Discrimination at Amazon. As an Investor, Your Voice Can Bring Real Change:
Perhaps never before in American history have we needed to work together more to defeat an unseen enemy. COVID-19 threatens us all – our health, our jobs, and the economic wellbeing of our country. Charitable organizations are on the front lines of combatting this pandemic.
Amazon plays a vital role in supporting charitable organizations by operating AmazonSmile, which allows Amazon customers to donate a portion of their purchase to the charity of their choice.
Yet Amazon outsources program participation to the Southern Poverty Law Center–a hyper-partisan and discredited organization that smears organizations it disagrees with as “haters” or “extremists.” Even as AmazonSmile has provided over $150 million to nonprofit organizations, Amazon gives the SPLC control over which organizations are eligible for charitable support instead of their own customers.
As shareholders, we believe Amazon should make program decisions for itself and not outsource decision making to a third party. Viewpoint discrimination brought on by a third party introduces unnecessary risk into Amazon’s growth strategy. It limits consumer choice and hurts the entire nonprofit community that Amazon purports to support through the Amazon Smile program.
Take Action
As an investor, you represent a critical stakeholder group. Your voice is very important, and you can take steps to stand up to the SPLC’s control of AmazonSmile quickly and easily:
It all Starts Here:
- Use the Petition form on this page to #AskAmazon to stop discriminating against nonprofits by outsourcing AmazonSmile to the SPLC. It will be sent to Amazon’s Board of Directors.
- Use the Advocall button to the right to immediately call Amazon Investor Relations and tell them that you support the Viewpoint Discrimination Risk Reporting shareholder proposal, which will appear on Amazon’s proxy statement this year and holds Amazon accountable for its irresponsible partnership with the SPLC.
- Vote your proxy directly, or tell your financial manager to do so, in favor of Viewpoint Discrimination Risk Reporting shareholder proposal,
If you give us just a moment of your time, you could change how Conservative America is treated by Amazon and at the same time protect your investment. Please act now.
Petition for Amazon to Stop Economic Censorship of Nonprofits
As an Amazon shareowner, I’m an investor in a company that provides many millions of people in the United States and across the world with access to needed supplies and consumer goods. Now more than any time in memory, Amazon is fulfilling a critical need for all of society as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Today, Amazon has the ability to meet people’s needs but also to empower their charitable spirit through the AmazonSmile program. But even as Amazon works to serve all people, as a shareowner, I’m concerned with the company’s outsourcing of eligibility decisions for AmazonSmile to the Southern Poverty Law Center. I believe partnering with an overtly partisan, activist group such as the Southern Poverty Law Center brings on undue reputational risk to AmazonSmile and Amazon as a company.
- AmazonSmile has delivered over $150 million in funding to nonprofits.
- These funds are directed by customers to the nonprofit of their choice.
- These nonprofits include politically liberal organizations, such as Planned Parenthood, the Freedom from Religion Foundation, and the SPLC.
- Amazon outsources eligibility decisions to the Southern Poverty Law Center, which deliberately excludes government approved 501(c)3s that are politically conservative to settle political scores, even as they receive funds that they deny their political opponents.
- The size and scale of the AmazonSmile program makes eligibility a critical matter to nonprofits, especially during the current crisis, where need has increased even as funding sources have dried up.
Given the scale of the AmazonSmile Foundation, which delivered over $44 million in grants during the 2018 fiscal year alone, outsourcing this critical function to a politically motivated organization brings unnecessary reputational risk to Amazon and may marginalize the very customers the company intends to serve and empower.
Therefore, we the undersigned request and require that The AmazonSmile Foundation bring eligibility determinations in-house, publish a fair and clear set of standards for eligibility, and end the gatekeeper role of the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Sincerely Yours,
(Signature attached)