FOURTEEN charitable organisations received donations of RM150,000 in total from DiGi Telecommunications Sdn Bhd under its “Love to Save” campaign.

“We conceptualised this campaign to make it easy for Malaysians to support their charity of choice. We wanted to give everyone, including non-DiGi customers, the opportunity to make a difference with just one click,” said DiGi’s head of segments C.K. Koay.

During the campaign, members of the public were invited to visit www.lovetosave.com.myto choose a charity and DiGi would donate RM5 for each click or vote to the selected charity.

It was at no cost to the public, said Koay at a cheque presentation ceremony last Wednesday.

The website attracted 86,615 hits with more than 19,000 registered supporters and 589 personal groups created. The campaign also attracted the attention of online social networking website users, with information on Love to Save circulated through Facebook, Twitter, blogs and online forums.

“We were gratified by the response from so many Malaysians who were excited about the campaign. Not only did they take the opportunity to contribute with a click, they also helped spread news of the campaign by word-of-mouth and through social media,” said Koay.

The month-long campaign, which started on June 1, saw DiGi pledging to donate a total of RM150,000 to 14 charity partners from three categories, namely nature, health and social causes.

“We chose nature as it is part of our green initiative, health because it is relevant to all of us and social causes as they don’t get a lot of attention and this was to get them more attention,” he said.

The charity partners which benefited from the campaign are SPCA Selangor, Malaysian Nature Society, Borneo Conservation Trust and Global Environment Centre under the nature category which received a collective sum of RM47,060.

The National Kidney Foundation (NKF), IJN Foundation, Hospis Malaysia, Majlis Kanser National (MAKNA) and Malaysian AIDS Foundation (MAF) under the health category received the largest sum totalling RM57,295.

Charity partners under the social category received a total of RM45,645 and include the National Council for the Blind Malaysia, Malaysian Council for Child Welfare, Women’s Aid Organisation (WAO), National Council of Senior Citizen Organisations and Persatuan Kebajikan HOPE worldwide Kuala Lumpur.

Individually, MAKNA received the most votes with donations of  RM19,980 followed by SPCA Selangor receiving RM19,235 and HOPE worldwide Kuala Lumpur receiving RM15,065.

“The simplicity of the campaign was appealing to supporters who couldn’t believe that DiGi would part with RM5 without asking for anything in return,” said WAO executive director Ivy Josiah.