronicles 
Target gives a percentage of everything I buy to my 1st choice charity, which is my children’s elementary school. I pay with my Target card as usual. Amazon rarely thinks the stuff I buy is “eligible” .
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I agree with the premise that it’s likely more marketing than philanthropy. But I take issue with the math at the end, where you use an example of $995 of $1,000 spent going to Amazon, only because that’s revenue not profit. Amazon obviously doesn’t get to keep $1,000 spent on their site, they have COGS to deliver goods for that revenue. That’s not to say Amazon isn’t immensely profitable, just that its profit margin wouldn’t be anywhere near analogous to the example.
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Nice and informative post. I would love to read more of your blogs
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As of today Amazon has donated 135 million dollars to all charities combined through smile. Honestly I’d consider that “not bad” since its skimmed off the top of stuff people are buying anyways…
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I’d also like to add that it’s available through the mobile app now.
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It’s a marketing program, not a charity program. People should understand that. Amazon does this specifically because it affects people in their subconscious and gets them to buy more, or not hold back a little bit here and there. In the end you are duped into feeling good about buying something. The points are made very clear in this post. But whatever.
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On iphone and ipad, too? Can’tseem to fond it.
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I have signed up for our church. My only “gripe” is that I cannot find items that apply – I am not a power shopper and have only made three purchases this way but non of my purchases qualify. Is it food items, paper products, electronics??? Amazon only says that the eligible items are clearly marked on the page description…
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I seldom buy from Amazon if I can get something direct from the manufacturer’s site, as I am finding that Amazon’s prices can very often be twice what they are elsewhere. Therefore I suspect that the “Amazon Smiles” .5% is already added into the prices on everything, leaving the buyer to have to go through all the extra trouble to take advantage of the gifting to charity option. The fact that most are in too much of a hurry to spend the extra time and trouble to jump over to the Amazon Smiles site is well known and the extra .5% “overcharges” then go straight to the coffers of Amazon as free profit.
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I don’t see the problem. I book marked Amazon Smile and am logged in just like teg. Amazon. My charity gets money when I buy things. Sure they could give more but that can be said about any company that has programs like this. They could just as easy not give at all. Anyway you look at this it doesn’t cost you a thing and your charity receives a check. Small non profits like Foundation to report, empower and educate Maryland look forward to any help they receive. Lets stop looking a gift horse in the mouth and be happy amazon has this program.
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It should be way more tho. I spent a couple thousand dollars and apparently I have donated a whopping three dollars and sixty seven cents.
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Amazon could just as easily NOT contribute to charity. The fact they’re giving customers a way to do so is great, we shouldn’t shame a company for doing that. It’s ridiculous to think a FOR PROFIT company would automatically give away 0.5% of all of their sales. On a positive note, when I just navigated to amazon I got a prompt from the website to go to the smile.amazon.com instead to make sure my charity gets credit. They are reminding people, not “hiding it”. People complaining about good things fascinate me. Worthless click-bait article.
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100% Agree. I didn’t even know Amazon Smile existed until earlier this year. In my opinion, if I’m going to spend $40 or $400 online at Amazon, I might as well do a little something and give .20 or 2.00 to a nonprofit. Hell, SOME people would argue a pretty strong argument against the US government giving so called nonprofit tax-exemptions! So I say be thankful and grateful!
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I have spent well over a couple thousand dollars and it says I contributed $3.67…that is NOT 0.5%. It should be around $120. They are not donating 0.5% and that is the issue.
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.5% of $2,000 is $10. Think of the math this way – one percent, or 1/100th, of $2,000 is $20, and half of that (the .5%) is $10. $120 is 6% of $2,000.
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……but they could also jusypt as easily contribute the same amount from all sales!
