Just look at other companies.

Here's Meta as an example https://about.meta.com/giving-together/

They gave $7B to all sorts of random stuff like cat shelters

Pretty much every company has some stuff like this. Don't you see think it'd be weird if Amazon was the 1 company that doesnt?

Edit: Better article here that distinguishes between Meta's matching and donation from meta users https://about.fb.com/news/2022/11/fundraise-for-nonprofits-g....

Sorry, I don’t really understand what you’re talking about.

My point is they are trying to sugarcoat this as focusing on specific charities, whereas I believe total donation dollars is going to drop. In addition, I think Amazon is hoping to save on costs having to manage AmazonSmile itself.

I suspect that saving the cost of managing AmazonSmile is the primary motivator. That's a lot of overhead! Two thousand pages of charities, most of which are collecting less than $30. I'd bet there are hundreds, if not thousands, of charities that Amazon was paying more to manage collection/disbursement than the actual charity received. (Or maybe not--there seems to be a minimum payout of $5.00, starting on page 1881.)

They could have simply raised their minimum to a number that covered the overhead.

They're a public company so it'll be on their 10-K in some form. And of course the charities would notice if they didn't, though they're only going to mention good news.