全球视野 | 为什么亚马逊关闭AmazonSmile捐赠计划让非营利组织感到愤怒与失望？

Amazon’s surprise decision to shut down its AmazonSmile donation program has left thousands of its nonprofit beneficiaries disappointed and concerned about finding ways to replace the funding. 

亚马逊出人意料地决定关闭其AmazonSmile捐赠计划，这让许多从该计划受益的非营利组织感到失望，并且这些组织担心如何找到替代这笔资金的方法。 

The e-commerce giant had launched AmazonSmile in 2013, contributing 0.5% of every purchase made by participating customers to the charity of their choosing. As of 2022, the company said it has donated $449 million to various charities. 

这家电子商务巨头在2013年推出了AmazonSmile计划。参与该计划的顾客的每笔购物的0.5%，将会被捐给顾客们自己选择的慈善机构。该公司表示，截至2022年，它已向各种慈善机构捐赠了4.49亿美元。 

Before it ends the program next month, Amazon says, it will provide a final donation to each of the 1 million-plus nonprofits that used AmazonSmile, equivalent to 25% of what the charity received from the program in 2022. 

亚马逊表示，在结束该计划之前，它将向使用AmazonSmile的100多万家非营利组织中的每一家提供最后一笔捐款，这相当于该慈善机构2022年从该计划获得的25%。 

Some of the e-commerce giant’s competitors, including Walmart and Target, have their own community donation programs that somewhat resemble AmazonSmile. 

这个电子商务巨头的一些竞争对手，包括沃尔玛和塔吉特，都有类似于AmazonSmile的、自己的社区捐赠计划。 

But nonprofits say they feel let down. 

但非营利组织说，他们感到失望。 

Tenisha Taylor says she felt Amazon insulted her Chicago nonprofit’s work by saying its program hadn’t provided enough of an impact for its charitable beneficiaries. 

特尼莎·泰勒说，她觉得亚马逊侮辱了她在芝加哥的非营利组织的工作，说其项目没有为其慈善受益人提供足够的影响。 

“You haven’t talked to me,” said Taylor, who founded the Ezekiel Taylor Foundation, which provides scholarships to young Black men from Chicago whose lives have been affected by gun violence. “You haven’t seen my bottom line of impact of these brilliant young men that I have walking on campuses across this country.” 

泰勒创建了伊齐基尔·泰勒基金会，为来自芝加哥的、那些生活受到枪支暴力影响的年轻黑人男性提供奖学金。他说：“你（亚马逊）从没有和我谈过。你还没有看到我的影响力的成效，就是那些在我帮助下走进这个国家的校园里的出色年轻人们。” 

Taylor noted the huge disparity between the wealth of Amazon’s founder, Jeff Bezos, and the small amounts that nonprofits use to try to make their communities healthier and safer. 

泰勒指出，亚马逊创始人杰夫·贝佐斯的财富，与非营利组织用来试图使其社区变得更健康、更安全的少量财富之间，存在着巨大差距。 

“We are making this company (Amazon) rich — we are,” said Taylor referring to communities of color like hers. “At the very least, they can be good corporate citizens to pay it forward in the communities that are patronizing them.” 

“是我们，是我们正在使这家公司（亚马逊）变得富有。”泰勒指的是像她一样的有色人种社区。泰勒说：“至少，亚马逊可以成为优秀的企业公民，回馈那些光顾他们的社区。” 

Amazon’s decision to end the program was part of a strategic shift to support initiatives that work on a larger scale, like its $2 billion contribution to build affordable housing, said Patrick Malone, a company spokesperson. After 10 years, he said, it was time to reevaluate the program. He said the move is not a criticism of the nonprofits it supported. 

公司发言人帕特里克·马龙说，亚马逊决定终止该计划是战略转变的一部分，以支持在更大范围内发挥作用的举措，如为建设经济适用房捐款20亿美元。他说，经过10年后，是时候重新评估该计划了。他说，此举并不是对AmazonSmile所支持的非营利组织的批评。 

The company also recently announced that it would lay off 18,000 employees and cut other less profitable parts of its business. 

该公司最近还宣布将裁员1.8万人，并削减其业务中其他利润较低的部分。 

Taylor and other nonprofit founders say they are angry that Amazon didn’t give them an earlier warning about the program’s end. Many nonprofits had promoted AmazonSmile in their own fundraising appeals because the program provided them with a passive revenue stream from Amazon customers. 

