Amazon cuts credit for charities to access web services
- Reference: 1646651705
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2022/03/07/amazon_cuts_credit_for_charities/
- Source link:
The cloud wing of the megacorp has for several years offered a grant of $2,000 in AWS Promotional Credits to eligible non-profit organisations, brokered through a non-profit network called [1]TechSoup Global in the US and via an organisation called [2]Charity Digital in the UK.
Through this [3]AWS Credit Programme , non-profit outfits had access to selected AWS cloud-based services, such as Amazon WorkDocs, Amazon WorkMail, and Amazon WorkSpaces.
[4]
However, when some UK charities came to renew their credits this time round, they found that the grant on offer from AWS that they could claim had been reduced from $2,000 to $1,000 at some point during the past year, leaving them to pick up the remainder of the bill for services that they have now come to rely on.
[5]
[6]
We were alerted to this by Reg reader John Pipal, an IT freelancer who says he has offered support to London NGOs and charities for 20 years. Pipal told us that two London-based charities he is currently working with have both been taking advantage of the AWS credit scheme to run EC2 Windows server instances for operating Remote Desktop sessions, which has apparently proven very useful during the pandemic.
One of the charity clients moved their remote desktop server onto AWS and also decided to make use of Amazon's cloud storage, as its bills for all this were completely covered by the AWS Credit Programme.
Short notice
Amazon is entirely within its rights to change the terms of any credit programmes it offers to non-profit organisations, as these are provided entirely at the company's discretion. However, it appears that at least some charities were not aware of the changes, only discovering it when they came to renew their grant.
It also means that such organisations may now have to spend more of the money they accept from donations on operating costs.
[7]
"My particular gripe is that organisations that have taken up this offer could reasonably have expected that it would continue, given the behemoth's recent success, and that it will be expensive for them now, no matter what they do – leave or stay," Pipal said.
A spokesperson for Charity Digital told The Register that AWS had changed its non-profit credit programme to help more charities by providing more licences to a wider pool of customers.
The credits had apparently been oversubscribed in the past, often running out quickly. To address this, AWS decided to lower the value of the credits in order to make more credits available. Admin fees that the non-profits pay have also been lowered.
[8]
In other words, it appears that the cloudy giant wants to extend the benefits of its charity programme to a larger audience. A nice idea, but tough if you happen to be a small charity and suddenly find you don't have as much to spend on IT services as you had banked on.
[9]What is it with cloud status pages not reflecting reality?
[10]Kyndryl completes hyperscaler trifecta with AWS partnership
[11]Microsoft details 'planet-scale' AI infrastructure packing 100,000-plus GPUs
[12]Akamai's Linode buy: Good for enterprise, risky for others
Amazon reported [13]operating profit for AWS during calendar Q4 of 2021 of $5.293bn, which saw its cloud services division finish 2021 with total operating income of $18.532bn, up nearly 37 per cent year-on-year.
We asked Amazon for an explanation of the changes to the AWS Credit Programme, and the company sent us the following statement:
"Globally, the amount of AWS credits we provided to non-profit organisations increased last year. We offer a variety of programs to help non-profit customers access and experiment with the latest cloud technology. This includes grants and funding to drive modernisation and innovation, as well as free training to help upskill employees.
"We continuously review and evolve these programs to ensure the right mix of offerings are in place to support our customers."
The company did not reveal the amount of the increase in the total funding pot. ®
Get our [14]Tech Resources
[1] https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/publicsector/announcing-aws-cloud-credits-for-nonprofits-with-techsoup-global/
[2] https://charitydigital.org.uk/
[3] https://aws.amazon.com/government-education/nonprofits/nonprofit-credit-program/
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offprem/paasiaas&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2YiY6ODf0AXQVK63xmPc1NgAAAIQ&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[5] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offprem/paasiaas&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YiY6ODf0AXQVK63xmPc1NgAAAIQ&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[6] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offprem/paasiaas&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33YiY6ODf0AXQVK63xmPc1NgAAAIQ&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[7] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offprem/paasiaas&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YiY6ODf0AXQVK63xmPc1NgAAAIQ&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[8] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offprem/paasiaas&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33YiY6ODf0AXQVK63xmPc1NgAAAIQ&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2022/02/24/cloud_service_status_pages_fail/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2022/02/24/kyndryl_aws/
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2022/02/22/microsoft_singularity_ai_infrastructure/
[12] https://www.theregister.com/2022/02/21/linode_akamai/
[13] https://www.theregister.com/2022/02/04/amazon_q4_2021/
[14] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: Isn't this just bait'n'switch?
Isn't it interesting how it is always the megacorps raking money in by the tankerload who skimp at every opportunity ?
Re: Isn't this just bait'n'switch?
We should ask the question "How many and who got poor?" every time a "rich" person/corp is congratulated to his/her/its wealth.
The perceived distribution of wealth is very much misaligned with reality. That is probably why we haven't many more revolutions to prevent these megacorps from coming into existence.
Re: Isn't this just bait'n'switch?
They prefer to think of it as a "give back" take-back.
So?
Amazon is offerring £1000 of services to charities. As someone involved in charities, I have to decide whether to accept a donation of cash, goods or services. If not, for whatever reason, don't turn around and say "that isn't enough" ...
The ethics is about budgets and not telling people you've changed what you're giving
It's the same as publicly announcing to a small charity you were going to give them £2000 a year and then turning around and only transferring £1000 one year without telling them you'd changed your mind. The charity is going to make their budget based on having £1000 more than they had and the deficit is going to come as a surprise. This means you've caused them to then make promises they now can't keep. Likely that deficit is going to come out of grants they cannot now make, and which if you had told the charity in advance, they would not have promised.
Yeah it's your money, but there's right and a wrong way of going about things once you've made a commitment. The right thing to do is to be as public about changes to your donation as you were about the initial donation. All it will cost you is kudos but at least you can still have a good conscience.
Re: So?
You need to improve your comprehension skills. Amazon is not offering £1000 to charities, it is offering half of what it had promised.
Not the same boat.
Maybe
My guess is most Charities have similar needs.
Most or many often have lousy security and backups unfortunately as rely on volunteers and outdated tech.
If AWS bolted together some open source browser based package with some easy customisations for modules for fundraising, charity commission reporting, clients etc and easy migrations from spreadsheets they would do charities a favour and be the go to solutions for all charities.
Bezos must need a bigger yacht then
(through his stockholding)
Most charities don't have lots of dosh so any reduction in this sort of thing could impact their operations. Scumbags!
Isn't this just bait'n'switch?
"We continuously review and evolve these programs to ensure the right mix of offerings are in place to support our customers."
That is business-speak for "We tweak the offerings to maximize your dependence and our profits."
They grow their business but are not willing to scale the charity in the same way. So they become less charitable while they are getting bigger. First hook 'm on the charity free list, then lets squeeze the money pot. Isn't that a typical trait of a monopolist?