AmazonSmile Charity Program Shutting Down, As Company Starts Cutting Costs

By Amy D

Posted on January 19, 2023

The AmazonSmile program, a charity initiative by Amazon that raised more than $377 million since 2013, is shutting down by February 20.

If you shop on Amazon, you probably saw or even used it – it was a program where, for each purchase you made, Amazon donated a small percentage of your order value to a charity of your choice.

Now, in a measure to cut costs and optimize operations, Amazon is shutting down AmazonSmile, saying they’ll start investing in other areas where they can make “meaningful changes.”

“After almost a decade, the program has not grown to create the impact that we had originally hoped”, said the company in a blog post announcing the end of the charity initiative and explaining that “with so many eligible organizations — more than 1 million globally — our ability to have an impact was often spread too thin.”

Fortunately, for those organizations that did rely on AmazonSmile, the company has a plan to help them adjust and will offer them 3 months of earnings based on what they made in 2022.

You can read in their blog how Amazon plans to do charity going forward.

AmazonSmile is just the latest program to get the ax as the shopping giant is looking to cut costs. Alongside the huge workforce reduction announced in November that saw 18,000 jobs eliminated, Amazon also shut down the Amazon Care telehealth service and Amazon Scout, their home-delivery robots.

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