Half a croissant, on a plate, with a sign in front of it saying '50c'
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Phone charge donations for charities

Easy donations to charities
 
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Certain tv shows have their viewers vote on who stays and who goes, and charge you a small amount for voting. So why don't charities do a similar thing? They could have little commercials showing their phone number, and the amount of money they have gained from people calling. It might only be a couple of cents donated by each call, but if enough people see it and call, it will add up greatly, similar to www.thehungersite.com , its affiliates, and www.freedonation.com . This method will easily reach a lot of people. Hopefully the charities will get free ad space from philantrophist station organizers, and then this could take off. Addendum: Or they could adopt a "The Hunger Site" model, where you call once a day for free, and listen to some sponsor's ads, maybe with the option of paying extra to the charity.
Trag, Jul 21 2003

The Hunger site network http://www.thehungersite.com
Give food to the hungry for free. Has been tested by the TV show street cents and is for real. [Trag, Oct 04 2004]

Freedonation http://www.freedonation.com/
Like the hungersite, but allows you to give up to 20 times per day for each item, still for free [Trag, Oct 04 2004, last modified Oct 21 2004]

900-numbers: no longer just for heavy breathers (1996) http://www.charityv...esearch/rfmk21.html
"The 900-number lines used during the telethon for the Saguenay region flood raised $2.3 million." [jutta, Oct 04 2004, last modified Oct 21 2004]

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       Not quite the same, but there is a phone company here in the US that donates 1% of your bill to certain charities, while keeping the cost to you the same as a standard phone company. Plus they give you free Ben & Jerry's ice cream.
notme, Jul 21 2003
  

       Often the premium-rate text and phone lines are used for competitions. The revenue gained is firstly used to pay for the prize then for profit. The voting systems (having no prize to buy) have a higher profit margin.   

       I'm fairly certain that I have seen a voting text number that claimed to give a quarter of the charge to charity, but can't find anything on the web.
st3f, Jul 31 2003
  

       I don't dislike it [Trag] although normally with premium rate mobile numbers the 'content provider' only gets about 30% of the cash, we seems hopelessly inefficient.
neilp, Jul 31 2003
  
      
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