泰勒和其他非营利性组织的创始人表示，他们对亚马逊没有就该计划的结束提前发出警告感到愤怒。许多非营利组织在自己的筹款呼吁中推广了AmazonSmile，因为该计划为他们提供了来自亚马逊顾客的被动收入流。 

Lauren Wagner, executive director of the Long Island Arts Alliance, based in Patchogue, New York, said she had encouraged the nonprofits she supports to sign up for AmazonSmile. Now, she’s concerned that her organization doesn’t know the identity of those customers and wants Amazon to seek permission to share that information with nonprofits. 

位于纽约帕乔格的长岛艺术联盟的执行董事劳伦·瓦格纳说，她曾鼓励她支持的非营利组织注册AmazonSmile。现在，她担心她的组织不知道这些顾客的身份信息，并希望向亚马逊寻求许可，与非营利组织分享这些信息。 

Malone said Amazon had notified customers of the program’s end and has no plans to share customer information with nonprofits. 

马龙说，亚马逊已经通知了顾客们该计划的结束，并没有计划与非营利组织分享顾客信息。 

Wagner said she contacted Amazon many times over the years to suggest improvements to the program. Among her suggestions were allowing users to donate without specifically going to smile.amazon.com and providing the option to donate when shopping on the Amazon app, something the company eventually allowed. 

瓦格纳说，多年来，她多次联系亚马逊，建议改进该项目。她的建议包括允许用户在不特别访问smile.amazon.com的情况下进行捐赠，并提供在亚马逊应用程序上购物时捐赠的选项，该公司最终允许了这一点。 

“They certainly never listened to any of the emails that were sent or they never surveyed us,” she said. “They never got our input on how to make it more impactful.” 

瓦格纳说：“他们肯定从来没有听从过任何一封发送给他们的电子邮件，或者他们从来没有调研过我们。他们从未得到我们关于如何使其更具影响力的意见。” 

A former Amazon employee, Adam Goldstein, said he, too, doubts how interested the company was in improving the program. For three years at Amazon, Goldstein said, he helped nonprofits claim donations, which he said felt was personally rewarding. But he didn’t get the impression that the company cared deeply about giving back to the community. 

亚马逊的一位前雇员亚当·戈德斯坦说，他也怀疑该公司对改善该项目会有多大兴趣。戈德斯坦说，在亚马逊工作的三年里，他帮助非营利组织申请捐款，他说这让他感觉到对自身有成就感。但他并没有产生公司对回馈社会非常关心的印象。 

“I only ever got the sense that it was really just about Amazon’s bottom line, and the charitable giving was marketing fodder,” Goldstein said. 

戈德斯坦说：“我只感觉到，这真的只是为了亚马逊的利润，而慈善捐赠是营销的素材。” 

Goldstein, who went on to become a grant writer and now works for a jobs initiative in Seattle, said he was told by a senior marketing manager that the program had been created to encourage customers to buy directly from Amazon rather than clicking through from a Google search for the product. That saved Amazon from having to pay a fee to Google. 

戈德斯坦后来成为一名拨款申请员，现在为西雅图的一项就业计划工作。他说，一位高级营销经理告诉他，创建AmazonSmile计划是为了鼓励客户直接从亚马逊购买，而不是通过点击谷歌来搜索产品。这可以让亚马逊不必向谷歌支付费用。 

Malone said that was not true. He said AmazonSmile was launched to allow customers to direct donations to a charity of their choosing, in what he called a win-win. 

马龙说这不是真的。他说，AmazonSmile的推出是为了让顾客将捐款直接捐给他们选择的慈善机构，他称这是一种双赢。 

Kari Niedfeldt-Thomas, a managing director of Chief Executives for Corporate Purpose, a business coalition that advises companies on social responsibility issues, said she was not surprised by Amazon’s decision to eliminate the program. 

向企业提供社会责任问题咨询的商业联盟Chief Executives for Corporate Purpose的董事总经理卡里·尼德费尔特-托马斯说，她对亚马逊取消AmazonSmile计划的决定并不惊讶。 

“A lot of companies start out their corporate community investment programs with what we would refer to as a ‘confetti approach’ — they give to everyone and everyone’s really excited,” Niedfeldt-Thomas said. “Then, over time, we see companies moving their strategic pillars to what we would refer to as a more ‘concentrated approach.’ ” 

卡里·尼德费尔特-托马斯说：“很多公司在开始他们的企业社区投资计划时，会采用我们所说的‘纸屑方法’：他们给到每个人，每个人都非常兴奋。然后，随着时间的推移，我们看到公司将他们的战略支柱转移到我们所说的更加‘集中的方法’。" 

In its letter to customers, Amazon said it would “pursue and invest in other areas where we’ve seen we can make meaningful change — from building affordable housing to providing access to computer science education for students in underserved communities.” 

