Haiti - Charity Short Codes

The terrible earthquake in Haiti has required a swift fund raising response by the Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC). One of the tools that they have chosen to deploy is a Charity Short Code. This provides a simple, swift way for mobile users to make a donation.

To make a donation users simply text GIVE to 70077. The cost is £5 plus the cost of a standard text message.

The advantage of a charity shortcode is that no VAT is taken by the taxman, and there are significantly better payouts from the operators, in some cases 100%.

There are a series of similar initiatives in the US and Canada, and these have raised over $7M so far.

WIN also offer Charity Short Codes, and have taken a corporate decision not to take any fee from the text donation - something that not all other suppliers have committed to. One of our first campaigns has been working with London based Kids Company. We have enabled their first text donation campaign, that saw poster sites across a number of London buses stops, example below. We will be continuing to help develop campaigns for Kids Co in 2010.