Tag Archives: disaster fundraising

Can your organization take advantage of mobile “impulse philanthropy”? – and what it may do to your donors

Posted on by Nick Allen

Nearly all our clients are trying to figure out how to use mobile phones for fundraising and cultivation.

Ever since the Red Cross raised $31 million from $10 text-to-give messages to help the suffering in Haiti, nonprofits have been lusting after what Jim Manis, president of the Mobile Giving Foundation, calls “impulse philanthropy.”  Others have been worrying that, as mobile devices surpass PCs and laptops in a few years as the main Internet access points for most people, will younger donors adopt this “impulse” giving in place of long-term loyalty to organizations.

First, the facts.  The Red Cross and Wyclef Jean’s Yele were the only big winners in mobile giving around Haiti, with the Red Cross getting nearly all of it.  Among the hundreds of other organizations responding to the earthquake, a dozen or so each raised a few hundred –  nothing to sneeze at, but a fraction of what they raised from emails and their Web sites.  And when people give via text messaging, the organizations don’t get their contact information, apart from one text message asking them to opt in to ongoing communications.   Nine of 15% of donors opt in to ongoing messaging, said Jim Manis of the Mobile Giving Foundation, which works with the mobile carriers to manage donations.

Apart from Haiti, there have been a handful of other successful efforts over the last few years, such as Alicia Keyes’ text-to-give appeals at her concerts to benefit her charity fighting AIDS in Africa charity.

In any case, very few groups have made mobile work – yet.  Of course, you don’t want to use email or your Web site to ask supporters to give via mobile when they could give much larger gifts online, with full contact info.  Mobile might be good to get impulse gifts from people you couldn’t reach any other way, or who won’t give any other way.  If you could be on dozens or thousands of billboards with your mobile number, that might get new gifts.  If your quarterback could ask for mobile donations from the 70,000 folks in the stands – and many more watching on TV – that could work (though groups who have done this have generally been disappointed in the results).  If you’re an aid group and there’s another Haiti, you want to have your mobile giving program ready, especially if you can convince Michelle Obama or Sarah Palin to promote it with PSAs.

At a recent conference on mobile giving, Tim Sawer of World Vision, shared some of the wisdom he’s garnered as head of new products and new channels for the giant development organization, which is also a master of marketing.  Allow the donor to give via their channel(s) of choice, he stresses.   World Vision has gathered mobile numbers in churches and by asking for them from the stage at events, then followed up with a fundraising appeal.   The mobile donor demographic sweet spot is 18-35 but then World Vision sees a pretty even spread among other donors under 70.  These donors are giving to the cause more than to the organization, so specific asks — $10 for a malaria bed net or $10 for a water project – work best.

The ongoing challenge, Sawer explains, is to move the donor toward loyalty to the organization – from impulse to a relationship, from giving to a cause or event to giving to the organization.  The other challenge is to make the back-end work – to see if you can ID the donor in your database when all you may have is her mobile number – and to manage the donor across channels.  Asking for mobile numbers in all donor communications across channels is going to be essential, Sawer says.

Nick Allen is co-founder and chief strategy officer of Donordigital, the online fundraising, marketing, and advertising company.  Contact: nick@donordigital.com or phone (510) 473-0366.

Did you text WILDLIFE to 20222 to donate for Gulf Oil Spill?

Posted on by Nick Allen

Did you text WILDLIFE to 20222 to donate $10 to National Wildlife Federation’s Gulf Oil Spill Restoration Fund?

I didn’t think so.

While text-to-give mobile giving raised about $37 million for Haiti – almost all for the American Red Cross – it’s not generally ready for prime time … yet.

In the meantime, the most practical use for mobile by nonprofits is going to be for advocacy, organizing, and information sharing, especially with the demographics who are more likely to rely on their phones rather than their PCs.   Low-income Hispanic immigrants are a perfect audience for the pro-immigration campaign, Reform Immigration for America.

Says Online Director John Brian McCarthy:

“We have over 150,000 subscribers in our SMS network. I can’t give you an average response rate, because it varies so much by the ask and we send so much less frequently than email that it’s tough to normalize – an ask to call Members of Congress might generate 30,000 calls while an ask to call in and leave a voice mail about why reform matters to you might get just 1,000, and an ask to attend a local rally is nearly impossible to track.

“That said, we’ve generated more than 325,000 calls to decision-makers since we started the program last year…  Another SMS metric relates to a series of house parties we hosted last October – out of the 1,000 house parties the campaign sponsored, more than half were self-organized by individuals who signed up to host via SMS, with thousands more people texting in to find a house party near them (and that was when we were at just 80,000 subscribers!).”

In the next few years, most of us are going to be spending most of our online time on some kind of mobile device, whether it looks more like an iPhone or an iPad.  Mobile commerce tools from Google, Apple, PayPal, and/or Visa will make mobile buying and giving easy, reliable, and significant, at least for people under 40 or 50.  (Texting, with its 140-character limit will morph into something that looks more like email or Facebook updates by then.)

With a major disaster (Haiti), a major brand name (Red Cross), and major TV promotion, mobile can bring in the $37 million (around 4 million gifts at a fixed $5 or $10 apiece).  Apart from the Red Cross, most organizations raised a few tens of thousands of dollars from mobile – and they didn’t get donors’ contact info to thank them and resolicit them; even getting opt-in to continue communicating is difficult with the current mobile fundraising program, governed by AT&T, Verizon, and the other carriers.

Meanwhile, the average Web site gift for Haiti for the organizations that also did mobile was well over $100 or $150, and they got donor information and email addresses to continue the conversation. So if an organization gets a mobile gift from a person who has given, or would give, a Web gift, it’s a major loss.   What’s more, giving via text or Facebook Causes could be a worrisome signal that some younger donors actually prefer to make a nearly anonymous one-off gift to avoid getting on a list for ongoing appeals, according to Chuck Longfield, founder of Target Analytics.

As with Facebook, another channel which isn’t effective (yet) for fundraising,  mobile is here to stay.  And organizations need to be where their supporters are, discussing sharing, educating, advocating … and cultivating.

Nick Allen is co-founder and chief strategy officer of Donordigital, the online fundraising, marketing, and advertising company.  Contact: nick@donordigital.com or phone (510) 473-0366.