Haiti Relief Efforts & The SMS Gateway

The SMS gateway can be employed to assist charities and aid agencies across the globe with their fund raising activities. How do they do it? With one of the most significant benefits of SMS – a built-in payment system.

The death toll in Haiti is said to have topped 150,000 following an earth quake registering 7.0, with a number of powerful aftershocks afterward. Through various efforts a sizable amount has been accumulated by aid agencies and charities around the globe to assist rescue operations and those affected by this terrible tragedy. And in most cases, all it took was a simple SMS. So how did they do it?

Why SMS is Used

Think about your own handset and the small little SIM card inside. This SIM card holds some important information relating to your phone, and allows you to make contact with just about anyone else, be it via voice, text or data. But only if you have airtime. In fact, it’s the airtime that plays an important part here: when donating money to a suitable charity, the amount donated is deducted from the available airtime. This ensures a hassle-free and secure payment method; a transaction completed by simply sending a message via an SMS gateway while on the move. That’s why SMS is the fund-raising tool of choice for many organizations and charities.

Premium Rate SMS Messages

So how can your company or organization employ this beneficial technology in a similar manner? Let’s start with the short code – usually 4 to 6 digits in length, making it easier to remember and generally more accessible for individuals to get in touch with your organization and/or company. This short code, more formally known as a Common Short Code (CSC), is regulated and approved by the Common Short Code Administration. Using a CSC, companies and organizations are able to send and/or receive premium rated messages via the SMS gateway that allow destination numbers to pay for content or, as is the case with Haiti, to donate money.

Common Short Codes can only be used on a national level, which means that, should you wish to raise money in a different country for a worthwhile cause or use a premium rate short code for a different purpose, you’ll have to apply for one in that specific country.

Do You Get All the Money?
Associated with premium-rated SMS messages is a revenue-share model. This model specifies how much of the donated or paid amount is kept by the network operator, after which the remainder is paid out to the company or organization renting the premium-rated short code.

Without getting too technical, let’s look at the various ways companies, both big and small, can use SMS gateways to raise money or sell premium content.

Easy to Integrate, Easy to Use

There exist two ready-to-use interfaces associated with SMS message transmission and reception. Each of these provide their own benefits to enable the company or organization to use an SMS gateway as a fund raising / marketing / internal communication tool without any effort.

Web Interfaces (e.g. Communicator)

If you’ve got a browser and an internet connection, then you’ll be able to use this interface from anywhere in the world. These interfaces take care of all the technical aspects of message sending and allow companies and organizations to send messages through the SMS gateway using a relatively intuitive look & feel.

After logging in with a username and password you’ll be able to:

• Send Messages
• Receive Messages (Two-way messaging must be enabled)
• Manage address books & lists
• View delivery reports
• View account balances
• Manage routing profiles (for campaigns with a budget)
• etc.

Desktop Interfaces (e.g. Messenger Pro)

If you like what you’ve read regarding the web interface, then you’ll love the desktop interface that provides exactly the same functionality, with the only difference being that it is installed locally on a computer. As with the web interface, this also requires an internet connection that connects to the SMS gateway and makes message transmission possible.

Note that most of the desktop interfaces are OS dependent.

Requires Programming Skill

There exist a variety of application programming interfaces (API’s) that will allow your company or organization to connect to the SMS gateway to send and receive messages. These API’s allow for the integration of native software environments with the SMS gateway without requiring a total infrastructure revamp. This will allow you to integrate your own databases and programs with SMS messaging to ensure ease of use. Current available API’s include:

• HTTP/S
• SMPP
• SMTP
• SOAP
• FTP
• XML
• .COM

Whether you use any of the existing interfaces for your charity campaigns or one of the API’s for total and seamless integration, premium-rated SMS messaging is achievable in both instances and will allow you to help those who need it most, just like current aid campaigns for Haiti. For more information, read more about the SMS gateway.

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Tags: application programming interface, Communicator, Haiti SMS Relief, Messenger PRO, Premium Rate SMS, Revenue-share, SMS gateway, SMS Gateways, SMS messaging