# another pointless political rant



## Phil Pascoe (15 Dec 2020)

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## Rorschach (15 Dec 2020)

Do you know how this is funded? I find it hard to believe they are taking it out of their cut, if so, why the need to opt in?


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## paulrbarnard (15 Dec 2020)

I do this for Cancer Research. Several family and friends have died from cancer


Dear Paul Barnard,

This is your quarterly AmazonSmile donation notification. Your chosen charity, *Cancer Research UK*, recently received a quarterly donation of *£93,629.07* from AmazonSmile, thanks to customers shopping at AmazonSmile.

To date, Amazon has donated a total of:

*£629,037.02* to Cancer Research UK
*£5,721,914.99* to UK charities


All that you need to do is sign up then access Amazon through their alternative smile launch page.


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## Phil Pascoe (15 Dec 2020)




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## Rorschach (15 Dec 2020)

Phil Pascoe said:


> Why does it matter?



Why doesn't it matter to you?


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## marcros (15 Dec 2020)

Rorschach said:


> Do you know how this is funded? I find it hard to believe they are taking it out of their cut, if so, why the need to opt in?



I would assume so that there is some choice in where the donation goes to.


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## paulrbarnard (15 Dec 2020)

Rorschach said:


> Why doesn't it matter to you?


It maters to me. The money is a charitable donation from Amazon which they write off against tax. So the money is coming from you already. The reality is that the net amount is fractions of a fraction of a percentage of Amazon turnover and is therefor a very cost effective marketting ploy.

That said It costs me nothing directly to shop via the smile link and make myself feel a bit better that my consumerism is having some payback.

Of course it is far better to make a direct contribution but every little helps as the saying goes.


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## Phil Pascoe (15 Dec 2020)




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## pcb1962 (15 Dec 2020)

Rorschach said:


> Do you know how this is funded? I find it hard to believe they are taking it out of their cut, if so, why the need to opt in?


Presumably it's the same money that would be paid to an affiliate if you bought through an affiliate link, it just sort of makes the charity the affiliate.


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## Fidget (15 Dec 2020)

marcros said:


> I would assume so that there is some choice in where the donation goes to.



Yes, you choose which charity you want to support. I was quite surprised that even the small one I wanted to contribute to was found easily.

I couldn't see any reason not to adopt this way of buying through Amazon


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## paulrbarnard (15 Dec 2020)

Fidget said:


> Yes, you choose which charity you want to support. I was quite surprised that even the small one I wanted to contribute to was found easily.
> 
> I couldn't see any reason not to adopt this way of buying through Amazon


They actually have a process for charities to register to receive. If your favourite charity isn't there they can sign up smile.amazon.co.uk Org Central: Customers shop. Amazon gives.


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## flying haggis (15 Dec 2020)

sorry but the somewhat cynical me reckons that with donations like that from amazon, a lot of the charities will just end up paying their high up staff more


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## flying haggis (15 Dec 2020)

cant edit the last post for some reason ie Age Uk CEO got £190000 in 2016 and the CEO of cancer reserach got £240000. which considering the PM only gets about £150000 the salaries of the top charity bosses makes my blood boil


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## pcb1962 (15 Dec 2020)

flying haggis said:


> cant edit the last post for some reason ie Age Uk CEO got £190000 in 2016 and the CEO of cancer reserach got £240000. which considering the PM only gets about £150000 the salaries of the top charity bosses makes my blood boil


I agree with you, the usual counter-argument is that these charities are multi-million pound businesses and to attract the type of people with experience of running a business of that size they have to pay the market salary.


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## Rorschach (15 Dec 2020)

flying haggis said:


> cant edit the last post for some reason ie Age Uk CEO got £190000 in 2016 and the CEO of cancer reserach got £240000. which considering the PM only gets about £150000 the salaries of the top charity bosses makes my blood boil



I agree.

I personally don't give to charity as a point of principle, not just for the reason above though.


