11% of Cellphone Owners Have Made Text-Message Gifts, Study Finds

July 8, 2010 | Read Time: 1 minute

Eleven percent of cellphone owners have made a charitable contribution via text message, according to a new report.

Young cellphone owners were more likely to make text-message gifts than their older counterparts.

Among cellphone owners ages 18 to 29, 19 percent said that they had donated via text message, compared with 10 percent of people ages 30 to 49, 8 percent of people ages 50 to 64, and 4 percent of cellphone owners age 65 and older.

Nearly a quarter of Latino cellphone owners (23 percent) said that they had made a text-message contribution, compared with 16 percent of African-American and 7 percent of white cellphone owners.

The findings are part of a new study of Americans’ use of wireless Internet services.

Fifty-nine percent of survey participants said that they go online wirelessly from a laptop computer (47 percent) or cellphone (40 percent).

The telephone survey of 2,252 adults—1,917 of whom are cellphone owners—was conducted from April 29 to May 30. Commissioned by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, it was designed to produce a sample that mirrored the demographics of the American population.

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About the Author

NICOLE WALLACE

Features Editor

Nicole Wallace is features editor of the Chronicle of Philanthropy. She has written about innovation in the nonprofit world, charities’ use of data to improve their work and to boost fundraising, advanced technologies for social good, and hybrid efforts at the intersection of the nonprofit and for-profit sectors, such as social enterprise and impact investing.Nicole spearheaded the Chronicle’s coverage of Hurricane Katrina recovery efforts on the Gulf Coast and reported from India on the role of philanthropy in rebuilding after the South Asian tsunami. She started at the Chronicle in 1996 as an editorial assistant compiling The Nonprofit Handbook.Before joining the Chronicle, Nicole worked at the Association of Farmworker Opportunity Programs and served in the inaugural class of the AmeriCorps National Civilian Community Corps.A native of Columbia, Pa., she holds a bachelor’s degree in foreign service from Georgetown University.