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Aren’t you being a little hard on Amazon when our mighty president has billions and doesn’t even know what charity is about?!? My DEFAULT amazon is smile.amazon.com and I am just adding to a charity that I already give generously to. And, it is not of the the five that you site. There are literally hundreds which can receive the pittance of a contribution that you scoff at. Frankly, with a little attention every one who uses Amazon could give a little bit that would add up to a great deal. How much do YOU give to charity???
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FYI Trump contributes his entire POYUS salary to charity
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Gee, isn’t that nice? While the American tax payer pays for all of his golfing time at his resorts and has to pay for his stupid children to go play ‘pretend royalty’ in the UK. He is a lazy useless bastard.
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SmileAlways is a Chrome extension that automatically redirects you to smile.amazon.com to make donating to charity easier!
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The issue I have is that if I want my organization to receive $10, I have to spend $2,000. I can more than outdo that $10 by giving a larger amount directly to the charitable organization. The goal of Amazon Smile is to get people to spend, spend, spend, spend themselves into bankruptcy. Same goal that credit card companies have in their rewards program.
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Your comment is even dumber than the article. NO one in his/her right mind is going to spend $2,000 on amazon smile for the sole purpose of making a $10 donation.
You spend $2000 on amazon because you want $2000 worth of products. 0.5% of that going to a charity is just a modest side benefit.
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it is percentage of profits that’s important. To measure a company’s charitable contributions as a percentage of sales is absurd. For comparative pruposes against peers, perhaps, but as an absolute value? This kind of ignorant clickbait is what’s wrong wit this country.
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Can’t believe that this guy is that dumb that he can’t create a bookmark with his favorite charity. I have no problem “finding” the link on my browser and have helped donated hundreds!
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Marc, I’m a little late to the party — but appreciated your article. I could be mistaken, but it seems that the book prices I’m seeing in Smile are a little higher than the prices for the same book in Amazon without Smile. Phew, don’t even want to contemplate the ramifications of that one — but maybe a journalist will revisit it someday.
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i got a plugin on chrome that puts all of my amazon browsing on smile, and hopefully amazon will eventually integrate it, but i started when it was a beta thing, which makes it a pain in the ass for everyone. but to put it bluntly, that little bit is still a bit, and nobody but amazon pays it. if you want to donate someone else’s money you shouldn’t be surprised that you gotta jump through hoops. chrome on andriod is compatible with pretty much every chrome app now, including most smile apps, and smile is still not an official amazon thing. smile.amazon.com should (i hope, eventually) become just a part of amazon, like how you can have your amazon set up to contribute to a partner. but tossing a small app on your chrime or firefox while impossible for many is still the best option. but don’t throw it away, it doesn’t do as much as it promised, it still does produce a lot of money for charity. it would be nice if it were simpler, and if they integrated it into the actual website instead of insisting on smile.amazon.com, but there are workarounds, AND it isn’t even out of beta yet.
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For iPad, log into Amazon Smile. Click on airdrop icon in upper right hand corner (the one you use to select print). Select “add to home screen” icon. Amazon Airdrop icon will now appear on your home screen like any other app. One time …. and done. Not a big deal. Should work for phone app too. There are a lot of smaller charities that appreciate all the nickels and dimes you can give them. They add up over time. Selecting a reputable charity is a separate issue.
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That’s what I’ve done on my android phone for over 2 years. Also if I accidentally end up on the regular amazon site, I receive a pop up message that states, “you used Amazonsmile in past shopping, click here if you want to redirect to Amazonsmile.”
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Marc, you really took the time to write this ridiculous article over how much one actually gives? It’s a free market, you dipsh!t, and Amazon has a right to make money as much as you have. Have you even took a moment to look at the millions that smile.amazon has raised? Not to mention, Bezo just launched a $2B fund for the homeless. Such unnecessary drama you’re attempting to serve.
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What a dumb article. My charity is getting $9.47 more than they were going to get by simply changing the browser link at our office where we spend tens of thousands of dollars a year – and that’s just a week worth of purchasing. Some people will complain about anything.