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## D_W (15 Dec 2020)

flying haggis said:


> sorry but the somewhat cynical me reckons that with donations like that from amazon, a lot of the charities will just end up paying their high up staff more



Not sure if you can check as easily there, but tax filings help us find out here what percentage of donated money goes to actual program costs vs. advertising and administrative. 

Two like-named charities may both have a 90% and 10% figure in their filings, with one using 10% for actual programs and 90% eaten up by everything else, and the other the converse. 

I also avoid aggregators of charity dollars here. They generally have administrative fees of 10-15%, but they are the loudest and most obnoxious about telling businesses that they'll be lined out if they don't join their cause. For obvious reason - they have no real purpose other than to be a conduit, so their setup requires a bribe - a decades long tradition of virtue signaling.


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## D_W (15 Dec 2020)

Rorschach said:


> Do you know how this is funded? I find it hard to believe they are taking it out of their cut, if so, why the need to opt in?



They probably have a charity target and contract requirements of a certain amount based on tax incentives, etc. I'd imagine it becomes part of their marketing program (that they do actually give up some of their revenue, but they get favorable tax treatment for it and would've been required to do it, anyway, as part of terms or agreements). 

If they got stupid about it, they would be sued by shareholders in the US (it has to be in the interest of the business when you're operating on other peoples' money).


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## pcb1962 (15 Dec 2020)

D_W said:


> Not sure if you can check as easily there, but tax filings help us find out here what percentage of donated money goes to actual program costs vs. advertising and administrative.


It's all available here from official sources, eg Cancer Research UK


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## Garno (15 Dec 2020)

This is your quarterly AmazonSmile donation notification. Your chosen charity, *The British Red Cross Society*, recently received a quarterly donation of *£13,421.88* from AmazonSmile, thanks to customers shopping at smile.amazon.co.uk or with AmazonSmile turned ON in the app.

To date, Amazon has donated a total of:

*£93,813.02* to The British Red Cross Society
*£5,721,914.99* to UK charities

thats mine


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## partsandlabour (16 Dec 2020)

They sound like huge donations, but they are not in the scheme of things. This is a marketing exercise by Amazon - do not be duped. If companies like Amazon paid their fair share of UK tax then perhaps there would be more money in the kitty to tackle issues that charities currently have to pick up the slack on. Amazon are not doing this out of the goodness of their hearts. Their number crunchers have measured the impact upon sales of 'care washing' strategies such as this. If you absolutely have to buy from Amazon, then yes, why not sign up? But if you have the option of buying from a company that hands over their fair share to the revenue in the UK, then please do this instead.


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## Phil Pascoe (16 Dec 2020)




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## Rorschach (16 Dec 2020)

Phil Pascoe said:


> I take it you didn't read the OP?
> 
> I'm not interested whether Bezos is crook, Amazon is wrecking city centres or any other political rant, just reality. If you buy from/through Amazon, do it through Amazon Smile, a minute proportion (1/2% iirc) goes to a nominated charity. Not on everything, not a lot, but it's money they wouldn't have got otherwise.



Except that the donations are a tax write off, so if they donate to charity they pay less tax and that means less money in the government coffers to spend on people who need it (theoretically)


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## Phil Pascoe (16 Dec 2020)




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## Rorschach (16 Dec 2020)

Phil Pascoe said:


> You didn't read it either? Why don't you start another moan thread?



I'll get banned if I do.

I was just pointing out that " it's money they wouldn't have got otherwise" is not really true, the money in the system is the same, it just might be allocated differently. 
I did read the OP, but the discussion has gone a different way now and you have commented on that too.


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## Doug B (16 Dec 2020)

Henning Wehn‘s comment resonated with me.






It’s a shame our successive governments haven’t made these multi nationals pay the taxes they should


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## Phil Pascoe (16 Dec 2020)




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## Sandyn (16 Dec 2020)

I didn't know about that! I will certainly be shopping through Amazon smile in future thanks for highlighting it.


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## paulrbarnard (16 Dec 2020)

This is the most egregious example I have seen recently. It was reported in the Daily Fail so take it for what it's worth. This is a charity that was set up as part of the "Me Too" movement.


