Text your donations to 90999

By Adam Maikkula | January 17, 2010

In December, I donated $5 to Alicia Keys’ Keep A Child Alive foundation by texting “ALIVE” to 90999. Making the donation was really easy since I could use my cell phone to donate and have the $5 added to my Sprint bill at the end of the month. The texting process was very straightforward as I texted “ALIVE” to 90999 and immediately received a text asking me to confirm a one time donation billed to my cell phone. Once I confirmed my intention of donating the money, I received a ‘thank you’ text.

Last week, I received my Sprint bill and wondered how my text message donation would appear. Beneath my phone number, I read the details of my donation from 12/21/09. The one time donation was listed as:

“www.MobileGiving.org: Donation – 90999 KpChldAlv Dona – 12/21…$5.00″

As a consumer, it was great to see that my text donation was legitimate and that Sprint correctly billed me the proper amount. In all honesty, considering the total Sprint Surcharges and the Government Taxes & Fees, the $5 donation was nothing for me to be worried about (it was the least I could do). It was a pleasure to help the Keep A Child Alive foundation. I encourage you all to check out one of these text donation services for yourselves.

If you have been active on social media at all this week, you should have noticed the ‘”text ‘HAITI’ to 90999 to donate $10 to American Red Cross relief for Haiti” status messages going out. As a previous user of this 90999 service, I just wanted to let readers know that this is a legitimate service, and as you can see from my Keep A Child Alive experience above, it is a great way to support humanitarian efforts in a matter of seconds.

Social media has really helped the “ALIVE” and “HAITI” initiatives raise awareness, increase donations, and encourage public awareness by making it easy for campaigns to virally spread across the internet. It is one thing to receive a “Please Donate Money” letter in the mail, but it is an entirely different experience when you receive status message updates from many of your friends showing their support for one of these causes. For many people, it is far easier to get behind a cause if they know their friends are supporting it as well. Also, it is much easier to donate money when NOT being aggressively asked to do so. A tweet, update, or picture is often more effective than an aggressive “just give us money” communication. Remember, even if you do not wish to donate money yourself, you can help raise awareness by copying and pasting the messages above to your own social media.