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Hahaha congratulations! You saved the world! How much good, exactly, will they do with that $9.47? Will it make up for a SINGLE local business who went out of business or laid off a SINGLE worker because people gave their money to amazon because it was easier?
Another million dollars for Bezos, he’ll invest it in a business and make more money for himself. That could have paid the salaries for TWENTY breadwinners and supported a HUNDRED family members. Now they’re on food stamps.
Is THAT something to complain about?
Spend your money locally, support people, and keep your @$%^ $9.47 if it turns you into a self-righteous ass.
You’re just crying because you can’t feel like a philanthropist any more.
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Hey! I’m so glad that you found a way for your office to really take advantage of a system that will pay you to do what you are already doing. I’m curious if your charity would be interested in taking a look at another system to shop through to pay them, also. Thanks for your reponse.
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This smacks of a colossal waste of time. Who cares how much they give? As long as they do. If a charity means that much to you, as mine does to me because it’s for a fatal disease that few people know about and is in my family, I give both ways, directly and by shopping at Amazon Smile. It’s not rocket science. If you care enough, you will remember to shop there. Every penny helps.
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Although I’d agree that the percent of charitable giving from Amazon could be better, I think of the old saying “Every little bit helps”. Before we blame Amazon for being cheap with their contributions, we need to look at ourselves first. One does not need to navigate each time to Amazon smile to shop which will generate income for charities, all you have to do it make it your default, (easy task to add to favorites). And yet too many of us are too lazy to take the 30 seconds to do this. For whatever it’s worth.
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I do volunteer work for a small nonprofit. A board member has wanted to add an Amazon Smile link to the website. I’ve been against it, mainly because I think it’s distracting to have a link that takes potential donors away from our site.
If a donor clicks the donation link and donates twenty dollars we get a twenty dollar donation. If a donor clicks the Smile link and spends twenty dollars we get ten cents. As much as I like buying stuff from Amazon I’d rather keep that link off my donor site.
Thanks for your insight. I will show this post to my board and hopefully convince then that Amazon Smile is not worth it.
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I totally see your point. That said, I found out about Amazon Smile via my preferred, very small charity website while donating, and my thought was that not only could I donate but could contribute more vial Smile simply by making my normal purchases. If you carefully chose your placement and wording on your website (for example, after a donation had been made and you send a confirmation reply) you are letting donors know that there contribution can be increased by even more. Not a sermon, just a thought.
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Hi 🙂 I’ve been on several NonProfit boards and know that everyone works very hard to promote their nonprofit! and bring in money! I’m curious if you would be interested in taking a look at a system that could possibly bring in 30-50% in Royalties. Thanks for connecting.
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There is no cost to join, so the term “worth it” is ambiguous at best; the notion that people would visit your site and choose to shop on Amazon in lieu of donating gives very little credit to your supporters. Most donors already use Amazon; the phrase “marginal revenue” comes to mind. Took about 5 minutes to sign my organization up.
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Thank u, finally someone with a brain AND A CONSCIENCE! KUDOS TO U! I APPLAUD U!! IT’S HARD TO FIND PEOPLE WITH A CONSCIENCE ANYMORE. THE MORE I READ OF AMAZON AND IT’S BULLSHIT, IT MAKES ME SICK. THANKS FOR YOUR BLATANT HONESTY. WHAT A BREATH OF FRESH AIR!
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WHO HAS TO review my reply? What country r we living in? Freedom of Speech is our 1st Amendment!! I cannot even commend someone who has replied to Amazon’s cheap donations to Amazon Smile, which I have donated to in the past but will no longer do so. If Jeff Bezos wanted to b considered a real philanthropist maybe he would donate some real cash toward the ASPCA, which is my charity, not 5 cents per frigging purchase. I did not realize the percentage donated was that cheap. I already donate to several animal organizations including the ASPCA. I guess SHOPPING at Amazon will stop as well. Bezos is a real piece of work. Look over my reply and c if it passes your approval and whatever other z-2bag u feel needs to protect Bezos reputation. Oops, too late he is doing a damn good job making himself look bad all by himself. Tell his PR people don’t bother, he’s screwing up his own reputation all by himself!
