Salvation Army’s New Digital System: Your Phone Can Use This Graphic to Donate $5, $10, $25
ZANESVILLE, Ohio — The Salvation Army is announcing a modernized donation system as Christmas approaches.
Bell ringers are still out at twelve locations across the Zanesville area. But many people are using debit & credit cards to pay for gifts for Christmas and other holidays. The Salvation Army says if you don’t have any cash on you when you meet a bell ringer, you can still donate. The bell ringer’s sign has a code on it which will activate your phone’s internal app, take you to a site and allow you to make a digital donation.
“It’s right on every one of our signs out there. If you don’t have cash on you and you want to pay, if you know how to do all of that. Yeah, someone showed me, basically if you just put your phone on camera, you hold it up to the sign, there’s a little symbol there, it clicks on it, it brings up our site and you can just type in your donation,” says George Bates, Envoy, at The Salvation Army’s Zanesville headquarters on Putnam Ave.
The digital donation system doesn’t replace cold, hard cash. They’re still accepting change and dollar bills. The announcement of the digital system comes as the nonprofit is lagging behind for the year.
“We’re like 30% behind our goal this year and we don’t want to cut programs. We will struggle all year long, and hopefully, I don’t want to be doing Christmas bells in July,” Bates adds.