亚马逊在给客户的信中说，它将“追求并投资于我们已经看到能够带来有意义变化的其他领域：从建造可负担住房，到为服务不足社区的学生提供计算机科学教育。” 

Niedfeldt-Thomas said her coalition considers companies that donate more than 1% of their pre-tax profits to be “good corporate citizens.” According to Amazon’s 2021 financials, it donates much more than that. Malone said the company wants to focus its philanthropic work around its strengths — by, for example, mobilizing large responses during disasters or distributing food aid. 

尼德费尔特-托马斯说，她的联盟认为，捐赠超过其税前利润1%的公司是“良好的企业公民”。根据亚马逊2021年的财务数据，它的捐款远远超过了这个数字。马龙说，该公司希望围绕其优势开展慈善工作。例如，通过在灾难期间，动员大规模响应或分发粮食援助。 

The business coalition’s research for 2021 shows that corporate donations were down slightly compared to 2020, when companies accelerated contributions to combat the COVID-19 pandemic, Niedfeldt-Thomas said. She noted that the current economic climate, with inflation and recession concerns, may also cause further decline. 

尼德费尔特-托马斯说，商业联盟对2021年的研究显示，与2020年相比，企业捐款略有下降，当时企业为抗击新冠疫情大流行加快了捐赠。她指出，目前的经济环境下，对通货膨胀和经济衰退的担忧，也可能导致进一步的下降。 

Though some corporations were “leveling off” in their giving, Niedfeldt-Thomas said her coalition found that 58% of the companies surveyed increased their total community investment between 2019 and 2021 and 35% of companies increased their budgets by more than 25%. 

虽然一些公司的捐赠“趋于平缓”，但尼德菲尔特-托马斯说，她的联盟发现，58%的受访公司在2019年至2021年期间增加了他们的社区投资总额，35%的公司的预算增加了25%以上。 

Walmart last year launched a community donation program called Spark Good, in addition to its existing philanthropic efforts that are directed through its store managers. The new program, Spark Good, like AmazonSmile, allows customers to select the nonprofit they want to support when they shop online with Walmart, and lets them buy goods from a nonprofit’s registry. 

沃尔玛去年推出了一项名为“Spark Good”的社区捐赠计划，这是在其现有通过商店经理指导的慈善工作之外的。新计划“Spark Good”与AmazonSmile一样，允许顾客在沃尔玛网上购物时，选择他们想支持的非营利组织，并让他们从非营利组织的捐赠愿望清单购买商品。 

Unlike AmazonSmile, Spark Good does not donate a percentage of a customer’s sale. Rather, it allows them to round up their payment to the nearest dollar. 

与AmazonSmile不同的是，Spark Good并不从顾客的销售中捐出一个百分比。相反，它允许顾客们将其付款四舍五入到最接近的美元。 

Julie Gehrki, Walmart’s vice president of philanthropy, said that Spark Good was designed with input from nonprofits and that it lets them engage with customers in the ways that feel relevant to their organization. 

沃尔玛负责慈善事业的副总裁朱莉·盖尔基说，Spark Good是根据非营利组织的意见设计的，它可以让非营利组织以与自己组织相关的方式与顾客接触。 

“We started with this idea that we could help connect customers to issues they care about,” she said. “We could make their daily shopping experience one that allows them to give back to who they want to and that, in aggregate, that would make a big difference.” 

她说：“我们开始时有这样一个想法，即我们可以帮助顾客与他们关心的问题联系起来。我们可以使他们的日常购物体验，成为一种允许他们回馈给他们想回馈的人的体验。而且，总的来说，这将带来很大的变化。” 

Wagner and Taylor said they hoped Amazon would reinstate the program. The small donations they received from customers, they said, were always helpful. 

劳伦·瓦格纳和特尼莎·泰勒表示，他们希望亚马逊能恢复这一计划。他们说，他们从顾客那里收到的小额捐款总是很有帮助。 

While working at Amazon, Goldstein said, he frequently saw how valuable even the smallest donations were to nonprofits. 

亚当·戈德斯坦说，在亚马逊工作时，他经常看到即使是最小的捐赠，对非营利组织来说也很有价值。 

“When Amazon says it wasn’t the impact that we really wanted, I think the big question is: what was the impact that you wanted?” he said. “And what I hear is, the impact on Amazon’s bottom line isn’t what they wanted.” 

戈德斯坦说：“当亚马逊说这不是我们真正想要的影响时，我认为最大的问题是：你想要的影响是什么？而我听到的是，对亚马逊的利润的影响，并不是他们想要的。”