The Wrong Kind of Charity?

I received an email from Amazon UK this morning which opened with the following:

Ten years ago, we launched AmazonSmile to make it easier for customers to support their favourite charities. However, since launch, the programme has not grown to create the impact that we had originally hoped.

AmazonSmile represents a very small portion of the total charitable contributions made through our other programmes, which we estimate at more than £100 million in 2021.

We are writing to let you know that we plan to wind down AmazonSmile by February 20, 2023. We will continue to pursue and invest in other programmes that we know will have more impact—from providing support to families in need, to using our logistics infrastructure and technology to assist communities impacted by natural disasters.

I’m not sure what kind of ‘impact’ Amazon was looking for, but I suspect they mean ‘putting a positive gloss on our reputation’.

AmazonSmile is the only reason I still occasionally shop at their website. Forcing them to pay some money to my preferred charity with every purchase made me feel a little better about giving them my custom.

The fact that I’ve never heard of any of the other charitable things they mention in the email makes me wonder exactly how they’re donating and how much benefit is being delivered to good causes.

Am I being too cynical?