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Comment by garrison | Hacker News Reader

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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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.)

> Amazon Smile only works with charities.

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

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).

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_...

> If your selected charity does not register to participate, becomes ineligible, or requests to be removed from the program, you will have a chance to select a different charity to receive the accrued donations that have not yet been disbursed to your charity. If you do not select a different charity, the accrued donations will be distributed to other organizations receiving donations.

This seems fair.

Why shouldn't Brave adopt this exact model?

Because if I donate to the EFF and it instead goes to a certain charity that kills something like 90% of the pets it takes in, I'm going to be upset.

If I donate to my favorite YouTube personality and instead the money goes to PewDiePie's empire, I'm going to be upset.

The difference between donations and taxes is that I can choose who to fund and how much. If that choice is no longer mine, and I have a strong chance to fund entities I find morally repulsive, then why donate?

I received an email a few months after signing up for Amazon Smile letting me know that the charity I chose was not able to accept donations and that I needed to choose another one. I did not see an option to forward the funds that would have gone to my chosen charity for past purchases to the new charity, though.

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

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