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how about going “old skool”; shortcut on your screen to the ‘smile’ URL??…and…i’ve been asked by Amazon during checkout if i want to switch to ‘smile’….
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A penny is a penny and they add up. I don’t care what or how they are doing it. At least they are doing it. How much have we givin to charity lately? Myself as a single parent cannot afford it. So when I have the opportunity to buy from a supplier that does… I’m going to order from them.
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Amazon Smile About Page states: ‘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.’
Today’s orders placed: $300, how much did the organization (www.thisableveteran.org) i want to support get? $0.00
I went back a month’s worth of orders ($12,000) for our company and calculated what the charity would have received: $0.00.
The good news is: Coffee filters, trash bags, a plastic gun, and doll, and a hairbrush qualify.
I’m guessing Amazon is using people’s charities as a way to advertise their philanthropic efforts to help the world. I’m galling BS. They don’t do anything for charity or let alone help you do anything for charity. If they wanted to help 1/2 a percent of every sale is not unreasonable.
I fell for the scam. It’s just cheap advertising/PR for Amazon.
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So I started thinking. You pay the same price. They reinvest it till the end of the quarter. They give it to the charity, and they take the tax deduction. Charity is out the money because they are waiting till end of “quarter”. These are pennies to us but significant dollars cumulative to Amazon. I’m thinking I would rather give more now, directly and take my own deduction. I’ve been doing Smile for several years. Time to stop.
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Hmmm…I try to remember to use Smile, but frequently forget since I use my phone usually when ordering which uses the app, and have to use another shortcut when ordering. Yea, it’s closing one app, then opening a shortcut to Amazon that uses my Safari browse in my iPhone and placing the order in the web browser instead of the app. So as the author says, it would be so simple for the app designer to simply put a toggle in the app to always order through Smile, but they don’t, and there’s the tell.
I’ve thought the same about this, thanks for the article.
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I can’t even see a link to AmazonSmile on their website – quite bizarre!
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There isn’t a link. You have to type in the words “Amazon Smile” in your search bar and then you can link them from that point.
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You can use an extension or add-on to always redirect to the smile version so you never forget! I will link the ones I use down below.
Chrome: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/amazon-smile-always/lnefbhhckalidjpncmmmaajmlakndfol?hl=en
FireFox: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/amazon-always-smile/?src=search
Even if the donation is small you might as well set it up and use the extension. Then you never even have to remember. Small passive donations are still better than no donations at all.
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Thank you! I just added it. It’s rare I forget to order through Smile Amazon, even when ordering on the phone. You’re very thoughtful. Happy Holidays!
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A motivating discussion is definitely worth comment.
I believe that you need to publish more on this subject, it might not be a taboo subject but typically people do not speak about such subjects.
To the next! All the best!!
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There is something called Always Smile in chrome which will always redirect you to the smile url. Easy and seemless to ensure your purchases are as charitable as possible (https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/smile-always/jgpmhnmjbhgkhpbgelalfpplebgfjmbf?hl=en)
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How pessimistic and whiny can an author be? As of May 2018, all Amazon Smile charities have received over $89M. That little 0.5% goes a long way when you have the largest customer base in the world. I have placed 581 orders on Amazon and have NEVER missed the Smile URL because I use this thing called a “bookmark”. Ever hear of it? Rather than whine about a good thing not being good enough, how about acknowledging the good and simply making a suggestion to make it better?
Also, when I spend $1000 on Amazon Smile, $995 does NOT go to Jeff Bezos, as your article implies. There’s a seller in there…. and a supplier… and a manufacturer… and – of course – Amazon. Everyone spends money to make money.
