Donate via your cellphone

The Imam Khomeini Relief Foundation, with the help of the first network operator, Mobile Telecommunication Company of Iran (MCI), is collecting donations via SMS. MCI in Iran is known as Hamrah-e Aval.

In a ceremony celebrating the signing of the agreement between the two companies, Parviz Fattah, Head of the Imam Khomeini Relief Fund said: “This contract is a social responsibility and MCI has accepted not to charge fees for SMSs from people donating via this system”.

This project has been executed as a pilot project for the past five months and currently has 800 participants. The Relief Foundation hopes to increase the number of participants to millions by having the project become operational across the country. This system will significantly reduce the cost for personnel and maintaining donation collection boxes for the Relief Foundation. “From the start of this year, 10% of donations have become electronic and we intend to increase this by 10% each year”, added Mr Fattah.

The CEO of MCI, Vahid Sadoughi also commented on this collaboration: “The MCI network has 60 million subscribers. If they join this system and donate at least 1000 IRR every day, this would add up to 60 billion IRR ($1.8m) in donations.”

Fostering one thousand children under guardianship of the Relief Foundation by Hamrahe Avval and depositing 500 thousand IRR for each child is one of the clauses of this three year agreement.

The Imam Khomeini Relief Foundation was established in March 1979, on orders of Ayatollah Khomeini in order to support and assist the impoverished. Based on figures from this organization, last year this foundation received 14600 billion IRR ($438m) in donations. Based on the latest statistics, in 2014, 4.5 million people were supported by this foundation.