Just got the email. You may have too.
Amazon Smile -- the program that allows Amazon shoppers to designate their “Favorite charity” to receive half a percent of what they spend on Amazon -- is about to end after ten years. The end is this coming February 20.
Most likely this is small and unimportant news to you. If it’s a big deal, my condolences. I wish you the best at finding a replacement revenue source.
And this is where I can’t stop myself saying, I told you so.
Because I (and many others) did.
It was inevitable that Amazon Smile would end. Amazon is a business. Everything they do needs to make business sense. It seems Amazon Smile made enough sense to last for a decade. Until it didn’t any more.
As their email put it:
... we learned that with so many eligible organizations — more than 1 million globally — our ability to have an impact was often spread too thin.... Amazon can have a more significant and lasting impact if we invest in specific areas and focus our philanthropic efforts ...
I can just picture someone in some Seattle back-office sending out hundreds of thousands of checks for under $50.
So they stopped. Regardless of the impact their decision might have on their nonprofit partners.
It was their right -- their responsibility -- to do what made sense for their own goals.
The good news is that for most participants, the revenue lost will be unimportant.
But I think there’s a lesson for nonprofits to learn from this, and I blogged about it back in 2019, at Should you bother with Amazon Smile?
My point then (and now) was that fundraisers should take a careful look at “free money” deals like Amazon Smile.
Because they aren’t free.
In the best of situations, these schemes cost time to make them work at all -- opportunity cost. And often, though not in the case of Amazon Smile, they also cost actual money.
That .5% rebate meant when the donors who went to the trouble to designate you as their favorite spent $10,000 on Amazon, you’d get $50.
To make the revenue scale up to a meaningful number would take not just a large list of donors, but a meaningful effort to reach out to donors and get them to do what it took for you to get that .5%.
And while you were doing that, what other more dependable revenue-generating activities were you not doing?
As I noted back then, “I bet you'd get there faster standing on the sidewalk with a tin cup.”
So next time one of those generous “free money for nonprofits” deals comes your way, remember to count the cost of being involved. Including the time spent.
And remember, the whole thing can (and will) eventually disappear with nothing more than a polite email.
