April 2010
1 post
How 'This American Life' Attracted Donors with... →
Nice article about This American Life’s mobile giving campaign, including an interview with production manager Seth Lind.
Try it! Text LIFE to 25383 to donate $5 to This American Life
January 2010
3 posts
Mobile Donations Pass $27 Million
According to the latest report from the Mobile Giving Foundation, text donations to Haiti have passed $27 million
Complete List of Organizations Collecting Mobile... →
Mobile Commons has the most up-to-date list of organizations who are collecting donations for Haiti using text messaging and how you can donate.
Mobile Fundraising Campaigns to Help Haiti
Update: Mobile Commons how has the most up-to-date list.
A bunch of great organizations have launched mobile fundraising campaigns today to provide disaster relief in Haiti. Here’s how you can help:
Text HAITI to 25383 to donate $5 to International Rescue Committee
Text HAITI to 30644 to pledge a donation to CARE
Text RELIEF to 30644 to get automatically connected to Catholic Relief...
December 2009
1 post
Listen to Ira Glass, host of This American Life,...
November 2009
1 post
Mobile charitable fundraising to reach $2M in 2009 →
There’s a nice interview with Jim Manis, President of the Mobile Giving Foundation, on Mobile Marketer.
With 2 months left to go in 2009, Manis expects to finish 2009 with over $2 million in funds raised using text message donations.
September 2009
3 posts
Mobile Giving Foundation launches in Canada today. →
MobileCause Acquires iPhone Mobile Giving... →
According to a recent press release, MobileCause has acquired Iugo.me, a technology company serving non-profits that deploys innovative mobile giving solutions for the iPhone. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.
9/11 Memorial & Museum Runs Mobile Giving... →
The National Sept. 11 Memorial & Museum, NASCAR, and the North South Motorsports team are running a mobile giving and text-to-screen campaign called “Text to Remember” to help raise funds and awareness.
“If your organization can convince a supporter to donate, the supporter can donate immediately,” said Michael Sabat of Mobile Commons “Mobile giving is easy and painless. With a...
August 2009
1 post
Ronald McDonald House Combines SMS & the Web for...
The Ronald McDonald House in Chicagoland and Northwest Indiana is using mobile donations to raise money to build the largest Ronald McDonald House in the world, according to Mobile Marketer.
The non-profit showed a video with a call-to-action asking people to text in. The response message contained a web link where users could go online to complete the donation. The text message itself...
June 2009
2 posts
Mobile Donations Via SMS Comes to the UK
WIN, a technology provider in the U.K. is going to start waiving SMS fees for charitable donations, according to Third Sector Daily. Currently up to 30% of SMS donations in the UK go to service providers. WIN is urging other technology providers to follow suit and drop their commissions too.
“This is a good day. My hand hurts from writing checks to charities we support...”
– Jim Manis, Founder and CEO of the Mobile Giving Foundation
May 2009
5 posts
Hilary Clinton Announces Mobile Giving Program
Secretary of State Hilary Clinton announced today at a press briefing that the US will give $110 million in humanitarian aid to Pakistan.
During her announcement, she unveiled a new mobile giving program being run by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. She urged citizens to text SWAT to 20222 to donate $5 to help provide food, water, and shelter for Pakistani citizens.
First American...
"Keep a Child Alive" Raised $450,000 During...
Keep a Child Alive has released stats from last night’s American Idol call to action. They raised a whopping $450,000 from over 90,000 donors! This was the first nationwide prime time mobile giving call to action and by far the largest SMS fundraising campaign to date.
Alicia Keys asks American Idol fans to text for... →
Alicia Keys appears on American Idol tonight and asked fans to text the word ALIVE to 90999 and donate $5 to Keep a Child Alive, the charity she co-founded. American Idol has a massive viewership, many of whom are experienced texters, so hopefully they got a strong response and raised a lot of money.
Try it! Text ALIVE to 90999
The List of Mobile Giving Providers Keeps Growing
It’s been a pretty exciting spring for mobile fundraising. In the past few months, the number of companies providing mobile giving functionality has doubled and the list of charities getting started with mobile donations over SMS just keeps growing!
For example, this week PollEverywhere announced a partnership that combines their text-2-screen and polling tools with MobileCause’s...
March 2009
7 posts
Mobile Giving Foundation on BlogTalkRadio
Christian Zimmern of the Mobile Giving Foundation and Suzy Twohig of Share our Strength are going to be interviewed today on BlogTalkRadio about mobile donations via premium SMS. Listen in today, March 30th at 4pmEDT.
