Halloween Appeal Taps Smartphones

Technology

This year’s trick-or-treaters will carry Unicef donation boxes with a barcode that enables gifts by smartphone. This year’s trick-or-treaters will carry Unicef donation boxes with a barcode that enables gifts by smartphone.

October 16, 2011 | Read Time: 1 minute

The ghosts and goblins, princesses and pirates on your doorstep this Halloween might also be high-tech fund raisers in disguise. For more than 60 years, children have collected money for the international-aid group Unicef as they make their trick-or-treating rounds.

This year supporters can contribute $10 by scanning a bar code that smartphones use to link to online information. The so-called QR code, for quick response, is now printed on the campaign’s iconic orange donation box.

Unicef is also promoting text-message donations as part of the Halloween drive, and participants can set up their own fund-raising sites and send e-mail or Facebook appeals to friends and relatives.

For more information: Go to http://youth.unicefusa.org.

Bits

• The Vodafone Americas Foundation and mHealth Alliance are sponsoring a competition that will award a total of $650,000 for projects that use wireless technology to help solve critical social problems. Submissions are due December 31, and winners will be announced in April. For more information: Go to http://project.vodafone-us.com.

• Idealware, a nonprofit technology group in Portland, Me., has updated its guide to software programs designed to help foundations manage the grant-making process. The free report includes reviews and a comparison of 20 systems. To read the report: Go to http://www.idealware.org/reports/grants-management.

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.