News

Saxton to revive Institute's text message donation campaign

Fundraising | Becky Slack | 17 Sep 2008

Outgoing Institute of Fundraising chair Joe Saxton has been asked by his successor, Paul Amadi, to launch an investigation into fundraising by text message.

Saxton’s brief is to establish what the barriers are to more charities using the mechanism, and how the Institute might help to overcome these.

He plans to create a coalition of charities which will both fund a campaign and draw up its business plan, the basis of which will be decided upon after thorough research into what is feasible.

Fundraising by text message has long been considered a missed opportunity for charities, because mobile phone usage is so ubiquitous nowadays. Latest figures from the Mobile Data Association shows that we send more than one billion texts every week, with volumes growing by 40 per cent year-on-year.

Costs prohibitively high

But there are several problems preventing UK charities from making greater use of SMS to raise money, not least of which is the fact that the mobile phone companies and the Treasury take a large chunk of each donation. VAT and operator commission can amount to 55p on a £1.50 gift, making the cost of offering this service to donors prohibitively high, especially for small charities.

Two years ago, the IoF commenced a campaign to persuade the mobile operators to slash their fees, but seemed to give up when it failed to score an early win. Last December, the debate was temporarily revived when Liberal Democrat MP Mark Oaten lodged an early day motion calling on the Chancellor to abolish VAT on text message donations, but after attracting 57 signatures, this too appears to have stalled.

Now Saxton is to pick up where others left off.

‘Reasonable level of fees’

“There is a lot of homework to be done before we launch the campaign. We need to establish what the public thinks is a reasonable level of fees, we need to speak to fundraisers to see what they think would work and to the regulators and phone companies to get their views,” Saxton told PF. “The coalition will be made up of people who are willing to put some money in the pot to pay for the research and possibly a lobbying firm.”

It is hoped the coalition will be formed over the coming months with a view to being ready to lobby the mobile phone operators by the end of the year. People interested in being part of the coalition should contact Saxton direct: joe.saxton@nfpsynergy.net

Tweet

Who's Who: Becky Slack | Tania Mason