Charities will still be able to receive donations until the program officially ends. Those charities that will be impacted by AmazonSmile coming to an end will receive a one-time donation worth three months of what they received in 2022, Amazon explained.
“We will continue to pursue and invest in other areas where we’ve seen we can make meaningful change-from building affordable housing to providing access to computer science education for students in underserved communities to using our logistics infrastructure and technology to assist broad communities impacted by natural disasters,” the company said. According to AmazonSmile’s website, over 1 million charities have benefited from the program.Ī spokesperson tells Nexstar those charities have received $500 million with the average annual donation being less than $230.Īmazon now plans to “wind down” AmazonSmile by February 20, 2023. Through the program, Amazon would donate 0.5% of the price of eligible purchases to the shopper’s charitable organization of their choice. As a result, Amazon froze hiring, closed brick-and-mortar stores and shut down business units, in addition to cutting jobs.OSHA cites Amazon for safety hazards at three warehouses amid larger investigationĪmazonSmile was launched in 2013. Consumers eventually went back to their pre-pandemic shopping habits, and Amazon (with its bottomline affected by the shift) reportedly conducted cost-cutting reviews to figure out which units weren't bringing in money. Amazon was one of the companies that benefited from COVID lockdowns over the past few years and had to hire thousands of new people to keep up with the demand. If you'll recall, Amazon recently announced that it's expanding its planned job cuts to eliminate over 18,000 roles. Still, critics can't help but wonder if this is merely one of Amazon's cost-cutting tactics. According to Bloomberg through, the company donated almost $500 million to charities over the past 10 years through AmazonSmile, but the average amount per donation is only $230 due to the sheer number of participating organizations. Going forward, the company will focus its charitable work "in other areas where it can make meaningful change." It gave a few examples of its future plans, such as investing $2 billion to build and preserve affordable housing, funding the computer science curriculum for 1 million students across thousands of schools and delivering 12 million meals this year through food banks.Īmazon didn't expound on what it meant by the program failing to make a meaningful impact. As a parting donation to participating organizations, Amazon will give them the equivalent of three months what they earned in 2022 through the program. Whenever people use the AmazonSmile website to make a purchase, the company donates 0.5 percent of what they paid to the charity of their choice at no additional cost to them. Apparently, the program's ability to make meaningful impact was hampered by the fact that it has over 1 million eligible organizations worldwide. In its announcement, the e-commerce giant said "the program has not grown to create the impact that had originally hoped" almost a decade after it was launched.
Amazon plans to wind down AmazonSmile, its giving program that allows buyers to donate to their favorite charities with every purchase, by February 20th, 2023.
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