More on Mobile

A study presented at the [Direct Marketing Association] Nonprofit Federation conference in Washington, D.C., earlier this year revealed that less than 5 percent of text-to-give donors shared their e-mail address when asked to, thereby severely limiting a nonprofit's ability to develop a significant relationship with the donors.

TA: One of the strengths of the mobile donation channel is the ability to prompt contributions from new donors. In general, it is a younger audience that uses mobile phones for activities beyond conversation. Many of these individuals might not have donated at all if there was not an easy way to do it via mobile. In fact, many of these younger people probably never donated to anything before for any reason. And once the younger, newer donors give, charities can use the mobile donation platform to ask for permission to contact them in the future — a powerful way to build a community and a new generation of donors. The next wave of smartphones will make it easy for charities to collect vital donor data during the initial giving process.

In the current economic climate, many assumptions we might have made about the contributions of wealthy donors or about the amount of large donations are changing. We received calls from people who said they were not working, but even though their belts were tighter, they could afford to donate $10. So we think mobile donations probably made up some of the gap caused by our economic situation.

For donors who normally give larger amounts to causes they support, smaller mobile donations augment traditional giving. Text donations can be made anytime and anyplace, and it is likely that some of the text donations dedicated to Haiti were given by traditional large donors who were prompted by public pleas and acted immediately based on the circumstances surrounding that specific call to action. People who recognize how much a larger donation could help did not substitute a $10 donation for a $100 or $1,000 donation. They did both. Individuals that have the financial means to give large gifts and have done so in the past are fully aware of how to send a check or go online.