Cell Phones Make Donating Easier

Thousands of charitable organizations have joined a program to collect donations made through cell phones, illustrating how technology can make giving and collecting pledges more efficient.

Vodafone's UK chief executive Guy Laurence says more than 1,000 charities every week are signing on for a cell phone fundraising program that lets donors text codes that link to specific organizations.

"[The program] has a number of advantages over cash collection," Laurence told the Institute of Fundraising in London. "It appeals to the younger generation of donors, half of which do not donate to charity at all. 100% of the donation goes to the charity's bank account and it allows for the collection of gift aid."

Laurence said because more than 50 million people now use cell phones, charities are able to reach donors who they never could reach in the past.

Through Vodafone's cell phone collection-enabled donation method, contributions go directly to the charity and donors are charged on their monthly phone bill. Charities are not charged for the service, nor are donors, so the full donation goes directly to the charity.

While traditional fundraising campaigns work by gathering pledges, often, the promised money never comes.

Most people still give cash donations, though cell phone fundraisers also are proving to be lucrative and are changing the ways donors open their wallets.

For example, when a massive F-5 tornado hit Joplin, Mo. earlier this summer, the American Red Cross collected thousands of dollars in donations through cell phone programs. The Red Cross announced texting "REDCROSS" to a specific code would send in $10 donations to the organization.

Cell phone programs such as this allow donors from far away to easily help a cause of their choice, because it's much easier to text a code than to send out a check or money order. Texting also takes away the worry of sending personal checks or credit card numbers to strangers. Because donors pay for a texted pledge through their mobile phone bills, there are no account numbers for hackers to steal.

Donors should be aware, however, that traditional cell phone text-messaging costs always apply when they're making a pledge. Nevertheless, with the unlimited messaging programs, many donors are finding that it's easier -- and less expensive -- to text a message than buy a stamp and send it out the old-fashioned way.

Cell Phones Make Donating Easier originally appeared at Mobiledia on Tue Jul 05, 2011 4:52 pm.

Source: http://www.mobiledia.com/news/96852.html

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