SMS giving – an interesting example from Central Europe

Howard Lake | 30 October 2007 | Blogs

Czechs love mobile phones – our country has 10 million inhabitants that own more than 13 million active SIM cards. Last year they sent altogether 6 billion standard SMS so it is no surprise that SMS giving became very popular way to contribute to charity as people are used to send SMS frequently. 3 years ago Czech Donors Forum convinced all mobile operators on the Czech market to join common project and make together SMS giving as easy as possible. DMS (Donor Message Service) system they created is simple and transparent. The most important part is an agreement on unified and easy to remember phone number (87777) and keywords that work in all mobile phone networks. There is also a unified price of one SMS: 30 CZK (appr.1 EUR) – NGO receives 27 crowns and the rest covers administration costs of the system. If NGO wants to participate it submits proposal to DMS Council and after approval receives its unique “DMS keyword” (e.g. DMS UNICEF) and can start to collect donations. Their case for support and number of SMS received is published on webpage (www.darcovskasms.cz) so people can check what’s going on with their donation.
Since the beginning in 2004 more than 120 NGOs have participated and people sent them almost 6 million SMS. It works evidently very well for humanitarian causes or fundraising campaigns with huge media coverage. For example, after the 2004 Tsunami 700,000 SMS were sent within two weeks. Or Help the Children raised nearly 400,000 SMS around their Easter TV show this year. Other, especially smaller and less known charities obtain low order numbers (few hundreds or thousands per year). It is obvious that presence in the mass media is the most important part of success of the campaign.
Unfortunately it is anonymous giving. If someone contributes (s)he gets only standard thank you message. NGOs don’t receive the phone number of their donor so that they have no chance to get in contact with them. So DMS is a big progress as it was almost impossible to use SMS for fundraising here before, but there is still a lot of space for improvement as it has definitely potential to be more than “just” the advanced public collection.

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.