Thanks, Amazon: Killing your Smile charity program makes buying here in KC easier | Opinion

While cleaning out the spam filter in my personal email Monday afternoon, I noticed a message with a subject line that I immediately took to mean bad news: “Update on AmazonSmile.”

AmazonSmile was a program the online retailer launched in 2013 that let customers put a little of each purchase they made into the pockets of a charity of their choice, so long as they remembered to start their shopping by going to smile.amazon.com instead of the main homepage. But as of Feb. 20, it’s history.

It wasn’t much — a half-percent of what I spent went to my designee. But if enough Amazon buyers chose the same beneficiary, those tiny fractional purchases added up. Updates came to my inbox erratically over the years, letting me know how much my charity was receiving: It got $300.69 in the third quarter of 2022, for example, bringing its total to $5,092.37 overall so far.

“The program has not grown to create the impact that we had originally hoped,” read the email announcing AmazonSmile’s demise. “With so many eligible organizations — more than 1 million globally — our ability to have an impact was often spread too thin.” Instead, Amazon’s supposed philanthropic efforts will be directed to house brands: the Amazon Housing Equity Fund, the Amazon Future Engineer program, the Amazon Community Delivery Fund.

Would that $5,092.37 make much of a dent in one of those projects’ bank accounts? Not likely. But to the tiny Kansas City nonprofit I chose because of its reputation for helping some of the most vulnerable among us, and devoting almost every penny it receives toward their direct care?

“Yes, that donation did matter to us,” an official with the charity told me Monday.

I’ve long tried to resist the convenience of firing up the Amazon app when I need to make a purchase but can wait a few days to have it delivered. The allure of a super-low price often just isn’t worth not being able to look an item over before I buy it. And I can often find bargains just as good at my favorite places to browse kitchenwares in Westport or musical instruments in Midtown, anyway.

So thanks, Amazon, I suppose: That half-percent might not seem like much, but it was one small bit of reassurance that my money was doing at least something for Kansas City. So now, choosing to go out of my way to buy local whenever I can is just that tiny bit more appealing. It’s the little things that add up, after all.

This story was originally published January 23, 2023 at 3:45 PM.