How Important Is Mobile Giving?

There's been a lot of buzz around the nonprofit blogosphere about mobile giving. mGive in particular, who offers mobile giving services through an alliance with the nonprofit Mobile Giving Foundation, has received much attention from nonprofits looking for new ways to raise money quickly and easily. According to Mobile Giving Foundation CEO Jim Manis, he and others developed the technology as a part of Katrina and tsunami relief efforts, to great success.

The idea is exciting: ads for your nonprofit offer a way to make a quick five-to-ten-dollar donation without writing a check or picking up a credit card. If several thousand people decide to donate, then suddenly you have a very large revenue stream with tiny overheard costs. The donation is added to donors' phone bills at the end of the month, and the Mobile Giving Foundation cuts you a check.

Jeff at Donor Power Blog is dubious. "Raising $40,000 from 8000 people sounds pretty cool," Jeff says. "But it's unambitious. You should be able to net more than $1 million from that many donors." By bypassing human interaction with donors, mobile giving makes it easy to take them for granted. Who are these 8000 donors? Why did they give to your nonprofit, and not to someone else? Long-term relationships with just a few of those 8000 donors could be exponentially more beneficial to your organization's future than a one-time donation campaign.

I think that Jeff makes some very good points, but I also think that it's possible to launch a mobile fundraising campaign with an eye pointed toward deeper relationships with donors. An interesting new tool called Frontline SMS offers nonprofits the ability to send text messages to constituents quickly and easily. A tool like this 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.

As Barack Obama's infamous text message demonstrated, people are willing to give you their personal info if you treat them like key players in your mission. The next step is to let them be key players by nurturing long-term partnerships with them.

For more thoughts about developing small donations into long-term friendships, check out this interview with Craig Harris, founder and CEO of NOZA. Also, don't forget that GrantStation will be available for a very special discounted admin fee on September 24.

.........................................................

Discuss This in Our Forums

How do you see mobile giving most effectively fitting into a nonprofit's fundraising strategy? Is mobile giving more appropriate for some types of nonprofits or audiences than others? Share your thoughts with others in this Technology for Fundraising forum discussion.