SEATTLE (Michigan News Source) – On Wednesday, charities across the country, and in the rest of the world, received an email that Amazon would be shutting down its charity donation program, AmazonSmile, on February 20th. The program, in operation since 2013, allows shoppers to donate 0.5% of eligible purchases to a charity of their choice, whether it’s a big organization like St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, a medium-sized non-profit organization that raises money for breast cancer research or a small animal charity that only rescues 50 kittens and puppies a year.

MORE NEWS: Man Arrested Outside Trump Rally in September Found Competent to Stand Trial

Since the program started, AmazonSmile has been able to donate $400 million to U.S. charities and more than $449 million globally. However, the company, in an email sent out on Wednesday, said, “…with so many eligible organizations—more than 1 million globally—our ability to have an impact was often spread too thin.”

Company spokesman Patrick Malone says that most donations aren’t very large, averaging about $230 per charity a year.

Although an Amazon company spokesperson said the move isn’t a cost-cutting measure, some in the media are questioning if it has to do with the 18,000 layoffs that the company is making. Others in the media think that the company is ungrateful for the amount of business that the charity program has brought in. Some, like the New York Times, say that AmazonSmile was responsible for Amazon Prime membership catapulting to popularity after non-profits all over the country started promoting it to get donations.

With only a month’s notice given to the charities that participate in the program, Amazon is lamenting that the donations haven’t been going to the right priorities and they want to move towards spending their profits on the areas that the company chooses instead of organizations that their customers want to donate to.

Their email said, “Over the past few years, we’ve seen that Amazon can have a more significant and lasting impact if we invest in specific areas and focus our philanthropic efforts in the communities where our employees live and work. We’ve started to see the benefits of a more focused approach with our investments in programs like Amazon Future Engineer and our $2 billion investment in building affordable housing in our hometown communities through the Amazon Housing Equity Fund—and we will continue to pursue and invest in other areas where we’ve seen we can make meaningful change.”

Amazon doesn’t think that the way the donations have been spent have been used in a manner they had anticipated and they said, “the program has not grown to create the impact that we had originally hoped.” So instead, in their company blog, they outline the charitable causes they plan to support.

In order to soften the blow to the over one million organizations who have been able to receive AmazonSmile donations in the past, the company’s email to the charities said they will provide them with a one-time payment equivalent to three months of payments based on what they accrued in 2022 through this program. They said, “The timing of this final payment will be approximately 60 to 90 days after February 20, 2023. We hope that this will help minimize the impact that this decision might have.”

MORE NEWS: Number of State Employees Earning $126K+ Nearly Triples in Four Years

In closing, the “AmazonSmile Team” says that charitable Amazon customers can still buy things for their favorite non-profit organizations through a wish list of items that they need; however, the charities won’t receive any donations for doing so (or for buying anything else) after February 20th. Their final sentence in the email said, “We are determined to help create a better world for our customers, our employees, and the communities we serve across the country.”

The social media posts from non-profits around the country since Wednesday show that the new world that Amazon will be creating and the impact that this decision will have will be quite momentous for many, especially to smaller non-profits – and it won’t be good.

The animal rescue organizations especially are dismayed and worried that this move will add to their other challenges over the past few years including more animal surrenders, higher costs and less donations.

National Public Radio reports that Squirrelwood Equine Sanctuary, an animal sanctuary in New York’s Hudson Valley, home to more than 40 horses and other farm animals, will be hit hard. The organization says that the money they have received from AmazonSmile has “made a huge difference to us.” Beth Hyman, the Executive Director of the sanctuary, says that the donations have been reliable and that they receive a few thousand dollars every quarter which can feed an animal for a year.

Hyman goes on to say the same thing that many in the animal rescue world are saying about the upcoming lost donations when she points out, “That’s a life that hangs in the balance.”

Many other types of charities are also posting on Twitter and Facebook as well that they rely on their quarterly donations from AmazonSmile and that shutting down the program is going to have a huge impact on their non-profit organization.

The Munchkins’ Mission cat rescue organization in Suttons Bay, Michigan posted on their Facebook page, “We never received thousands of dollars but the few hundreds we did receive we so helpful.”

When doing a search on the amount of eligible organizations in Michigan that people can donate to through AmazonSmile, 8172 results came up with everything from PTAs to animal charities, from youth development to conservation groups, from sports clubs to scholarship programs, from advocates for children crime victims to the disabled, from libraries to LGBTQ groups.

But it’s not just the small organizations that use the AmazonSmile program.

Many large national groups around the country use AmazonSmile to solicit donations for their head organization and local partners like Planned Parenthood, the Red Cross, United Way, YMCA, Habitat for Humanity, Goodwill, Salvation Army and more.

St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital said at the end of last year that they had received $15 million in donations since they first started participating in the program.

The comments on social media about AmazonSmile shutting down the charitable program are plentiful both on the pages of the non-profit organizations and also on Amazon platforms, with many threatening to abandon the shopping website altogether.

As one disgusted Facebook user and supporter of a local community organization put it,“Well, you’re certainly making an impact NOW, Amazon.”