Amazon is offering a number of promotions in support of Veterans Day, including a $40 Prime membership discount for current and former military service members.
In an Amazon statement provided to American Military News, the online retailer confirmed its promotional sign-up offer, allowing current and former U.S. armed forces members — including active duty, veterans, national guard and reserve personnel — to sign up for a year of Amazon Prime for just $79, marking a $40 discount. Current prime members can also take advantage of the deal, which runs from Nov. 6 – 11.
“From building training programs that help veterans and military spouses gain in-demand skills, to empowering veteran entrepreneurs to grow their businesses, we’re proud to continue supporting the military community,” said Amazon director of military affairs, John Quintas.
Quintas said, “We’re committed to investing in the military community and introducing initiatives that make their lives easier.”
Along with the Prime discount for armed forces service members, Amazon has also added a new Military Family Small Business search page on Amazon’s Storefront feature. The Storefront feature curates American small and medium-sized businesses participating in Amazon sales.
According to the Amazon statement, the online retailer will also increase its funding support to assist veterans starting their own package service as one of Amazon’s Delivery Service partners. Amazon will increase the veteran business support from $1 million to $3 million.
Throughout the year, Amazon users can also take advantage of the AmazonSmile feature to donate to charitable organizations, including many military-affiliated charities. The AmazonSmile charitable donation feature places a portion of all its purchases to a charity of the Amazon user’s choosing.
Amazon currently employs more than 21,000 veterans and military spouses and has set a goal to have hired 25,000 veterans and their spouses by 2021.
Alongside its military hiring programs, Amazon offers an apprenticeship program for those veterans and military spouses, teaching them highly demanded skill sets such as cloud computing. More than 500 veterans and their spouses have joined the apprenticeship program which puts them on track to become full-time employees for the online retail giant.
Amazon’s military relationship goes beyond veterans discounts and training programs. The company has lent its artificial intelligence computing expertise to the Air Force, and has hosted training opportunities to assist logistics officers working to handle the military’s massive supply chain.
In March of 2018, the Defense Department also signaled interest in migrating its classified data on to the Amazon Web Services’ (AWS) Secret Region — a cloud storage database originally created to support the CIA and other intelligence community agencies.