Lessons and Tips for Fundraising with SMS
This is a nice blog post on the Connected Thinking Blog recounting a presentation by Mark Miller, Director, Philanthropic Marketing & Communications at Children’s National Medical Center and Jim Manis, Chairman of Mobile Giving Foundation.
They ran a program with the Washington Nationals baseball team to raise money for Washington Nationals Diabetes Care Complex.
The article describes...
Mobile Donations PSA Contest!
Keep a Child Alive and STA Travel are sponsoring a contest to create a public service announcement advertising their mobile giving program.
Students submit a 60 second PSA video urging people to “text ALIVE to 90999.” The winner gets a trip to Africa to work with Keep a Child Alive on the ground for one week in January 2010!
Full contest rules available here.
Mobile Donations in the NonProfit Times
The NonProfit Times is running an article about mobile donations. It discusses the recent success of Teleton (which we’ve covered before), but also spends a lot of time talking about how mobile giving is really part of a much larger mobile strategy, which in turn is part of a larger communication strategy for an organization.
The article also points out that the value of mobile donations...
Teleton MexAmerica Raises Largest One Day Amount...
Fundación Teletón MexAmerica used mobile giving in their annual telethon last year on December 3rd. This was the first time premium SMS donations were used in a telethon. Mobile Accord just released a press release revealing that the Teleton raised $76,160 in mobile donations — the largest amount ever given using SMS!
According to Adriana Rangel, the International Program Coordinator for...
The Effect of Text Messaging on Online Fundraising
The Humane Society of the United States and the Watershed Company recently published a fantastic study about the effectiveness of text messaging on online fundraising.
HSUS sent an end-of-year text message to two-thirds of their mobile subscriber list urging them to donate. The remaining third did not receive any mobile messages.
The next day, they sent out their year-end last chance email...
Mobile Fundraising Overview on MobileActive.org
Katrin Verclas posted an excellent and very in-depth article all about the current state of mobile giving on the Mobile Active blog. Anyone interested in mobile fundraising should absolutely read the entire post, as she explains things clearly and includes some great use-cases and examples.
The article first discusses premium SMS (e.g. text GIVE to a short code), which has been the focus of...
February 2009
1 post
Mobile Giving 101: The Application Process
After choosing an application provider, the first step to get started with mobile giving is to submit an application to the Mobile Giving Foundation. There are two stages to the approval process:
The MGF verifies that you are a qualified non-profit and eligible for mobile giving
The MGF submits the application to each telecom carrier, who then individually approve the campaign on each of their...
January 2009
26 posts
Mobile Giving 101: Provisioning Short Codes For...
A short code is a special 5 or 6 digit phone number, usually used by companies and organizations for interactive text messaging campaigns. They are designed to be shorter to read and easier to remember than regular phone numbers. In order to get a short code, you must apply through the CSCA and get approval for the specific program(s) you want to run. For example, a short code can be approved...
An Interview with Jim Manis of the MGF
A couple months ago, the Mobile Commons blog published an interview with Jim Manis, the Chairman and CEO of the Mobile Giving Foundation. The content is still very relevant, so we wanted to link to the original post.
In the interview, Jim discusses his background, the role of the Mobile Giving Foundation, some of the operational hurdles getting mobile giving off the ground, plus some optimistic...
Mobile Giving 101: The Life Cycle of a Mobile...
There are four states in the life cycle of a mobile donation: Pending, Accepted, Declined, or Rejected.
The typical message flow of a mobile donation is as follows:
1. A donation is initiated by a user, either by texting a keyword or filling out a web form, and a message is immediately sent to the Mobile Giving Foundation.
2. The MGF triggers a text message to the user’s phone asking...
Introducing Mobile Giving 101
As part of this blog, we are going to write an ongoing series of posts detailing all the ins and outs about how mobile donations work. We’re calling the series “Mobile Giving 101”. We’re planning to cover a wide range topics, ranging from technical implementation details to best practices for executing on strategy.
If there are any specific topics you’d like...
http://twitter.com/mobile_giving →
Mobile Giving Insider is up and running on Twitter too! We’ll be tweeting over there with interesting little links that don’t make the blog, so follow us if you want all the details. We’re also auto-tweeting when we publish new articles on the blog. Let us know if you find that helpful or too noisy.
