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garrison | 8 years ago

This is effectively how Amazon Smile works, although the technical details are different: instead of soliciting "donations" they promise that 0.5% of each purchase is given (by Amazon) to the user's charity of choice. But the charity does not receive the money until they "register" their organization with Amazon, and as far as I can tell there is no way for me to know if my chosen organization has done so.

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JumpCrisscross|8 years ago

Amazon Smile only works with charities. Charities publicly list their addresses in multiple public databases. Sending a cheque to that address is easy. Not the same thing for non-charity content producers. (Not to mention, taxes.)

Alex3917|8 years ago

> Amazon Smile only works with charities.

They work with any type of nonprofit, not only charities.

klank|8 years ago

I don't think it's a fair comparison. When you select your charity Amazon Smile directly says:

"We will reach out to the organization you select to ensure it is ready to accept donations from Amazon."

Furthermore, you aren't able to free form enter a charity. It's only from the list they've sourced (presumably from public records).

snowpanda|8 years ago

But the problem remains the same in that the charities on Amazon Smile (almost one million[1]) were (as far as we know) never informed that money was being collected for them.

Yes they might be contacted, but what if they don't want (or simply can't for legal reasons) use Amazon as a gateway for their funds?

Now you've given users the impression that they are helping a certain charity when it never makes it there.

Theoretically, these same users might have made a small donation directly to that company if it wasn't for Smile.

I'd still recommend using Smile, overall I think it's great, but you have to admit there might have been a better way to go about it. How to do that better, I do not know.

[1] https://smile.amazon.com/gp/chpf/about/ref=smi_se_dshb_leli_...

dexterdog|8 years ago

But smile doesn't cost anything to the user. You pay the same checkout price for something you were already buying.