Trick or Treat for UNICEF Embraces New Giving Tech

For three generations… since 1950… the United States Fund for UNICEF has sponsored Trick or Treat for UNICEF a door-to-door fundraiser conducted by children and meant to take place on or around Halloween, October 31.

In 60 years Trick or Treat for UNICEF has raised $164 million, an average of $2.7 million a year. Not bad!

But the problem, if you can call it that, is that the campaign has traditionally generated the donations in cash, with all the attendant challenges that entails.

Moreover, the people who donated last year are likely to be unknown to the United States Fund for UNICEF and almost certainly forgotten by the kids, meaning there’s little continuity from year to year.

Surely there’s a role here for technology.

And indeed the United States Fund for UNICEF has embraced a slick new way for kids to Trick or Treat for UNICEF.

Today kids can Trick or Treat for UNICEF, raise good sum of money and never touch a single nickel of it.

This Halloween the kids can print out a canister wrapper like the one at the left which features a QR code. When people scan the code using their smartphone they can make a direct donation to UNICEF.

What if the person who answers the door doesn’t have a smartphone or the necessary QR reader?

Well a persistent Trick or Treater also knows that people can text “TOT” to UNICEF (864233) to make a $10.00 donation to Trick-or-Treat for UNICEF. The $10 will be added to donor’s phone bill.

The United States Fund for UNICEF doesn’t mention it, but of course they’re collecting the phone numbers of donors. Come next Halloween they could message a prior donor directly. They could even send a punch list to kids asking them to knock specific doors of prior year’s donors.

If that sounds slightly creepy… even for Halloween… remember that that’s exactly how political candidates campaign door-to-door nowadays. Their party gives them a list of registered voters from their party broken out by their precinct/district. Then they specifically knock on the doors of people who belong to their party and are registered voters.

Kudos to the United States Fund for UNICEF for bringing this classic fundraiser up to date.

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