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Almost all my orders are out and about and on the Amazon app. Ever heard of an app? It’s that thing that makes using “a link” to a website seem like someone who lives 10 years in the past. I (and others) have been making a suggestion for YEARS to make it better. Make a smile app. It should be about 10 lines of added code to the current app they produce. It’s not rocket science, but they refuse to do it. Why? Because they don’t want people using a smile app? Why do you suppose that is?
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I use Amazon smile all the time (unless I navigate accidentally away following others’ links…) and have raised over $600 for ASPCA. It is better than nothing. If you use Amazon, use smile – it’s just a little more going in to good causes without much effort…
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Dude, you would have had to spend over ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY THOUSAND DOLLARS to have raised $600 for your chosen charity. Seriously?
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I agree I have been supporting a charity for years on Amazon smile and have only made it to about $19. While my local grocery store give almost $18 a quarter. Seems like the local grocery store has a better picture here. I don’t think I will ever get to $600 in donations through Amazon Smile…but I like the little that I do give…so I will keep it going
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I order from Amazon multiple times per month and checked my giving today; after a few years of the same charity (at least 2-3 on this one), my purchases have generated $22?? Yes, if you look around you can see how much you’ve generated. Totally not worth it. Possibly my husband or I have forgotten to go the correct link a time or two, but usually make the effort. I also question “why the link.” The whole thing seems like a big marketing scheme to make them appear more charitable than they really are.
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I fear you have missed the point. It is not Amazon’s intention to Publicize any one charity, nor “encourage” your charity to use SMILE – that is your and your charity’s job. I, personally, have no problem getting to SMILE. If I log into Amazon.com – it will ask me if I’d like to order through SMILE. Click- and it shows my charity at the top of the page. Yes, the amount is small – but it is something! How much did your purchase at WalMart, Target or Abercrombie contribute to your non-profit?
“Shop Local” they say- right! I live in a small rural town. Nearest tiny Walmart is 20 miles! Dollar General and Family Dollar about the same. That’s all!! So, yes, I order from Amazon or drive an hour to two hours to the nearest Mall, which may or may not have what I want/need.
SMILE does not increase my price. It comes out of the Amazon profit. I have not problem with Mr. Bezos making a donation- however small- to my charity.
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Any contribution to any charity is some thing they didn’t have before. I was disappointed that the amount was so small but then if you multiply that by thousands of smile consumers=that adds up.
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Again – Amazon has far more generous affiliate relationships with various charitable organizations – you just need to ask the orgs for the right information and then make sure you are using those links instead of Smile to credit them appropriately. My kids’ school gets about 6% back through this type of program. At the same time, I can go to Smile and get 1/12th as much (0.5%) going to the school. Smart organizations will look to set up these affiliate relationships instead of using Smile – which basically sucks and offers little incentive. (Wow – you spent $1000 and sent $5 to a charity. Great job!) Amazon pays affiliates more because it’s a proven system driving value to their bottom line. Nobody gets stuff for free, to make these things work, you have to promote amazon and the links you get.
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i must remind the author that Amazon does not even need to do what they are doing, they are not required to set aside any percentage of the sale for charity. And, by the way, in your example, you say that if you spend a thousand dollars, the Amazon gets $995.00 and the charity gets $5.00. i don’t think so, – you forgot about expenses; after merhcandising, paying for product, labor and overhead, like any business, Amazon’s profit is more like the 1 or 2 % that major stores get, – example your favorite grocery chain.
Me thinks you protest too much.
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Leaving the math behind, my first thought when I read just the title of the article was that folks might be deceived into thinking they’d donated to a certain charity like Samaritan’s Purse or CRU and let it go at that. Beware of the Author of deception.
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I found this article accidentally because I opened Amazon Smile today and discovered my charity had been changed to the Susan G Koman foundation. I had the same impression from the title – however, here we are and who knows how long I have been donating to a charity not of my choice.
