Social Commitment

 

Case Study: Donations to Haiti via SMS

On January 12th, 2010, an earthquake measuring 7.0 on the Richter scale struck Haiti. The natural disaster affected 3 million people in the region — one third of the population — leaving more than 1.5 million people homeless and more than 150,000 dead.

Aiming to increase the number of donations they could solicit from the public, several North American NGOs opted to use text messaging via SMS.

The idea was very simple but extremely effective. Relief agencies placed advertisements in newspapers, on television and across the Internet asking people to send a text message with the keyword "HAITI" to the short code 25383 to make a US$5.00 donation.

The results

By January 17th, only five days after the disaster, the Red Cross alone had already raised more than $20 million dollars from SMS donations. The campaigns were highly successful. People did not need to fill out forms, credit card numbers, but only use their own cell phones and send a short text message to make a financial contribution to the Haitian people.

Our social commitment

Since 2008, Mobile Pronto has created special programs that offer substantial discounts for non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and other charities to leverage the use of SMS text messaging and mobility applications. We believe that our applications and services can contribute significantly to the nonprofit sector.

Applicability of SMS to Social Programs

• Donation of monetary contributions via SMS (text messages). 
• Mobile marketing campaigns for awareness of social causes. 
• Sending alerts to members of partner organizations. 
• Recruiting volunteers and mobilizing workers to take action. 
• Surveys, research, and voting on matters of concern. 
• Sending thank you messages to supporters. 
• Reminders about contributing to a social cause.