From Scrooge to Carnegie: Amazon Becomes Benevolent

Amazon.com used to be a skinflint no-show at the cultural fundraising table. Last year, Slate’s Paul Collins sniped, “There are lemonade stands ... that donate more to charity than Amazon.com does.”

That was then. Soon after Slate’s slam Amazon changed 
its charitable tune in a characteristically big way. Now the company is pouring funds into dozens of cultural groups, at least twelve of them local. This month Amazon lends its good will to the Arts Crush Literary Week extravaganza “The Novel: Live,” in which thirty-six Northwest authors will write a novel in six days (October 10–16), watched over by 
Nancy Pearl.

Why the sudden generosity? Most observers credit Amazon’s director of author and public relations, Jon Fine, a veteran of Random House. Even fierce critics of Amazon’s former stinginess sing hosannas to his name. After meeting Fine in 2009, the ordinarily anti-Amazon critic Paul Constant wrote in the Stranger that Fine’s innovations “could possibly be one of the greatest Scrooge-goes-good stories in Seattle’s history.” Fine graciously referred an interview request to Amazon’s PR department.

“I know that Jeff Belle, a generous donor to 826 Seattle and Jon Fine’s boss, pointed Jon in our direction,” says 826 Seattle chief Teri Hein, who notes that Amazon started giving 826 money to help support its publishing of young writers two years ago.

“Jon has been spreading the love – and cash – ever since. In fact, our new volunteer coordinator came from a small nonprofit writing center in Charleston, North Carolina, and Amazon is helping them after Jon read about the organization in my newsletter.”

Amazon has also streamlined the funding process in ways Hein hopes others emulate. “Jon called and said, ‘I’m Jon Fine, I’m from Amazon, can I give you ten thousand dollars?’ And I said, ‘Yes.’” Hein had to sign a contract spelling out how the money would be spent and how Amazon’s logo would appear, but she didn’t have to fill out the massive paperwork most funders require, saving the group’s grant writers time. Leave it to Amazon to invent one-click fundraising. •