I started googling to find out if Amazon promotes a particular charity and found a lot more. I am not surprised that things are not what they seem. Amazon has a lot of marketing practices that are masked as customer-oriented options, but serve the bottom line more. Google their pricing practices. I get an icky feeling about being manipulated. However, I continue to use Amazon because it benefits me.
It is prudent to know what you are dealing with so that you can make your own business decisions accordingly.
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On my phone i was able to create a shortcut icon that functions like the app when i click on it. Was able to create the shortcut by using the option of adding smiles homepage to my phone homescreen.
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Excellent article!
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I know you need eyeballs on your page, but you make no worthwhile points. As a consumer, it is easy to go to smile – and how you could possible suggest that all that money isnt worthwhile is a joke. Its charity so anything anyone does can simply be categorized as a nice gesture.
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I just googled”Why does AMAZON make it so difficult to give with their Smile program?”….We have multiple users in our family and like to shop on Amazon. Sure you can bookmark the page, but everyone has to always remember to go into it. I find their program is cumbersome and inconvenient. When we enter the Amazon Prime site there is no direct link to smile either which creates more inconvenience. If you place your order in and switch to Smile, your order gets erased. It would make a huge difference if AMAZON would make your giving preferences part of your profile. Then it automatically can be connected to any orders you make. This would help us in our household and the giving would certainly go up!!!!
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I find that my shopping cart is saved when I switch sites as long as I’m logged in, which I always am. I posted suggestions on making it easier to stay on Smile — that was a week and a half ago but my post is “awaiting moderation”. Summary: keep a tab open in the browser, and use a search shortcut directed to Smile.
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there are web browser plugins that will do it for you. and the program is oddly still in beta. so yeah.
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I just don’t understand why they don’t just donate that amount from all the profits from purchases. Why do we have to go to smile? Just nip that 0.5% from all sales for charity? Seems simple. Doing it in the way they are doing it seems more about marketing than giving to charity. I wonder how much in comparison they spend to get the same level of marketing? Of course, it gives this money to charity which is a good thing, but it smells of marketing hidden behind kind gestures, like how to increase marketing whilst making people think you are just being kind.
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you choose who to donate to
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also it is all marketing, they DON’T CARE IF YOU USE SMILE. this is an opportunity for the consumer, not the seller.
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No real disagreement, but there are simple ways to make sure your Amazon purchases are Smiled. First, I always leave at least (!) one Amazon window open, and once it’s on Smile, it stays there — Amazon does not steer you back to non-Smile. Second, I use a search shortcut. I think all browsers have this feature; I’m doing it in Firefox. I have “z” defined to be search Amazon. I did this long before Smile, and when Smile came out, I just modified the URL in the search definition to search Smile. For example, a little while ago I typed “z sanding belts” in the address bar, and if I bought any sanding belts, they were Smiled. The only time I have to switch is when someone sends me an Amazon link — which of course is seldom a Smile link.
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firefox has an extension that smiles everything you go to on amazon (although i haven’t tried buying from european or asian amazon, not sure if it could manage that, i say this because those two amazons sometimes have items you cannot get on american amazon)
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Why not just bookmark the Amazon Smile website? Problem solved.
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I just signed up and tried to bookmark Smile–Amazon makes it impossible. It takes you everywhere but Smile. I’m really disappointed with Amazon. Make an offer (that makes Amazon look good) but make it really difficult to actually take advantage of the offer. I’m really surprised they would behave like this. I guess they can brag about how many Prime members signed up for Smile (but not say anything about how many have actually been allowed to use it.)
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smile is still in beta, even months after you made this post. and even when you made the post it was around a year old. but there are browser plugins that can make every amazon link smile.
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Thanks for the post informing how stupid, lazy and/or indifferent the average Amazon user is that they can’t manage to type “smile.” before “amazon.com” to help contribute in any small way to a charity they allegedly care about. This is Amazon’s fault for counting on their users’ laziness and stupidity and using it to lessen minimization of profit. I somehow remember to type the extra 6 characters, but I guess I’m just skewing statistics over here.
