Polar bears and children unlikely recipients of #nomakeupselfie donations

Thousands of people attempting to donate to the global “No make-up selfie” cancer campaign have inadvertently either given their money to a children’s charity — or tried to adopt a polar bear.

In Britain, after participants post a make-up free picture of themselves online, they send the word “beat” to a text-number to make their donation to Cancer Research UK.

However, thanks to thousands of people instead typing the word “donate”, their pledge has gone to children’s charity Unicef.

As of yesterday afternoon, over £19,000 (€23,000) had accidentally been sent to the wrong charity. Unicef said it was in the process of trying to ensure that all monies intended for Cancer Research UK reached its rightful destination.

Meanwhile the curse of auto-correct meant that rather than sending the word “beat” from their smartphones, some people sent the word “bear” which indicated to the World Wildlife Foundation that they were interested in adopting a polar bear.

Often the texters only realised the error when they received a message back from WWF which read: “Thank you for choosing an adorable polar bear. We will call you today to set up your adoption.”

Kerry Blackstock, WWF’s director of fundraising told the BBC: “Any texts sent to us instead of Cancer Research [UK] would not result in any donations going to help protect polar bears as WWF relies on human operators calling people back to confirm adoptions, so no money would have changed hands.”

Meanwhile, it has emerged that the campaign here has so far raised €1m for the Irish Cancer Society.

Mark Mellett, head of fundraising, said that the charity is “heartened” by the response. It is estimated that 8% (one in 15) of the Irish adult population have donated from their mobiles.