Mobile provider will return 100% of text donations
Howard Lake | 1 February 2013 | News
A new organisation which will allow charities to recoup 100% of the value of text donations has been launched in Ireland.
Likecharity will operate in partnership with Ireland’s six mobile providers, Vodafone, O2, Meteor, Three, Tesco Mobile and eMobile. Previously charities had to incur a fee from the mobile operators and pay VAT on each text donation.
This is the first time in Ireland that such a service has been offered and donors can now send a simple text message with a keyword dedicated to the specific charity or charitable event to a free-text number, 50300. The donation amount is added directly to the mobile customer’s phone bill or deducted from the customer’s mobile top-up and the donated funds are collected by likecharity who in turn send the donation to the nominated charity.
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A number of leading charities in Ireland such as UNICEF, Focus Ireland, DEBRA Ireland and Headstrong have already signed up to likecharity. The company will charge a software hosting fee, however, the company has said that the cost of using the platform will not rise above 5 per cent of the donations it generates through the platform, eliminating the risk of charities that do not use it as much as others having to pay a large bill.
The company said that the new service will be particularly cost effective for small charities and appeal to young donors.
Speaking at the launch of the initiative, Deirdre Garvey, CEO, The Wheel, a representative network for the community and voluntary sector in Ireland, said: “likecharity is a breakthrough for Ireland’s non-profit sector. For the first time charities can offer their donors a 100% donation option on all of the mobile networks”.
www.likecharity.com
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.