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.

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.