Opinion: Little to Smile About in New Amazon Giving Effort

Amazon’s new charity program, AmazonSmile, could actually curtail giving by consumers, a digital consultant to nonprofit groups writes at The Huffington Post.

Launched in late October, AmazonSmile allots to charity 0.5 percent of proceeds from purchases made at a sister Amazon Web site. Brady Josephson says that because the donation carries no extra cost for buyers, the transaction “heavily skews and distorts” their decision-making process, offering the good feeling that accompanies giving without their actually having given.

Consumers are thus less likely to make a genuine donation at the next opportunity, “because the charitable reward has been felt already so they don’t need to give to get another one,” Mr. Josephson writes. He adds that an AmazonSmile shopper would have to spend $10,000 to generate a $50 donation, asserting, “It’s pretty clear who wins here and I’ll give you a hint: It’s not the charity.”

Joshua DuBois, the former head of President Barack Obama’s office of faith-based initiatives, praises AmazonSmile in a Daily Beast column. He says that given Amazon’s size, the 0.5 percent donation could add up to hundreds of millions of dollars for charity, and that the program “has the potential to subtly shift the contours of American giving” by making donating easy and inspiring other major e-commerce businesses to follow suit.