Michael Stein: Internet Strategy for the Nonprofit Sector

Fundraising with a mobile phone

MobileActive's Katrin Verclas has written a great up-to-date overview of mobile fundraising around the world in an article published on February 23, 2009 on the MobileActive.org website:

"Mobile fundraising is taking off -- or so at least hope nonprofits hard hit by the economic downturn. Organizations are looking for a new channel for people to give on the spot, wherever they are, with their phones and a quick text message. There are a growing number of campaigns -- and lots of experimentation.  For example, some of the more interesting campaigns used mobiles to draw attention to their brand, or used mobiles as part of a one-time holiday campaign."

Read Katrin's full article on fundraising with a mobile phone

Integrating text messaging with fundraising = more dough

The mobile marketing agency Mobile Commons spent a lot of time at the end of 2008 working with one of its clients, the Humane Society of the United States, and their friends at the Watershed Company to come up with a nice mobile test for end of year fundraising. They wanted to give mobile subscribers an option to donate over the phone via an inbound call center after they received a text message promoting the call. It didn’t quite work out the way they planned; they received no donations over the phone. It did, however, produce a very interesting result: people who got the text message gave online with an increased response rate of 77%! They suppressed a third of their list to see if the text had any effect on online giving, and it turned out to have a huge impact. I share their excitement about all the different ways people are pushing mobile fundraising and hope that this integrated approach becomes another effective fundraising technique.

Download the PDF of the full case study

Websites should provide special mobile versions

Mobile phone users struggle mightily to use websites, even on high-end devices. To solve the problems, websites should provide special mobile versions, concludes usability expert Jakob Nielsen in an illuminating article, published on Feb 17, 2009.  His article describes his observations in recent usability tests, and he compares the experience to the Web in 1998.  His recommendation for best user performance is to design different websites for each mobile device class — the smaller the screen, the fewer features, and the more scaled back your design.

"For many sites, however, the only realistic option is to supplement the main site with a single mobile site, recognizing that it will serve plain cellphones poorly. This strategy often makes sense. After all, most low-end mobile users suffer such misery when they attempt to visit websites that they do so only for the most compelling tasks, and thus might not use your site anyway. So, if you have only one mobile site, target the medium-to-higher-end devices, as opposed to making a WAP-like site that everybody will hate."

Read Jakob Nielsen's article Mobile Web 2009 = Desktop Web 1998

Mobile Commons sponsoring a new blog called Mobile Giving Insider

Mobile Commons is sponsoring a new blog called Mobile Giving Insider.  The blog provides information about mobile giving, resources for nonprofits (e.g. vendors, technical documentation, etc), and a detailed FAQ.  Their goal is to have original reporting, highlights about new campaigns that non-profits are launching, and  case studies.  This week's blog post is about the mobile campaigns conducted by nonprofits during the Superbowl.

Visit and subscribe to Mobile Giving Insider

Mobile text message news and alerts from animal rights organizations

Mobile phone text messaging among nonprofits keep growing, witness the two efforts during last weekend's Superbowl.  In a meeting earlier this week with an animal legal rights organization in California we got to talking about what other animal rights organizations were doing with mobile text messaging.  I offered to dig up the signup pages to subscribe to text message alerts from Humane Society of the U.S. (HSUS) and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA).  HSUS makes it easy to find their signup page on their website, but it took me 30 minutes and four phone calls to track down the PETA signups.  It turns out that PETA's mobile texting signup page is limited to their MySpace page, how's that for niche marketing. Here's the 411:

• Get PETA Text Message Alerts
  Fill out the form fields on the right side within the space that says "Get Text Message Alerts" and click submit.
• Get PETA2 Text Message Alerts
  Fill out the same form fields on the right side of the page.
• Get HSUS Text Messages

First year of mobile giving out-performs first year of online giving

I had one of those "hmmmm" moments when I read the Dec 30 press release from mGive.com that stated that the first year of mobile giving out-performed the first year of online giving.  In 1997, online donations in the U.S. totaled about $300,000. That was the year that Nick Allen, Mal Warwick and I published our book with Strathmoor Press, Fundraising on the Internet: Recruiting and Renewing Donors Online, and made the bold prediction that online giving would revolutionize fundraising in the U.S.  2008 saw the launch of the mobile giving channel in the U.S. with a ten second United Way commercial during the Super Bowl in February.  mGive estimates that mobile giving in 2008 will total half a million dollars in $5 donations, representing more than 100,000 new donors.

Read the full mGive press release

Keep a Child Alive ties TV commercial to mobile giving

mGive is working with its partner Keep a Child Alive to promote its work via a television commercial on MTV during primetime.  But unlike any TV commercial you've ever seen, this one doesn't flash up an 800 number but relies on a mobile phone short code (and a website address at the end) to facilitate donations.  In fact, the text "Give $5 text ALIVE to 90999" stays on the screen for the entire 30 second that the commercial is running.  This is a very interesting test of mobile giving.  Will using TV advertising drive a larger volume of donations to make up for the low donation amount?  Can Keep a Child Alive convert some of these $5 gifts to larger gifts via email or mail solicitation?  I hope that mGive will keep us posted about the results.

Click to view the video above or see in on YouTube

Mobile Commons is busy launching mobile giving campaigns

I've been reporting recently on new mobile fundraising campaigns as announced by mobile vendor mGive, but they're not the only firm that is helping nonprofits deploy mobile communications and fundraising campaigns. The good folks at Mobile Commons are also busy launching mobile giving campaign with a focus on integrated data and reporting with existing fundraising tools tying giving into more participatory calls to action. Mobile Commons is working with ACLU, American Friends Service Committee, Amnesty International, Humane Society of the United States, CREDO Mobile, Human Rights Campaign, NARAL Pro-Choice America, NRDC and many more.

You can stay up-to-date with all their activities on the Mobile Commons blog

More mGive mobile campaign go live

As a follow-up to my blog post on October 10, mGive reports on its blog that they've launched nine new mobile donation campaigns. This means that mGive now has over 40 campaigns for nonprofits that are now live.  The organizations include Toys for Tots, Special Olympics, Girls for a Change, among others.  As before, the blog post  talks about each nonprofit's plans for promoting their mobile giving campaign in order to reach untapped audiences of potential donors.

Learn about these new mobile giving campaigns

New mobile giving campaigns go live

Katie Maxfield reports on the mGive blog that several of their clients have launched new mobile phone giving campaigns this Fall.  Mobile giving campaigns are now live for Susan G. Komen for the Cure, The Foundation for the Advancement of Women Now, Dystonia Medical Research Foundation, Call + Response, Safe Blood for Africa, and Parent Project Muscular Dystrophy Foundation. Katie's blog post includes all the short codes to make a mobile donation, so if you haven't tried mobile giving yet, now's your chance to be amazed and to imagine how this could work at your nonprofit agency.  The blog post also talks about each nonprofit's plans for promoting their mobile giving campaign in order to reach untapped audiences of potential donors. For example, Komen will be doing live promotion at a NASCAR event on October 11th, where attendants will be encouraged to mgive $5 by texting KOMEN to 90999.

Read about new mobile phone giving campaigns launched this Fall