Amazon has silently removed Black Lives Matter from its charity platform AmazonSmile, cutting the organization off from a massive source of potential funding. The company says that the decision was made after it concluded that BLM was no longer living up to the standards charities on the platform are meant to adhere to. BLM has been under scrutiny in recent weeks due to questions about what the organization has been doing with the immense wealth it has accumulated.
Amazon charity platform removes BLM
AmazonSmile is an extension of Amazon’s online marketplace which allows customers to select from an extensive list of eligible charities to support with their purchase.
Without additional cost to the buyer, Amazon then donates 0.5% of an eligible purchase to the specified charity.
That 0.5% may be a very small figure for any one purchase, but given the huge amount of business Amazon does online each day, that can add up very quickly for a well-known charity.
For an organization as famous and powerful as BLM this was likely a major source of income. Amazon, like most major corporations in America, wholeheartedly threw its support behind BLM in 2020.
Now it seems that income and support is being quietly cut off. Amazon isn’t exactly publicizing this development, but the move seems to be an effort to preemptively evade a developing scandal.
In explaining the situation, Amazon was quick to shift responsibility for its decision elsewhere by pointing out that its requirements include that an organization be “in good standing” in the states where they operate.
No longer “in good standing”
Black Lives Matter as an organization is currently not in “good standing” in multiple states, including California and Washington. These two states have threatened legal action to force BLM to explain where its money has gone.
BLM as a whole has accumulated billions of dollars in donations since 2020, but no one seems to be sure of where most of that money has since gone.
The scandals surrounding co-founder Patrisse Cullors have raised the very reasonable fear that much of that money has been effectively pocketed by her and other leaders.
If that’s the case, then Amazon and the other massive corporations which offered near limitless money to BLM have created the mess.
Donors great and small gave huge amounts of money to BLM after the George Floyd incident because it was obligatory to show that you weren’t a racist; no one ever really asked where that money was going, nor did they care.
Some has been spent on relatively small vanity projects or redirected to other nonprofits affiliated with BLM leaders, but the fate of most of what BLM got out of Amazon and other donors remains a mystery.
