Amazon Shuts Down AmazonSmile Charity Program in February

Amazon Shuts Down AmazonSmile Charity Program in February |

Amazon plans to end AmazonSmile, its donation program that allows shoppers to donate to their favorite charities with every purchase, by February 20, 2023. In its announcement, the e-commerce giant said: “The program hasn’t grown to make the impact [it] had originally hoped for nearly a decade after its launch. Obviously, the program’s ability to make a meaningful impact has been hampered by the fact that it has over 1 million eligible organizations worldwide. Donations were often spread too thinly.

Whenever people use the AmazonSmile website to make a purchase, the company donates 0.5 percent of the amount they paid to a charity of their choice at no additional cost to them. As a farewell donation to participating organizations, Amazon will give them the equivalent of three months of what they earned through the program in 2022. Going forward, the company will focus its community service “on other areas where it can make meaningful change.” There were some examples of his plans for the future, like investing $2 billion to build and maintain affordable housing, funding the computer science curriculum for 1 million students in thousands of schools, and delivering 12 million meals this year through food banks.

Amazon didn’t explain what it meant that the program didn’t make a significant impact. According to Bloomberg, the company has donated nearly $500 million to charities through AmazonSmile over the past 10 years, but the average amount per donation is just $230 due to the sheer number of organizations participating. Quiet, criticism I can’t help but wonder if this is just one from Amazon cost cutting tactics.

If you recall, Amazon recently announced that it is expanding its planned job cuts to cut over 18,000 jobs. Amazon has been one of the companies to benefit from the COVID lockdowns in recent years, hiring thousands of new employees to keep up with demand. Consumers eventually returned to their pre-pandemic shopping habits, and Amazon (with its bottom line affected by the postponement) was reportedly conducting cost-cutting audits to see which units weren’t making money. As a result, Amazon froze hiring, closing brick-and-mortar stores and closing business units, in addition to shedding jobs.

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