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London Air Ambulance, UK

Operating 365 days a year 24 hours a day, London's Air Ambulance costs a lot to run and maintain. As a charity, they rely heavily on the involvement of the public to keep the service at the levels of quality required when coping with life or death situations. To do so, London’s Air Ambulance offers a range of merchandise and runs sponsored events throughout the year, as well as receiving the support from a number of volunteers.

However, the fundamental channel of income is through charitable donations, and as the cost of running the service continues to increase, London’s Air Ambulance realised they needed a unique and innovative method for generating additional funds from previously untapped sources.

Andrew Cameron, Chief Executive of London's Air Ambulance explains, "Although we are partly funded by the NHS, the majority of our costs are covered through public donations, charity fundraising events and collection schemes. We realised that we were not doing enough to interact with a wider audience, and sought new ways of getting the public to donate to our cause."

Working closely with the London’s Air Ambulance to look at the ways in which they could generate significant additional donations, Oxygen8 Communications provided the charity with a short-code and implemented a text-to-donate scheme, designed to help increase the charitable donations from tech-savvy mobile phone users and to support the necessary maintenance that keeps London’s Air Ambulance operational.

The text-to-donate service operates on a short-code platform. Any member of the public wishing to make a donation to the charity can simply send an SMS to the short code LA81, which generates a one off donation via the cost of the text message. Messages are charged at £1.50 per text, of which 90p goes to the London's Air Ambulance, with the remainder going to the mobile network the message was sent from.

He continues, "As this was the first time that we have used an interactive donation service, we were looking for a communications provider that could provide us with a suitable solution as well as high levels of support and guidance. Oxygen8 have proven to be a very reliable partner, and they have assisted us greatly in making the text-to-donate service a success. We are seeing donations from a much wider set of demographics than ever before"

Shane Leahy, CEO of Oxygen8 Communications, comments "We are delighted to be working with London's Air Ambulance, to provide a text-to-donate service. The work that the London’s Air Ambulance team do is essential and it is really important to us to assist them in gaining as many donations as possible and maximising their ROI throughout this campaign".

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