Tax filings reveal Times' Up organization raised $3,670,219 in 2018 in its first year of operation but spent $1,407,032 on salaries and $312,001 on helping victims
Documents reveal the organization spent more than $157,000 on a luxury retreat
Almost $1m was spend on legal costs and $288,000 on advertising
A separate Legal Defense Fund claims to have helped '3,000 women' during the first six months of 2018 at a cost of $1.7m using money coming from donations 
But most of the fund money came from grants made to the Women's Law Center, while just $132,575 came from the Time's Up Foundation
Time's Up Now, the charity's lobbying end, handed over $179,426 to the fund


So $3,670,219 raised, $132,575 directly used for the stated cause. That's less than 4%


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## Jacob (16 Dec 2020)

Talking of charity - they are not all duds like Time's Up
My Christmas fund raiser for Shelter is still running. They close it in Jan, it'll show on the site.
Shelter: What we do if you dig around you can see how they spend it and how much they take. How we spend your money


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## Doug B (17 Dec 2020)

Phil Pascoe said:


> Pity he was wrong.



He’s a comedian & it was a Joke Phil, but it’s content as with many things said in jest has a lot of truth in it hence it resonating with me.


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## partsandlabour (17 Dec 2020)

Phil Pascoe said:


> I take it you didn't read the OP?
> 
> I'm not interested whether Bezos is crook, Amazon is wrecking city centres or any other political rant, just reality. If you buy from/through Amazon, do it through Amazon Smile, a minute proportion (1/2% iirc) goes to a nominated charity. Not on everything, not a lot, but it's money they wouldn't have got otherwise.



Yeah I read the OP... You said you were interested in 'reality'. I was responding to that notion.


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## Petehpkns (17 Dec 2020)

Rorschach said:


> Do you know how this is funded? I find it hard to believe they are taking it out of their cut, if so, why the need to opt in?


The opt in allows you to choose which organisation the donation goes to. Likewise M&S I believe........


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## flying haggis (17 Dec 2020)

pcb1962 said:


> It's all available here from official sources, eg Cancer Research UK


and according to the published data 200 staff shared £12 million between them !!


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## Terry - Somerset (17 Dec 2020)

Charities are large businesses. Cancer Research UK has an annual income of £624m, and Age UK £128m.

They are complex organisations and need professional management - financial, medical, project management, marketing etc etc.

The salaries need to be sufficient to attract those with the right skills. Professional managers (including my daughter incidentally) expect to be reasonably rewarded for efforts, skills etc even if they don't expect to get top quartile salaries.

Incidentally I am sure Amazon regard this as a promotional cost - it is trivial compared to other forms of promotion and may even elicit some positive "do good" emotions.


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## D_W (17 Dec 2020)

I think the way Amazon is doing it is a lot better than the register charities here. By that, I mean you go to the store to buy something trivial and the retail person at the register has a jar out for some charity and they're verbally asking if you'd like to donate some amount of money to xyz charity and have it added to your bill. I think I may have said yes once in a lifetime.

You get no chance to know anything about the charity, what you give is just flatly added to your bill, and if you're out and about, you get hit with it over and over. It's apparently not enough that you go into the store and buy the items at full price without dickering.

I've always been curious if the retailers take your charity dollars, donate it in their corporation name and then take a tax write off for it.


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## Peri (17 Dec 2020)

It's a nice thought Phil - thanks for letting me know about it. I use Amazon a lot and hadn't heard of it.


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## Just4Fun (17 Dec 2020)

Out shopping a few days ago I noticed someone in the street with a collection can for a charity that I would normally give to. This time I walked on by. I recently volounteered for them, working full time for 1 month without pay, and having seen up close how (the local part of) their organisation is run I doubt I will ever donate to them again. 

This puts me in a quandry. That organisation is a well known international charity with a good reputation but when you look behind the curtain it is not so great. If I can't donate to them, who can I donate to?


