Over at work, we are routinely asked to provide a stategy where a non-profit can recive donations via SMS.  This is cerainly easily and rapidly impemented via the existing technology.  The roadblock is that the carriers end up pulling away 30% - 45% of the donation.  This instanly makes this channel a non-vaiable option for every group we have reviewed thiis outlet.

Amnesty International appears to have taken another appraoch.  They are partnering with  a Working Assests to provide co-branded service — Amnesty Wireless.  Amnesty International then recives 10% of charges without addtional overhead.  This is certainly a more creative model.  It will be interesting to see how many people actually sign up for the service powered by the Nationwide Sprint PCS Network. 

In any case, this is probably the start of a trend in this saturated commodity market for cell phone services to enable affinity programs similar to those we find with credit cards.

Gizmodo Article

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