Mobile Giving Insider

Mobile Giving 101: The Life Cycle of a Mobile Donation

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 him or her to confirm the donation by replying ‘Y’

After steps 1 & 2, a donation is officially created and in a Pending state (this state is also known as “Message Sent” because the confirmation request message has been sent the user).

3. Once the user gets the confirmation request, one of three things may happen:

• The user replies ‘Y’ and the transaction’s state is changed to Accepted (Hooray!)
• The user replies ‘No’ (or anything but ‘Y’ or ‘YES’) and the transaction is changed to Declined (Boo!)
• The user does nothing

4. Finally, the telecom carrier must confirm that the user’s account is in good standing.  For example, if a user doesn’t pay their phone bill, the carrier has the right to reject the donation.  This could happen days or even weeks after the original donation was made.  Rejected donations are generally rare, but they certainly do happen, and cause the transaction to end up in a Rejected state (also known as “Billing Declined”)

In the case when a user does not text to confirm (or disconfirm) a donation, it remains in a Pending state.  Note that for the purpose of reporting, some service providers will consider a donation Declined after a certain time period has elapsed.  That designation is up to the individual service provider.

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 covered, please drop us an email!

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 mobile donation appeal are displayed on all screens, and promoted throughout the venue with banners, flyers, and t-shirts. Keep a Child Alive continues to raise thousands of dollars at a majority of stops on the 33 city tour, with about a 6-12% response rate for venues of 15,000-20,000.

You can also download a copy of the whitepaper as a PDF.

Live Events have traditionally been great for nonprofits that can partner with artists. The response rates reported by mGive are respectable and by the looks of the whitepaper it looks like the team at Keep a Child Alive has it together, in particular, they are:

• Focusing on a specific call to action
• Having the main artist drive the call to action
• Supporting the call to action with large screens
• Supporting the call to action with readily available ancillary material