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Donors mix up their charities following social media drive

charity

Donors mix up their charities following social media drive

It is expected that thousands of pounds have been donated to the wrong charity as part of the latest online fundraiser.

The recent trend that has been filling up newsfeeds across many social networking sites is the #nomakeupselfie craze, where people upload photographs of themselves wearing no makeup and make a text donation to Cancer Research UK, raising more than £8m so far.

However, the BBC has suggested that thousands of pounds worth of donations intended for this cause has gone to the wrong charity through simple errors made when texting the keyword ‘BEAT’. Some have found that their smartphones have been autocorrecting the word to read ‘BEAR’ which prompted responses from the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) informing donators that they are enquiring about adopting a polar bear.

Many who were surprised when they learned of their mistake took to social media in a light-hearted way and were able to joke about it. The WWF has said that it has taken no money from confused donators and wishes Cancer Research UK “every success in their campaign and their goals.”

Another error came when people text the word ‘DONATE’ rather than ‘BEAT’, which meant that donations were made to UNICEF. The charity has announced that it believes £18,625 had been accidentally donated and confirmed it would make every effort to ensure that these pledges would be transferred to Cancer Research UK, as it was “a genuine mix-up.”

All parties involved have said that they will try to ensure that something like this does not happen again.

Alan Littler

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