AmazonSmile claims that a percentage of your Amazon purchase can go to a charity of your choice. A program that nonprofits can utilize and in turn ask their supporters to “shop through Amazon” to have half of one percent of the things they purchase go to the designated charity. AmazonSmile will donate 0.5% of the purchase price of eligible products to the charitable organization of your choice. 

However, to access AmazonSmile you must go to a separate website, instead of their default storefront at amazon.com. Amazon.com’s software designers do not allow shoppers to make a one-time request to donate, or have these contributions directly linked to the shoppers account. The only automated actions are the notifications and advertisements sent out to charity supporters to shop Amazon. Amazon now has small nonprofits and organizations encouraging their members to use Amazon, knowing that most will forget to go to the AmazonSmile link.

This charitable act requires shoppers to be rigorous in their purchasing patterns, disrupting a pre-automated system instilled in most Amazon shoppers. The entire process to eventually give a charity half of a penny is tiresome and a deliberate effort by Amazon to depress, rather than increase, the act of giving. AmazonSmile relies on the work of nonprofits already strapped for time and resources, to further increase their customer retention, with no one smiling but them.

To increase AmazonSmile’s philanthropic legitimacy, we want to encourage AmazonSmile to raise their order-based donations from 0.5% to 1.0%. This would improve and help smaller nonprofits who’s selection rate is not as high as the nonprofits that AmazonSmile has personally selected. If the donation option and contributions were directly linked to the shoppers account, more people would remember and proceed to donating to non-profits. Making the change to add AmazonSmile onto Amazon's main account would be more philanthropic.