Sport Relief raises £3.4m through text donations
Howard Lake | 12 April 2010 | News
Sport Relief last month raised £3.4 million of its £31.6 million total from text donations. The charity accepted mobile donations of £1, £5 and, for the first time, £10. Mobile network operators waived their usual fees to ensure the full value of each donation reached Sport Relief. The donations were handled by Mobile Interactive Technology’s (MIT) MIDAS platform.
The first of the text donation services opened on 29 January 2010 and the £1, £5 and £10 services have been utilised for various fundraising activities for Sport Relief.
For example, ‘The BT Sport Relief Million Pound Bike Ride’ raised £700,000 in £1 and £5 mobile donations. The event saw celebrities including David Walliams, Miranda Hart and Davina McCall cycle from Land’s End to John O’Groats in just under 82 hours. ‘The Thomson Sport Relief Water Ski Challenge’, which saw Christine Bleakley water-ski across the English Channel, raised over £900,000 in £5 text donations. Eddie Izzard raised over £1.1 million in £5 text donations in response to running 43 marathons in 51 days around the UK.
The £10 donation option was used on the night of TV only, when the public were invited to text YES to 70010. All SMS donation services closed at midnight on 31 March.
Caroline Lien, Operations Director, Sport Relief, said: “Mobile has proven to be an extremely popular channel for us as it appeals to a wide audience demographic, and enables an instant donation at various price points. I’d also like to thank MIT’s Client Services and Operations team for their help and dedication throughout the campaign.”
Comic Relief will be able to claim at least 25% extra from the Government on top of all of the donations made by text up to 31 July 2010 for all those who texted to donate and signed up to Gift Aid online.
www.sportrelief.com/text
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.