OpenMarket Delivers on Pakistan Flood Text Donations

The Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC) has been collecting money for humanitarian aid for nearly 50 years. It’s an umbrella organisation of 13 charity agencies who use the donated proceeds to deliver effective and timely help to people affected by major disasters such as floods, earthquakes or famine.

A support network of television and radio broadcasters, banks, the Post Office, BT, regional and national press helps the DEC publicise nationwide fundraising appeals. Money can usually be donated online; by sending a cheque; or going to a bank or Post Office.

More recently, the DEC has introduced donations by text message as an additional fundraising option for the general public. The organisation has chosen mobile transaction provider OpenMarket to handle its SMS donations. The Pakistan Floods Appeal was the first DEC campaign that ran on the OpenMarket platform.

Text message donations are an immediate, easy-to-use and widely available channel that can open up new ways of fundraising, particularly with a younger audience or with donors who don’t own a credit card. Moreover, text message donations are an important and complementary way to raise further revenue from existing donors, because people can immediately respond to charitable calls to action when they see an ad in the street or on television.

Charity shortcode
The Mobile Data Association (MDA), a not-for-profit mobile trade association, recognised this and, in July 2009, introduced a framework for managing donations through mobile network operators. The framework means that no VAT is deducted from charity text message donations sent through a dedicated shortcode. Any five-digit shortcode beginning with 70 is now automatically considered a charity code, and can be allocated to a registered charity.

However, with the new MDA ruling in place, and mobile donations becoming more common, the organisation needed to simplify processes and have them ready to go at short notice. In early 2010, the DEC put out a tender with the help of the MDA to find a partner who could handle mobile fundraising campaigns on an ongoing basis. Mobile transaction hub, OpenMarket, got the nod. The company handles mobile payments and messaging services for a wide range of large consumer brands, agencies and start-up digital content businesses in Europe and the US.

“They impressed us with their flexible approach and reliable platform,” recalls Kath Hindley, deputy CEO at the DEC. “OpenMarket also provides a very user friendly, intuitive console for managing mobile campaigns so we can set up a new campaign on our own quickly and easily. This is essential as we cannot waste valuable time when help is needed following a disaster.”

Pakistan floods
Almost as soon as the partnership was agreed, it was put to a first test as the Pakistan floods hit, affecting 20m people and destroying or damaging 1.9m homes. As the scale of the disaster became clear, help was needed quickly to provide emergency medical care and shelter, distribute food and drinking water, and rebuild Pakistan’s shattered infrastructure.

While aid agencies on the ground were working hard to reach the people affected by the floods, the DEC launched its Pakistan Floods Appeal in the UK. The 70707 shortcode was allocated to the appeal, and within only two days of the emergency being declared a disaster, OpenMarket had the shortcode up and running, receiving and processing the first mobile donations.

Ads with the shortcode were placed on London Underground, projected onto prominent buildings such as the Pakistan Embassy, and displayed at a Pakistan-England cricket test match. The shortcode was also advertised on the DEC’s Facebook and Twitter pages. Donors could give £5 by simply texting the word ‘GIVE’, ‘DONATE’ or ‘AID’ to 70707. The donation was then added to their mobile phone bill and collected through the network operator.

OpenMarket also implemented a Gift Aid mechanism to enable the DEC to increase the value of each £5 donation by claiming Gift Aid on top of the donation. Donors giving through an SMS text message were automatically sent a message in return asking whether they wanted to opt in for Gift Aid. More than 60 per cent chose to opt in, contributing more than £1 on top of each £5 donation. Donors could also opt in to be contacted again with future appeals.

To track where advertising was most successful, the DEC used different keywords in each ad location. Passengers on London Underground-based ads texted the word ‘AID’ rather than ‘GIVE’, for example, so the DEC would then know that each donation coming in with the keyword ‘AID’ was generated from its posters on the Underground.

“This insight is essential for us, as it helps us understand the profile of our mobile donors better,” explains Hindley. “Knowing where and how to reach them is key. By implementing the opt-in mechanism, we are now also able to build a relationship with donors where we can contact them again during future campaigns. In the future, we may send them an update on their mobile phone to let them know how the money is being used; we currently only provide this information on our website. The more we can engage with our donors, the more money we can hopefully raise for a good cause.”

While donors giving to the Pakistan Floods Appeal via SMS had to pay their standard network rate for the text message sent, in the future, the shortcode 70000 will be free for consumers to use.

OpenMarket is now looking at opening up additional mobile payment mechanisms for the DEC to utilise in future campaigns, using the mobile internet and the OpenMarket Payforit scheme, which is supported by all UK operators.

The Pakistan Flood Appeal is still running and has so far collected a total of £64m.