Yeah, but mostly Amazon takes.

Last month, the Grand Junction, Colorado-based community radio station KAFM announced it would be partnering with Amazon Smile, an initiative launched in late-2013 which allows Amazon customers to donate 0.5% of their purchase to participating charities. Margie Wilson, the owner of the Grand Junction independent bookstore Grand Valley Books, was, understandably, unimpressed: as Shelf Awareness detailed in a report yesterday, Wilson questioned “how a local nonprofit station expected to gain community support while asking people to shop online.” KAFM would be gaining revenue—though not much, as a customer would have to spend $10,000 on Amazon for KAFM to get $50—but they’d be doing it at the expense of businesses in their community. 

Wilson quickly took action and fired off an email to other Grand Junction businesses, describing the partnership as  “an incredibly short-sighted move to get a few nickels from an online retailer that has exhibited … predatory practices for years.” Grand Junction’s Daily Sentinal has more on Wilson’s response:

Amazon.com mines the data of its customers, which is gathered from the time of their first purchases, which were books back when the retailing website first launched, Wilson said.

“What better way to find out about customer preferences” than knowing their taste in books and magazines, she asked.

Amazon.com enters into contracts with shippers on favorable terms that cost them less, terms small retailers like Grand Valley Books do not enjoy, Wilson said.

Wilson’s email rallied dozens of local businesses to her cause and KAFM quickly acknowledged the controversy by meeting with Wilson on May 28. KAFM’s board president, Barry Barak, who claimed to have been “unaware of Amazon’s business practices” told the Daily Sentinal that “the reaction was immediate and it was vehement” and acknowledged that the decision was a mistake:

“The board was not involved in the decision to do this. This was a management decision, which is fine. That is what they get paid to do. The fact that the response has reached the proportion it has (is what) brought the board into it…. For us, [Amazon Smile] was just another source of donations, but that’s on the surface. What it means to Main Street businesses is, intruder alert. We’re, in a sense, a Main Street business ourselves. So we’re very sympathetic.”

It is, of course, understandable why KAFM’s management would make this decision—as Barack acknowledged, “we are a nonprofit entity that operates on a shoestring so we’re always looking for ways to bring money back.” But Amazon Smile doesn’t do much, even if you’re on a shoestring—“it’s a paltry sum,” according to Barak.

On June 1, just four days after meeting with Wilson, KAFM cut ties with Amazon with this statement:

The KAFM Board of Directors has decided to discontinue its affiliation with the AmazonSmiles program. The decision was reached after a round of thoughtful discussions with KAFM members and representatives of the local business community.

The Board recognizes the support KAFM has received from local businesses across the Grand Valley for the past 15 years and seeks to underscore the collaborative nature of that long term relationship with this decision.

The fundraising method that sparked the controversy arose out of new technology, but the KAFM Board determined the resolution needed to come from an old “technology” – neighbors helping neighbors. In that spirit, we look forward to an expanded partnership with our downtown Grand Junction business friends and neighbors.

KAFM acknowledges all of the members, programmers, donors and underwriters who expressed a variety of opinions on this matter. Thank you for your input and your participation.

Wilson, for her part, seemed pleased with the response, telling Shelf Awareness that it was “”very affirming to receive tons of support from the local business community in the form of e-mails, Facebook postings, phone calls and person-to-person visits to my bookstore.” She continued, framing the issue in terms of larger “philosophical choices” about how non-profits and small businesses make decisions:

“We’re all fighting the same battle and we need to keep the pressure on nonprofits we support to be more discerning about their revenue streams. One of the points I made when I met with them is that policy decisions like this one are not day-to-day operational decisions, but rather a philosophical choice, and one that indicates something about the culture of their organization…

“It’s my hope that this will prompt public discussion of how nonprofits make decisions about seemingly beneficial partnerships that turn out to be a slap in the face to the local business community, and that are akin to ‘sleeping with the enemy’ in light of the impact they have.”

In this light, KAFM’s response is especially heartening—they made a controversial decision, listened to community members, and corrected it, without any rancor or malice—though it’s important, I suppose, to note that Amazon Smile is a pretty raw deal. When focusing on things like Amazon’s fight with Hachette (And Bonnier. And Warner Home Video.) it’s sometimes tempting to cynically see disputes as a ginormous Goliath fighting a smaller (but still pretty damn ginormous) Goliath—to focus on big fish, instead of the small. It is, in other words, easy to overlook Amazon’s impact on small communities across the country. In Grand Junction, Colorado, small business owners came together with a nonprofit to discuss how Amazon was affecting them and quickly realized Amazon had no place in their community. This is, in a number of ways, a conversation we should be having more often. It’s not just Amazon vs. publishers (or gatekeepers, if that’s your preference). It’s Amazon vs. communities.