Text for good

It was great to hear that the 25^th anniversary of Comic Relief’s Red Nose Day proved to be another record-breaker in terms of funds raised. And once again text donations played a huge part in contributing to the total.

Comic Relief used four charity shortcodes during this year’s Red Nose Day campaign (70011, 70005, 70010 and 70510) which allowed people to donate £1, £5 or £10.

The UK network operators have agreed that any five-digit text message short code beginning ‘70’ is now automatically considered a charity code and becomes eligible for 100% payout.

As of 21st March 2013, O2 customers sent a whopping 620,000 texts contributing nearly £4m to Comic Relief.  The majority of texts sent were at the £10 price point, closely followed by the £5 price point. So a big thank you to all customers who contributed. Donations can still be made to these shortcodes until 29th March 2013.

For those interested in using text as a means of fundraising for their favourite charity, take a look at www.charitytext.org/ for useful information.

I would also like to take this opportunity to thank our people who volunteered to don their headsets and take telephone pledges at our contact centres in Bury, Preston Brook, Leeds and Glasgow during the TV show.   And not forgetting the hundreds of employees who got involved in their own fundraising efforts across our offices and stores.  Comic Relief has a strong tradition of supporting young people in the UK – an enthusiasm we also share.  To find out how O2 and our people are supporting young people through its Think Big activities see www.o2thinkbig.co.uk.

Stop press: The Disasters Emergency Committee, the umbrella organisation for 14 international aid relief charities, has launched a nationwide appeal for Syria.  Donors can choose to use text to donate by texting the word SYRIA to 70000 to donate £5.