Charities turn to SMS donation in 2012

What is your preferred way to donate to a charity?  Well it seems that charities think that their future lies with text message donations…at least in the UK.  According to the UK regulator of premium rate telephone services that oversees charity text donation, PhonepayPlus, there has been a sharp increase  in charity text donations last year and the trend looks set to continue into 2012.

More than 200 charities are now registered with PhonepayPlus, which means that they can ask people to donate by sending a text message to the charity’s short code number.  Perhaps this isn’t too surprising given the end-of-year findings by nfpSynergy’s Charity Awareness Monitor  which found that the monthly average for people giving to charity by text donations rouse by 40% in 2011. 
As of 2011, around 1 in 4 people in the UK will donate to a charity by text.  Forecasts predict that by 2014 around £96 million will come from SMS donations, which is a lot of money by anyone’s standards.  And charities have been quick to realise that text donations chimes well with younger givers.

It is also interesting to note that although monetary donations are always welcome, text donations can be an effective way to recruit volunteers. The tough economic conditions mean that not everyone can afford to donate money, and on a globally scale it believes that fewer than 1% of people have given money to a charity in 2011, overall there has been an increase in the number of people volunteering. Remember this can be anything from helping out at a shop to providing technical support by texts to “Silver surfers”.

In the months and years to come I can imagine that charities, community groups  and non-profits will be able to make greater use of technology --be it email, SMS, internal messaging or social networks – to help tap into a groundswell of support and expertise to help others.  I can also well imagine that as mobile and micropayments become more wide spread, charities too will be look for ways to capitalise from these.