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Paul is correct. .013% was Amazon Smile’s donation for 2015. I have to agree with Marc though. .5% of $99.1 billion = $4.955 billion, not $12.9 million. If Amazon were to make it a 1 time request and lets say 5% of sales are linked to Smile that would have resulted in about $2.48 billion for 2015, not just 12.9 million. I just checked today and Smile says that the total donations generated through Feb 2018 were $80.13 million Not much when you consider what it could have been.
On selecting charities, I like that Amazon allows me to pick a smaller local charity. I believe that people that do not donate regularly would rather donate to local charities if there were an easy way. But having to place a request at Smile first translates to $0 because it’s just not the easy way. Like Marc said, if the purchase is small, say $40.00 why bother for a $.40 donation?
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0.5% of $99.1 billion =/= $4.955 billion. It’s 495.5 million. You’re off by a factor of ten.
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40 cents add up
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I have not read the comments so forgive me if I’m repeating something. It’s not difficult to remember to go to Smile, and if you do – well, how hard is it to revert to the site, really? I have set up special links on my phone and laptop so if I do misremember it’s not difficult to go over to the Smile site at which point I actually “smile” because I took the time to make a little bit of a difference.
I do like the idea of having the choice to Smile or not be a preference choice.
And despite whether or not it’s a marketing ploy – and Amazon is not the only one, mind you – it’s up to people to make up their own minds, do their own research.
Ultimately what’s important here is that a not-at-all paltry sum went to people’s choices of charities.
That’s a good thing.
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Leaving a comment on a blog post from a year ago, but since it’s the first result on Google when looking for an analysis of Amazon Prime, I figure it’s probably worth it to point a couple things out.
First, in spite of the fact that Amazon could probably do more in their charitable giving, I don’t really see how Smile is bad given what’s been explained here. Something is better than nothing and as long as the amount of money Amazon brags about giving is actually going to the charities (as opposed to keeping a percent of that 0.5% for administrative fees or something like that) then it’s honest charitable giving.
Second (and this is what really bugged me the most) in the last paragraph you say that for ever $1000 you spend, Amazon keeps $995. This assumption seems to be the driving force behind the negative perception that pervades this post and it’s either hilariously naive or maliciously deceptive. Amazon handles a ridiculous amount of money, but their profits are only a tiny fraction of their revenue. Amazon is notorious for having razor thin profit margins and then turning around and reinvesting the bulk of their earnings back into the company. According to their financial disclosures, their net profit margin for the quarter ending Mar ’18 was 3.19%. So in reality, for every $1000 you spend Amazon keeps $31.90 as profit. All things considered, giving $5 for every $30 you take doesn’t strike me as very stingy.
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I came here to see how this all works, and whether I want to participate in this program. In your article you say, “If my math is correct, that means that the $12,867,013 in charitable giving amounts to 0.00012 percent of sales.” Well, your math is NOT correct. You are off by a factor of 100! That comes out to 0.01298%. To see a percentage, you have to divide the $12M by the $99B, and them multiply by 100. That’s how percentages work.
I don’t have a horse in this race. But 12 or 13 million bucks ain’t hay. I’m sure they could do better. But using this increases my charitable contributions without another dime out of my pocket. If all the members of our organization do this, it will add up to something meaningfu.
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Actually it will never add up to anything meaningful at 0.5% -which is the point for Amazon. It’s like granting half of a “mile” for every dollar you spend. Or, a credit card that gives 0.5% cash back. People would never sign up for these things. But most important, it’s disingenuous not because Amazon is not giving enough (they don’t have to give anything) but because this program makes some people direct their spending to the company thinking they are making an impact when they are not.
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Many thanks for the nice post, it was very interesting and informative.
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