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## TRITON (17 Dec 2020)

I dont think its Amazon that is wrecking the city center, for that the only peole who have the power to buy are the public. Possibly best you lay the blame there.


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## Jacob (17 Dec 2020)

TRITON said:


> I dont think its Amazon that is wrecking the city center, for that the only peole who have the power to buy are the public. Possibly best you lay the blame there.


Business rates wreck city centres more than anything. That's why there are so many charity shops they get 80% off apparently.
Rates are really bad news for small business, you could be a one man craft worker next to an estate agent with 100x turnover but same rates for same space.


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## Rorschach (17 Dec 2020)

TRITON said:


> I dont think its Amazon that is wrecking the city center, for that the only peole who have the power to buy are the public. Possibly best you lay the blame there.



Certainly for our area the local council aren't helping either. Buses to the city centre are very expensive and parking charges are horrendous. Doesn't encourage people to go out and shop for a few hours.


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## artie (17 Dec 2020)

Just4Fun said:


> If I can't donate to them, who can I donate to?


This whole idea of giving your hard earned money to some group that promises to act in the interest of someone else is just another con, like so many others.
I'm not saying that people don't benefit from these charitable organisations, just that they only benefit a minute percentage of what they could.
Stop giving money to big corporate charities and do something nice for somebody every day, if you can.
Not everything should have a price tag.


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## D_W (17 Dec 2020)

Rorschach said:


> Certainly for our area the local council aren't helping either. Buses to the city centre are very expensive and parking charges are horrendous. Doesn't encourage people to go out and shop for a few hours.



Local councils often cater to a few loud residents if there's anything residential. Here in urban and rural areas, once there are any complaints about noise or traffic, the whole thing gets tilted to putting tons of conditions on having or opening a business (requiring current properties only to be used as a subsequent business if the business is an identical type, etc). 

When the taxes go up, so does avoidance, and you end up with "businesses" in the storefronts that don't pay tax (which must pass through to the property owner). I live in pittsburgh. You would think business rents downtown wouldn't be that high. The monthly rent for a small convenience store type location with about 15 feet of store front is $4k. What happens is that all of the cobblers and service businesses that used to occupy those fronts in the business district (because they served the people working in offices) get replaced with little service offices for a local college, or they become a charity storefront that often isn't even open. The remainder of the private businesses is private equity funded junk like tax prep (Sketchy in the downtown area here - they specialize in enticing people with no incomes to falsely claim dependents that aren't theirs so that they can get a refundable credit) or urban only cell providers. 

There is one cobbler left. I have no idea how he can pay rent like that unless his property owner is just waiting for someone else to want the spot.


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## D_W (17 Dec 2020)

Rorschach said:


> Certainly for our area the local council aren't helping either. Buses to the city centre are very expensive and parking charges are horrendous. Doesn't encourage people to go out and shop for a few hours.



separate, there are about three scheduled days per year here when the city has free parking to do shopping in the business area. There used to be department stores (the kind in one of your old shows, are you being served). They struggled for years and all are gone now. The answer to local councils when there's a problem is to designate a couple of days at it, and completely ignore that the remainder of their policies drive shoppers away. It costs $20-25 to park in any given day in our downtown, and the garages are usually filled early with commuters. The prices in the stores are higher to make up for the rent, and the rent prices are high to be able to deal with paying the property taxes on city buildings due to the fact that a huge volume of the remaining buildings are university, health system or charity rented (no tax). 

The whole situation makes no sense. No grocery shopping or anything of that sort for any of the residents that live in city center, and the response of the city council is to criticize the market chains here for being too greedy to open a store downtown (it's been tried - high location cost and high theft). Rather than starting to make some of the large "not for profit businesses" pay some share of property tax, the council and the NFPs come up with an arrangement to create programs that are a fraction of the tax amount as a buy-off scheme (as in, create another pet charity, and make the health systems fund it for a tenth or a 20th of what property taxes would be and then both try to find as many TV cameras as possible to highlight everyone being helped).


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