Mobile Giving Insider

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 really goes up for organizations that have the facility to make strong calls-to-action:

Organizations should craft a compelling call to action that requires a quick response or an urgent ask. Calls to action that are tied to disaster relief or breaking news might compel people to start texting and giving, as they did during recent natural disasters.  ”Organizations with the opportunity to have those calls to action are going to succeed much more than organizations that don’t in the universe of mobile donations,” said [Mobile Commons CEO ] Jed Alpert. 

In other words, just slapping a “Text GIVE to 12345” banner on your website isn’t going to cut it:

“Just like in the email world, if you recently acquired a list of email addresses from your old direct mail file and you sent those constituents a single email to give online, you aren’t going to see stellar results. The same ideas of relationship management also apply to mobile.” said Matt Wilson (Director of partnerships at Mobile Commons]

The article concludes by discussing the possibilities that open up once you start treating mobile as a true communication channel and not a standalone silo.  As you collect information about users, you can segment them by demographic, location, donor.

Organizations should try to segment messages by ZIP codes to remind donors about events in their community or state and can give donors more information about specific campaigns via email. “That way you can build a real record in your eCRM database as opposed to having just a list of mobiles,” said Tony Aiello (SVP at Mobile Accord).

Teleton MexAmerica Raises Largest One Day Amount to Date Using Mobile Giving

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 Fundacion Teleton MexAmerica, many of the mobile donors were first time donors.  That is an exciting statistic.  For an organization, mobile giving is a fantastic way to interact with first-time donors and cultivate a lasting relationship with them.  The real value lies in turning that $5 donation into a life-long supporter and donor!

Try it! Text TELETON to 90999

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 asking for donations.  The results were very exciting:

People who got the text message gave online with an increased response rate of 77%!

This is really encouraging news for non-profits and other organizations looking to integrate mobile into their outreach.  It has become very clear over the past couple years that mobile is not a standalone medium.  Rather, it is an incredible accompaniment to an organization’s entire communication strategy, and fundraising is no different.  

We’re very excited for more experiments and reports such as this one to emerge as the mobile field continues to heat up!

Download the full PDF of the Humane Society’s mobile fundraising experiment.

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 Mobile Giving Insider.  She provides an overview of the Mobile Giving Foundation, which should be very well known to readers of this site.  She the includes a handful of examples about successful campaigns from the past year.

The article continues to discuss alternative fundraising approaches using mobile.  For example, Mobile Commons uses text messaging to trigger phone calls allowing organizations to collect donations from a phone bank via credit card. Twitter is another example of how mobile has also been used to raise money for charity, such as the recent Twestival campaign that raised money for Charity: Water.

As Verclas concludes:

There is still much to be explored in this multi-channel universe and the organizations that are thinking creatively and innovatively about mobile giving but it is clear that this channel is going to take off as people get used to the idea and nonprofits become more clever in integrating mobiles into their strategies.  

I think she is spot-on with this point.  As such, we think it makes sense to really expand the scope of this blog to include all sorts of information about using mobile to raise money.  Up until now, we’ve really focused on just premium SMS.  You can expect our posts in the future to explore a wide array of mobile fundraising topics.  As always, feedback is very welcome!

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:

1. The MGF verifies that you are a qualified non-profit and eligible for mobile giving
2. The MGF submits the application to each telecom carrier, who then individually approve the campaign on each of their networks.

It is very important to plan ahead because the approval process can take 6-8 weeks or more.

Mobile Giving Foundation Approval
In the first phase, the Mobile Giving Foundation confirms the applicant is a legitimate 501(c)3 non-profit organization and makes sure everything is in good standing. There are 6 mandatory qualifications and 5 preferred qualifications for the application process. 

Some of the major requirements state that the organization

• must be a non-profit 501(c)3
• must show revenue of more than $500,000 
• must be registered as a soliciting charity in all states that solicitation will occur

The full list of guidelines is available as a PDF on the MGF site.  To request a copy of the application, you can email the Mobile Giving Foundation (support@mobilegiving.org) or work with your application provider who should have experience with this process.

This process takes approximately 4 weeks from the time the application is received.

Carrier Approval
After your organization is approved, the MGF submits your application to the mobile carriers.  In general, the carriers do not perform additional due diligence on the organization as they defer to the MGF for this. 

Each carrier has their own timeline for approvals, which can range from 2 weeks to 4 weeks or more.  Most carriers approve campaigns weekly but the two exceptions are Sprint and Verizon.  Sprint publishes schedule of particular dates that they approve campaigns and Verizon does not yet have a formal process in place.

Application providers have no control over the approval process or the timeline; all applications go through the exact same approval process.

Note that you can begin testing donations as soon as the first carrier approves your program.  It is possible to launch your program early, but note that users whose carriers are not yet approved will not be able to give.  For the best end-user experience and for the best results, it is highly recommended to wait until the entire approval process is complete.

Mobile Giving 101: Provisioning Short Codes For Mobile Giving

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 for alerts, for ringtones and other binary content, for mobile chat, etc.

In order to facilitate mobile donations, a short code must be provisioned specifically for that purpose.  A regular short code can not be used for mobile donations.  The approval process is currently done in conjunction with the Mobile Giving Foundation.

Because they are expensive, every organization does not need to get it’s own short code.  The most common use-case is for an organization to reserve a keyword on a shared short code.  For example, “SHARE” is a keyword on the shared short code 20222.  Vendors often own their own giving short codes and then let organizations share keywords on them.

As of this writing there are about 10 short codes approved for mobile giving:  20222, 25383, 27722, 40202, 41010, 464329, 861232, 864833 and 90999.

Interested in getting started on a shared giving short code?  Contact us or an approved service provider for more information!

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 closing thoughts.

He does a very nice job explaining the role of the MGF and exactly where they fit into the mobile giving ecosystem:

The operational layer facilitates the ability for nonprofits to interact with their donors through the mobile channel, regardless of what phone service donors use. The MGF provides the technical connectivity layer and the business agreements that transmit messages and billing events, and frames the standards and best practices by which money can be raised where a billing event occurs on the carrier bill. The Mobile Giving Foundation extends this operational layer to a broader ecosystem that includes application providers like you, the wireless carriers, and the nonprofit organizations. Fundamentally, it’s a way for nonprofits to reach their donors. Those donors are also customers of the wireless carriers.

And his closing thoughts are also worth repeating:

I’m very pleased that we can make available a whole new fundraising channel to nonprofits, and just as importantly, help provide a channel for a new, younger demographic to explore, learn and give to causes of interest to them. I’m particularly delighted that the wireless carriers see the value of supporting this effort, and doing so on a no cost basis. They have been generous in helping pioneer this new channel. Of course, we love the fact that companies like Mobile Commons and others have stepped up and leveraged their technology in the giving space. Our collective efforts will literally help change to face of giving today.

Read the full interview here.