Case Study: Mobile Giving at Live Events
The team over at mGive has just released a whitepaper based on their experience working with Alicia Keys and Keep a Child Alive. Some of the interesting bits:
During her concerts singer Alicia Keys stops halfway through her show, dims the house lights, and asks concertgoers to pull out their cell phone and donate $5 to Keep a Child Alive by texting ‘ALIVE’ to 90999. The instructions for the...
Send a Cell Phone Text Message to Combat Childhood... →
SF Gate has a story about the new giving campaign launched by Share Our Strength, an organization dedicated to ending childhood hunger.
The campaign is sponsored by AT&T and the Communications Workers of America. AT&T has agreed to match all donations up to $100,000.
Update: Beth Kanter & Chris Brogan also have nice writeups about the campaign. They each discuss mobile giving and...
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“1997=$300k in overall mobile donations. 2009 projected to be $5 million. NGOs...”
– @bigguyd on Twitter this morning.
Ed. note: I think he means $300,000 raised online in 1997 compared to $5 million mobile in 2009, but his last point reads loud and clear!
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Digital 2.0 Tools to Enhance & Expand Your Reach →
Joel Richman, Scott Beaudoin, Richard Greif and Laura Tomasetti presented this morning at the Digital Marketing Techniques for Non-Profits conference in Boston.
They discuss social media include Facebook, Twitter, mobile advocacy and mobile giving. Their slides are available on Slideshare.
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Beth's Blog: Will Your Nonprofit Embrace Free... →
While this post isn’t directly about Mobile Giving, it’s a very thorough and interesting analysis by Beth Kanter. She discusses her efforts to raise funds on behalf of an NGO using her personal social network. Other closely related technologies include Twitter with TipJoy and Facebook Causes.
It’s a must-read for anyone looking to use new technology tools and media to...
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More Organizations Embrace the Mobile Giving... →
Over on the mGive blog, they welcome three new non-profits who have just launched mobile giving programs: The Rotatary Foundation, Defenders of Wildlife, and the Fabricators and Manufacturers Association Foundation. Welcome, and good luck to all your programs!
Try it! text POLIO to 90999 to donate to the Rotary Foundation
Try it! text WOLF to 90999 to donate to the Defenders of Wildlife
Try...
“What if you could get a $5 donation and send a personalized thank you note? What...”
– Matt Wilson, on the Mobile Commons blog. His New Years resolution was to take mobile giving to the next level in 2009!
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WatchBig Cat Rescue recently launched a mobile giving program to raise funds to rescue a liger and 2 tigers! Their campaign was started with videos on You Tube showcasing the big cats and urging people to donate. The first 50 people to give get an animal print, unisex bracelet that says “I support Big Cat Rescue.”
Try it! Text LIGER to 20222 to donate $5 to Big Cat Rescue
Mobile Giving Case Study: Using Radio to Collect... →
The mGive blog has a nice case study about using radio as a call to action for mobile donations. KIIS FM, based in Los Angeles, hosted an on-air fundraiser with radio personality Ryan Seacrest to benefit the Children’s Hospital of Orange County. They were able to raise almost $9,000 via text message donations!
Try it! Text CHOC to 90999 to donate $5 to The Children’s Hospital of Orange...
AT&T No Longer Requires QPass for Mobile Donations
Up until very recently, AT&T required the use of the Amdocs/QPass system for mobile donations. If a user texted GIVE to a giving shortcode, the confirmation text would come back from a different number - a special AT&T number. This made for a pretty confusing user experience.
AT&T has recently changed their policy, allowing the confirmation request to come from the shortcode...
Mobile donations may grow tenfold from $500,000 in... →
From the article
Mobile donations are said to have crossed $500,000 in 2008, indicating the growing acceptance of a new channel for nonprofits to raise funds for causes.
This is obviously a really encouraging statistic for everyone. Let’s hope this number continues to grow as predicted in 2009!
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Resources
Application Service Providers
There are a number of application service providers currently working with the Mobile Giving Foundation to enable non-profits to manage their mobile giving campaigns.
Contact the individual vendors for more information about features and pricing.
Mobile Commons
Mobile Accord/mGive
Distributive Networks
Mobile Cause
Wireless Factory
As a non-profit, you...
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FAQ
What is mobile giving? In 2008, the US telecom carriers started processing charitable donations given via SMS text message. A user texts a keyword to a special number and $5 will be deducted from their phone bill and given to the non-profit. Who is eligible for mobile giving? Currently US non-profits with 501(c)3 status are eligible. What is the end-user experience? How does someone give with...
“What if you could get a $5 donation and send a personalized thank you note? What...”
– Mobile Commons Blog