Hundreds of thousands of charity organizations have relied on and benefitted from Amazon-facilitated donations through AmazonSmile. Andy Jassy, CEO of Amazon, addressed their increasing investments for a better customer experience in a letter to Amazon shareholders, published in April of 2022, stating, “if you’re making big bets… you have to be in it for the long-haul or you’ll give up too quickly.” Subsequently, on January 18th, 2023, Amazon announced it would end its AmazonSmile program by the end of the week. This brief week-long notice brought a financial deficit to charities receiving funds for AmazonSmile and showed how Amazon believed this charitable source was spread too thin over too many organizations. Amazon should have continued and improved AmazonSmile because it was consumer-focused, impactful, and did no harm to the parties involved. 

AmazonSmile was a customer-directed program that allowed customers to donate to and impact a charity organization of their choosing for no additional cost. The end of AmazonSmile rids customers of the opportunity to directly impact a charitable organization that they are a part of, affected by, or believe in. Its abrupt end gave charities a 33 day notice to find alternative funding. Many of these organizations, especially ones that are small and local, felt diminished that they had to remediate their sudden lack of funding from AmazonSmile. Amazon donated 0.5% of any customer’s AmazonSmile purchase to a charity of their choosing. According to Amazon, the program has donated over $499 million globally. This lucrative funding shows how valuable and significant this donation program was. In 2022, an Amazon spokesperson told NPR in an email that, “AmazonSmile's average donation per charity was $230 in the U.S.” This $230 average may seem like an unimpressive figure, but in actuality, its effect is profound as small charitable organizations need less funding, compared to larger charities. 

Amazon had an approval process for organizations to ensure that they held up positive and inclusive values. Amazon denied Coral Ridge Ministries Media (CRMM) from being a part of their donation program because they expressed negative views on the LGBTQ+ community and were labeled as a “hate group.” This case was taken to the U.S. Court of Appeals where the Senior U.S. District Judge Myron Thompson concluded that allowing Coral Ridge to be a part of Amazon Smile would be a violation of Amazon’s First Amendment rights and that their allegations did not actually describe actionable defamation. The decision to not ban these charities may be from Amazon’s beliefs, values, or simply that having them can produce the ultimate goal of financial gain. No matter the reason Amazon used their authority, power, and choice to ensure their values align with the charities they provided this fundraising method. 

A facet of AmazonSmile, Charity Lists, was announced in November of 2018 and subsequently taken away at the same time as AmazonSmile. The Charity List program allowed charities to create lists of their needs and customers could choose to purchase and donate the goods and 0.5% of the purchase to said charities.  In an attempt to replace these charity lists, Amazon allows charities to create wish lists where people are able to purchase and donate items to the charities. However, many organizations rely on many goods and services which cannot be purchased on Amazon. Because Amazon Charity Lists are a facet of AmazonSmile the organizations within them are approved through various ethical and logistical methods such as being recognized by the IRS as a tax-exempt 501(c)(3). AmazonSmile and Amazon Charity Lists should have remained running as they are significantly more prosocial and charitable than Amazon wish lists. 

Amazon claims to end AmazonSmile as the donations were spread too thin over too many charitable organizations. In Amazon’s announcement of their decision to end AmazonSmile, Amazon gave organizations a one-time donation equal to three months of individual non-profit organizations 2022 earnings. For many organizations, the money served as a passive revenue that allowed for room for the company to grow. The Cat’s Meow is a non-profit organization that received almost 4,000 dollars via AmazonSmile over a few years according to their Twitter account, @TheCatsMeowInc. The 4,000 dollars worth of donations had significantly helped them rescue, rehabilitate, and rehome cats in need. Along with donations for medicine and basic needs for people and animals, AmazonSmile provided an outlet for people to get involved with a nonprofit and fundraisers. The communications manager for CASA of Central Texas stated, “We were using them mostly as just general budget support. But for us, it was a tool to get people involved.” 

In their letter to customers addressing their decision to end AmazonSmile, Amazon emphasized that they still hold their long-term commitment to communities and will continue to donate to nonprofits. These nonprofits include Amazon Future Engineer, Community Delivery Program, Amazon Disaster relief, and community giving. In this letter, they do not state how much they are donating and what earned profits they will be using. Without monetary valued donation reports or evidence of percentage cost donations, there is no way of knowing your personal impact as an Amazon customer or how Amazon could help movements you care about. The ingenuity of AmazonSmile was that it allowed customers to financially support charities at no extra cost --- a feature not found in many other fundraisers.

Unfortunately, the shutdown of Amazon Smile does not allow room for growing better as a program or being reinstated. Amazon has already shut down AmazonSmile as of February 20th, 2023. While getting AmazonSmile back to its original beneficial purpose is not feasible, Amazon can and should increase the impact of their charitable wishlists. In order to show their dedication to promoting and donating to charities, Amazon should promote their charitable wish lists on the homepage on the official Amazon site. Amazon holds wealth and the ability to dominate its platform which allows it to implement direct customer-influenced donations. Amazon, among other organizations, should promote innovation to better charitable sights in the future.