Sport Relief 2012 raised £7.9 million via text donations
Howard Lake | 28 May 2012 | News
Sport Relief has so far raised £7.9 million via £1, £5 and £10 mobile donations, a record amount for the biannual campaign. In line with previous years, Sport Relief has received 100% of the value of SMS donations made by the public thanks to agreements with the mobile network operators.
Helen Puddefoot , Head of Campaign Management at Sport Relief said: “2012 has been a record year for mobile donations for Sport Relief, seeing the donation amount from SMS more than double since 2010, clearly demonstrating a huge appetite for SMS donations”.
Mobile fundraising asks
This year’s Sport Relief campaign invited the public to donate by SMS in response to several fundraising activities:
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- “John Bishop’s Week of Hell” asked people to donate £1 by texting the keyword ‘SPORT’ to 70011
- ‘John Bishop’s Week of Hell documentary’, broadcast on 22 March, asked viewers donate £5 by texting the keyword ‘HELP’ to 70005
- In ‘The BT Sport Relief Challenge: Walliams vs The Thames’ (140 miles in September 2011) supporters were asked to donate £5 by texting the keyword ‘SWIM’ to 70005
- On the ‘Sport Relief‘ night, broadcast on Friday 23 March, viewers were invited to donate £10 by texting ‘YES’ to 70010
Text donations to Sport Relief were again handled by Mobile Interactive Group (MIG), a Velti company. Rob Weisz, VP of Sales at MIG, said: “SMS donations are a trusted, efficient and engaging method for the nation to donate on multiple price points (£1, £5 and £10) and our high performance, high capacity interactive platform has been specifically designed to support mass participation broadcast events”.
The platform handled 2,276,369 mobile interactions during the campaign.
The 2012 Sport Relief campaign launched on 19 January and culminated on Sport Relief Weekend on 23 – 25 March.
Growth in text donations to Comic Relief and Sport Relief
- 2010: Sport Relief raised £44.25 million, of which £3.7 million was donated via £1, £5 and £10 mobile SMS donations.
- 2011: Comic Relief’s Red Nose Day raised £15.1m through £1, £5 and £10 donations, contributing to the overall £108 million raised that year.
- 2012: Sport Relief raised over £50m with £7.9 million given via £1, £5 and £10 mobile donations
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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.