Fauna and Flora International raise £33,000 from Web/WAP site
Howard Lake | 9 June 2004 | News
Sales of animal-sound ringtone downloads from Fauna and Flora International’s (FFI) new Web/WAP site wildlive! have raised £33,000 in five and a half months.
FFI has combined an online community website with WAP technology to offer a service that is accessible via both computer and mobile phone.
The site was built by etribes.com and was launched on 1 June 2004. Yet without any publicity it had already raised £33,000 from its animal ring-tones section in its testing period between mid-December 2003 and May 2004. This offers twenty-one tones such as a barking zebra and the melodic sound of tree frogs. These can be bought and downloaded to a mobile phone almost instantly.
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Wildlive! was implemented using a grant from The Vodafone Group Foundation together with technical support from Vodafone UK. Vodafone also transfers 100% of the income generated through downloads to FFI. Through the site FFI aims to provide a valuable information resource and a venue for sharing best practice, news and ideas about conservation around the globe.
As well as the ringtone income, the site also allows visitors the chance to buy photographs, pay their annual subscription to FFI if they are members, or make a donation online.
Ken Banks, Project Technical Advisor at FFI, said: “with the help of Vodafone Global Content Services we plan to extend the service throughout 2004, looking specifically at a global rollout and region-specific content.”
About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.