Fundraising by text

There is debate about the relative benefits and costs of fundraising by text.

This follows the UK industry-wide initiative enabling mobile users to donate to the national South East Asia tsunami appeal and our own initiative to help the Make Poverty History organisers raise money through text distribution of Live 8 concert tickets in 2005.

In some cases of text-based fundraising the use of third party premium text providers, and the levy of value added tax, reduces the amount of money that finds its way to the charities concerned.

For the tsunami appeal, a cross-industry initiative was applied to all handsets and all networks. Mobile operators provided their network services at cost and the Government agreed to waive the tax so that all funds went to the appeal.

For Live 8, the high-profile concerts to raise awareness about poverty in Africa, the organisers approached us to set up technical support and we suggested a text-based lottery and distribution system.

Each text application for Live 8 tickets cost £1.60, of which £1.50 went direct to Live8 and 10p contributed towards network costs and VAT. In all, we processed 2.1 million entries, peaking at 600 messages per second, raising £3.5 million through the event. Distribution of the 133,000 tickets was handled through O2 stores and via post. The same system was used in the Scottish event at Murrayfield.

Mobile operators are in general willing to make a gesture at times of disaster or wide national support for important causes. We are pleased that our technology lends itself favourably and that funds can be generated extensively and appropriately.