Hi Elliot, I'm with mGive.

Great blog post!

I can answer some of the above questions as we have worked with many nonprofits to promote out their mobile campaigns.


Mobile Donation campaigns should be looked at as a way to introduce a new audience to your organization, as well as open a new line of communication with your existing donor base. We find that the most effective way to utilize these micro-donations is through large scale events. Concerts are extremely effective, so is television and radio. As you stated in your blog post, Keep a Child Alive raised over $40,000 in mobile donations during Alicia Key’s most recent concert tour. This was the first ongoing promotion of a mobile donation campaign and we saw a significant ramp in usage as the concert series went on.

Now if you’re a smaller organization, local high school football games, rallies, or any sort of group event can be effective as well. We say it takes around 50 donations to recoup the cost of running a mobile donation campaign.


The most obvious audience for mobile donations are Millenials. Their mobile is on them at all times and is a direct connection to them wherever they are. However, its not all "young adults." For example, we are working with a senior services organization to promote out a mobile donation campaign. I think that mobile usage, specifically text messaging, is increasingly becoming the norm.

I did want to mention that the carriers are working to approve an expansion of mobile donations to include opt-in communication and monthly recurring donations. We should see these become available in the coming months.

I would love to hear any questions the tech soup community may have on mobile donations.

-Stephen
mGive

Yes, great blog post, Elliot. Appreciate the addition info from mGiving, too.

I am curious about some of the strategies to follow-up with new donors that respond to a mobile donation campaign. How have some of the orgs you worked with done that?

Thanks,

Hi Sasha,

Thanks for the question!

Currently, when a user donates they are not automatically opted-in to receive updates from the organization. The carriers are currently working on approving a new campaign type that ties donation with opt-in.

However, organizations can set up a standard rate campaign for alerts (free updates). These have to be run separately with a different keyword. One example is ASPCA. You can text 'CAT' or 'DOG' to 27722 to get free pet tips to you phone.

Another example is Amnesty International. They are currently running a campaign with updates regarding Troy Davis, who is facing the death penalty but may be innocent according to Amnesty. Text 'TROY' to 90999 for updates. You'll notice that the message asks you to forward to all your friends. This is truly viral and we have seen involvement increase exponentially in the past couple of days.

As soon as the carriers approve this new campaign type, alerts and donations will be tied together and the entire process will become more simple.

Let me know if you have any other questions!

Thanks-
Stephen Joos
mGive

Thanks, Stephen,

Elliot mentions in the blog how some tools

could make it possible to continue a discussion with 8000 donors, and eventually whittle them down to the few hundred donors in need of personal attention.

Do you have any suggestons on how this is being done?

Best wishes,

Thanks so much for dropping by, Stephen! Hopefully you'll stick around, as I'm sure others out there have questions for you too.

Just to alleviate any potential confusion, I had no idea whether mGive could support the sort of feedback loop I was describing, though it sounds from Stephen's note like mGive is definitely moving in that direction.

Cheers,
Elliot

This seems like a great community, I’ll definitely be sticking around.

The carriers are extremely protective of the mobile user’s privacy and security, which is a great thing. However, that means that expanding on the current One-Time $5 donation offering moves a bit slower. The one-time donation with opt-in (allowing donor communication) and monthly recurring donations should be approved by the carriers in the coming months.

I am very excited by what this technology can bring, and would love to answer any question on mobile donations or mobile marketing in general.

-Stephen
mGive

Just in case anyone goes looking for the blog post referenced above, it's been temporarily taken down due to a server hiccup. We'll republish it later this week.

Cheers,
Elliot

It's back now.

Robert Weiner linked here for discussion on his post- Cn U Raise $ Via Txt?  The post is here: http://blog.techsoup.org/node/692

I'm with mGive, a Mobile Giving service provider, and wanted to clarify a few items from the post.  We run the ASPCA campaign that Robert referred to in his post, and currently have over 100 nonprofit organizations using Mobile Giving right now.  First, the Mobile Giving foundation has adjusted their fee structure to allow 100% pass through.  I do not know if the new program has been released yet.

The Process of Text Solicitations outlined in the blog is specifically for converting standard rate subscription campaigns (the user experience from an ASPCA Cat or Dog mobile alert campaign) to mobile donors.  This is a rare campaign type, and there two main points of difference-

The nonprofit conducts a campaign asking potential donors to opt-in to receive texts. Note that no text solicitations can be sent to individuals who did not opt-in.
Mobile Donation calls to action do not ask users to opt-in to receive messages, they ask users to text in to donate at the $5 or $10 level. Robert is correct about opt-ins, it is against MMA guidelines to send a text message someone who has not opted-in.

Nonprofit staff sends text solicitations, usually for one-time gifts of $5 or $10, via the service provider’s website.
This is not necessarily true, the ASPCA has a donation tagline at the end of all of their advocacy alerts (Text GIVE to 27722), but not all nonprofits include this language in their messaging.

Under the My Take section, I want to clarify a few items:

• The traditional donation process is actually 2 text messages sent by the user- User Sends in a keyword to a mobile giving approved shortcode(GIVE to 27722), User receives message asking to confirm message, User sends 'Yes', User receives thank you message.
• Unfortunately the carriers require a set pricepoint per donation campaign, that means only $5 or $10, depending on what the nonprofit has signed up for (they can do both)
• Sending a reminder message if someone does not confirm the donation is against carrier guidelines.  I dont see this being changed anytime soon.
• We are working with Verizon to display mobile donations better, but you can get a detailed receipt online.  You can also download a full receipt of all your donations at http://www.mobilegiving.org/SMS_Donations/
• As of February, nonprofits have the ability to message back donors up to 4 times per month.  According to MGF standards, One message provides transparency as to how the donation is being used, and the other message is an direct response solicitation message.  The other 2 messages are completely customizable by the NPO, they can request name, email address, zip code, or any other information.

I think with  these additional messages and transparency guidelines, mobile giving will become a more personal experience that engages supporters and furthers the industry.  If you have any questions on Mobile Giving, you can find out more on our website http://www.mgive.com or shoot me an email sjoos at mgive. com

Hi Stephen, thanks a lot for coming back and replying to Robert's post. It's great to have your perspective here.

As of February, nonprofits have the ability to message back donors up to 4 times per month.

That's great! How new is that? I don't remember seeing that when I was researching your services for my blog post in September (I thought only one thank-you message was allowed), but I might have missed it.

As I've said again and again in the blog and forums--both about mobile technology and about online social networking--I think that the ROI of a one-day fundraiser is relatively small compared to the possibilities the technology offers for long-term relationship building. And although mobile networks are protective of their users' bandwidth and privacy (as they should be), I think that most donors will opt in for more communications if we don't take their attention for granted. In other words, they'll trust us to send them more messages if we promise to send them messages that don't waste their time or insult their intelligence.

This discussion Amy had with Clay Shirky gets me excited about the future of mobile technology in the nonprofit world. The ability to organize a subset of an organization's supporters around an issue happening right now is huge, and I think mobile phones will be a big part of it. Obama's iPhone app was just the beginning.

Cheers,
Elliot