Absolute peak corpo-speak. I think I can translate:
> We don't want to send smaller amounts of money to a huge amount of charities chosen by users, since some users likely chose charities that we do not support. It also doesn't allow us to print out those huge oversized checks for photo ops. We will continue to give a bare pittance out to a small number of organizations selected for peak public relations points while minimizing cost and maximizing tax write-offs and greasing the right palms to advance our business.
I asked ChatGPT to translate your paragraph back to positive sounding corporate speak:
> We are committed to being strategic and efficient with our charitable giving by focusing on a select number of organizations that align with our values and support our business objectives. This approach allows us to make a meaningful impact and gain positive visibility through high-impact initiatives and partnerships. Additionally, it maximizes the benefits of our charitable investments, including cost savings and tax advantages.
Yeah. If they had hoped for more impact, they could have, say, made Smile the default, instead of only very occasionally reminding you to use their inexplicably different URL for smile purchases.
The entire point of the url restriction was to save money on google search ads and boost costumers starting their search from Amazon first. The search ads savings was what went to charities.
That's the average, sure, but since Amazon allows each customer to pick a charity, I imagine some charities got a lot more, and some a lot less.
According to my account page, I've generated $100.71 for the charity I selected, and, overall, they've received $273.64 as a part of the program. So I guess the charity I selected wasn't all that popular. But I expect other, more mainstream charities, were.
It would be politically inconvenient for the FSF to accept that they get donations in kind from Amazon or Microsoft, given the FSF's regular attacks on the two companies.
I can't decide which is funnier, the fact that you think a fifteen-year-old experience is relevant now, or the fact they had to update the story multiple times because the author kept getting facts wrong. Not exactly a slam dunk on backing up the "most non-profits are a scam" claim.
Huh? The article is less than three years old; nothing but the first and last few paragraphs focus on the author's 15-year-old experience; and the couple of corrections at the end were fairly trivial, especially for such a long article.
The SPLC is one of the non-profits that is most responsible for this general assumption. The only one that might be more of a household name as a bad non-profit is Komen.
Checking my account right now: I generated $2.86, and my charity received $399.79. Yay for being average I guess!
I’m surprised they couldn’t squeeze more out of this program though. With credit cards, I think the points system definitely works to make you feel better about your purchase.
IMO they tried to strike a balance, the existence of Smile helps drive traffic to Amazon and improve their PR, but they make it harder than it should be (you have to use a speciic link, you have to enable push notifications on mobile etc.) so they don't end up having to pay too much. Logically they could have made Smile an option you set once and it's applied forever, but they didn't.
You think "I'm spending $500 for this dohicky, but I'm getting some magical points too". Intellectually you know those points are worth about $5, but there's an element of "mystery box" too. Maybe those points will be worth $50, or even more.
Like airline miles. You can convince yourself that X number of miles is "worth" $10k because they let you fly business class to Asia. In reality you don't value that flight at $10k because you wouldn't pay $10k to fly business class if you didn't have the points.
Assuming equal distribution is disingenuous. FreeBSD as an example has received nearly twenty thousand dollars through this program. It made a difference.
> We don't want to send smaller amounts of money to a huge amount of charities chosen by users, since some users likely chose charities that we do not support. It also doesn't allow us to print out those huge oversized checks for photo ops. We will continue to give a bare pittance out to a small number of organizations selected for peak public relations points while minimizing cost and maximizing tax write-offs and greasing the right palms to advance our business.