Text message fundraising via mobile phones

It's coming. We all know it's coming. In fact, I have a small wager with a couple fundraising colleagues about which one of us can make our direct response departments get it working first. However, as a word to the wise: If you are going to hand out fliers with a text number for donations - make sure you proofread twice!

Last August, a group of 10 people from the Animazzjoni Missjunarja Teresa Nuzzo, went to Kenya, where they worked in a secondary school for girls. They had good intentions to fundraise - but sometimes even good intentions end up on my blog.

Following their experience, the Animazzjoni Missjunarja Teresa Nuzzo launched a fund-raising campaign on 1 November. The campaign mainly consists of a leaflet distribution to all households in Malta and Gozo. During distribution, the group realised that the SMS donation numbers printed on the leaflets distributed to the 160,000 households were incorrect. Any donations sent via the numbers featured on the leaflet are being passed on to organisations that have nothing to do with the missions.

Ugh. That hurts.