Vodafone's chief, Guy Laurence, says charities have been joining at a rate of more than 1,000 a week
M�decins Sans Fronti�res, whose clinic in the Dadaab camp has been helping famine-struck Somali refugees is among some 10,000 registered charities that have signed up to the UK's first free text donation service, underlining strong support for new technology that enables people to donate on the spot.
The scheme was launched in May by the mobile phone operator Vodafone and the online donation service JustGiving to allow the UK's 50 million mobile phone users to give money to charity, free of charge, by text message.
Vodafone's UK chief executive, Guy Laurence, will tell a conference in London today, organised by the Institute of Fundraising, that more than 1,000 charities a week have been joining since the launch ? a total of 9,200. That figure is set to increase as individual fundraisers can now personalise their unique six-digit codes to start receiving donations of up to �10 for their chosen charities, which is being publicised with a national ad campaign on TV and print.
Donations go automatically to the chosen charity and the money is either added to the donor's mobile bill or deducted from their credit balance. The service works with any mobile network. There are no costs for charities and no network charges for donors, so every penny raised goes to charity.
The so-called "third sector" sees galvanising fundraising by mobile phone as key to kickstarting a new era of giving, and ? crucially ? appealing to young people. The new scheme comes as charities face a double whammy of funding cuts and a squeeze on donations because of a reduction in householders' disposable income.
A rival service ? BT's MyDonate scheme, which was launched in April using online donations but not text messaging ? announced last week that it had signed up more than 500 charities "with hundreds of other charities set to join in the coming weeks". There are 184,000 registered charities in the UK.
The thinktank ResPublica estimates that text donations could be worth as much as �96m annually by 2014. However, substantial set-up costs have previously meant that only the very largest charities ? through major exercises such as the BBC's Comic Relief ? have been able to use text fundraising. Nearly three-quarters (72%) of charities admitted the cost of setting up the service was a key barrier.
Despite the growth of online giving, donating by cash remains the most popular method (50% of donors use cash) yet cash donations tend to be smaller and more irregular than methods such as direct debit.
In his speech to the IoF conference today Laurence says: "Our vision was simple ? allow all charities, however big or small, to raise money by text donations from all mobile users in the UK, including a simple mechanism to collect gift aid. The scheme has a number of advantages over cash collection. 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."
He added: "With 50 million mobile phone users now able to make on-the-spot donations, fundraising will never be the same again."
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2011/jul/04/charities-vodafone-mobile-phones
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