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Charity apathy leaves high text message fees

Fundraising | Gemma Ware | 1 Mar 2008

The campaign to get mobile phone operators to waive fees on text message donations has lost its way. Gemma Ware finds out that the Americans may beat us to the best deal.

It’s not like charities to give up on a campaign. But it seems they have on SMS donations. Two years ago the sector was up in arms at the cost levied by mobile phone operators on text message donations, which can range from 23p to 28p for a £1.50 text. It looked like charities were set to use their muscle and get the fees scrapped, or at least, lowered.

But the Institute of Fundraising lost interest in leading the campaign, and admitted last year that it had stopped lobbying the mobile phone companies on the issue. Its director of policy and campaigns, Megan Pacey maintains the Institute is still calling on operators to introduce a long-term reduced charging structure to ensure text giving becomes a “mainstream donation mechanism”, but it is doing little to actively pursue them.

A flurry of interest stirred up last December after an early day motion lodged by Liberal Democrat MP Mark Oaten called for charities to be made exempt from VAT on the charges levied by the phone operators; but it too has died away. So far 55 MPs have signed the motion, but Oaten’s office say they have no immediate plans to pursue the issue.

Even the charity that was most vocal two years ago, Help a London Child (HALC), sheepishly admits that it has done little to move the campaign forward. “I’m going to put my hands up and say no,” says Annabel James, director of charities at GCap Media, which runs HALC. “It was just really hard to get the traction to get the campaign to go much further.” She says text donations are fine for big charities that can pull in enough volume to make economic sense, but smaller charities have less incentive. James says HALC’s priorities have also changed, and it is focusing more on online giving rather than text donations to engage its donors.

One mobile marketing agency, Incentivated, is still pressing the operators but says they have yet to all come together to discuss the issue and no progress has been made.

Perhaps charities should look to the US for inspiration. A new Washington-based not-for-profit called the Mobile Giving Foundation has hit on a model that could revolutionise SMS giving in the States. Although still in its test phase, the Foundation recently brokered a deal with four major mobile carriers to waive all fees for texts sent in response to a 10 second United Way DRTV advert aired during the NFL Superbowl in February. United Way received 90 per cent of the US$5 cost of each text with the Foundation taking a 10 per cent cut. Over 6,000 people responded, generating $10,205.

The Foundation has indications from Amnesty International, the American Heart Association and Unicef that they intend to use its mobile channel, which will launch officially on 1 April. Whether US carriers will agree to a sustained use of this model is still unclear, but UK charities should take note that, in their apathy, the Americans may beat them to the best deal.

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Who's Who: Gemma Ware