The #nomakeupselfie Twitter phenomenon which took off last week has raised £8m for Cancer Research UK, although around £18,000 in donations have been accidentally sent to Unicef.
The bare-faced photo campaign, whose beginnings remain a mystery, has continued to escalate since it started infiltrating Twitter and Facebook streams last week.
Although it did not initiate the social media campaign, in 24 hours Cancer Research had received £1m worth of donations from make-up free tweets and this figure continued to dramatically rise over the weekend.
Dr Harpal Kumar, chief executive of Cancer Research UK, said: “We’ve been overwhelmed by the support people have been showing us through the #nomakeupselfie trend.
“We don’t receive any government funding for our research and so it’s phenomenal to think that the generosity of the public is enabling us to fund critical research that we didn’t have the money for six days ago. Being able to fund more trials will bring forward the day when all cancers are cured.”
Unicef receives donations by mistake
However, mistakes made by individuals who texted “DONATE” instead of “BEAT” meant that £18,625 was inadvertently donated to Unicef rather than CRUK. Mike Flynn, director of individual giving at Unicef UK, said that this was “a genuine mix up” and that the charity is working to resolve this issue.
Flynn went on to say: “Unicef UK is not responsible for this error, however we’ve been working hard to find a resolution to the situation for those affected. We contacted CRUK as soon as we became aware of what was happening.
“Unicef UK and CRUK have agreed that these donations will be received in full by CRUK. We are now working closely with all parties involved to ensure that this doesn’t happen again in the future.”
On Friday, CRUK send a text to donors who had mistakenly texted Unicef, saying that Unicef would pass the donation on to them.
The BBC has also reported of other cases where “BEAT” was auto-corrected to “BEAR” on individual’s mobile phones, which meant potential donators had accidentally inquired to WWF about adopting a polar bear.
The charity said that they have so far recieved 2,850 texts in total and that they would normally only recieve 22 a day.
WWF have said that no money was taken from these people as adoptions have to be confirmed over the phone. Once alerted to what was going on, WWF created an automatic text response to let the sender know that they texted in error and may want to text CRUK instead.
WWF's director of fundraising, Kerry Blackstock, said: "We wish cancer research every success in their campaign and their goals, polar bear selfies are harder to come by, though as far as we are aware, none wear make up."
Other cancer charities have also reaped the benefits of the selfie craze. As of yesterday Breast Cancer Campaign had raised £167,000 from the text donations.
A Breast Cancer Campaign spokeswoman said: “Breast Cancer Campaign has continued to see donations roll in as a result of the #nomakeupselfie campaign.
“We couldn’t be more delighted. This campaign demonstrates the powerful impact that social media can have in raising awareness of breast cancer. Without it we wouldn’t have received over £165,000 to spend on life-saving research.”
Breast cancer awareness charity Coppafeel tweeted that it had raised £2,500 on Sunday from the #nomakeupselfie.
The trend has since been adapted to raise money for testicular cancer, as some men have taken to posting #cockinasock photos with money being donated to awareness charity Checkemlads. Yesterday, model and reality TV star Calum Best tweeted his own photo in support of the charity.
It has been suggested that the #nomakeupselfie campaign had started following an author’s defence of the scrutiny received by 81-year old actress Kim Novak, or from the success of the famed Oscars selfie from the same event. However, it seems to be unknown how it became linked to cancer awareness and donations.
