Telecoms company to donate "at least 10% of customers' bills"
Howard Lake | 3 November 2004 | News
CharCom, a new telecoms provider, has said it will donate all profits from customers’ telephone bills to charity, with at least 10% of a bill’s value going to the charity of the customer’s choice.
CharCom is a not-for-profit telephony provider that launches today. Its customers will be able to choose which charity will benefit from their phone call spend, and any UK registered charity can benefit from the new service.
CharCom say that the facility for customers to pick a cause that is personal or important to them makes their service “the first of its kind in the UK”. The company also claims that, “for the average residential or business customer, [it offers] better value than BT”.
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CharCom Limited was established by telecom executive John Helliwell four years after the sudden and unexpected death of his daughter Abbie Victoria, with the intention of raising money for FSID, the Foundation for the Study of Infant Death. He realised the idea was scaleable and could work for a variety of different charities.
Some charities will benefit from the scheme without any action on their parts as their supporters will choose them as beneficiary. Others are encouraged by CharCom to promote the opportunity to their supporters. However, CharCom are careful to point out that “charities are under no obligation to do so and will receive all funds owed to them irrespective of whether activity is undertaken in support of CharCom.”
CharCom is available to anybody with a BT phone line coming into their home. No change is made to the customer’s phone and there is no change to how phone calls are made and nobody will need to visit the customer’s home.
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.