The Evolution of Multichannel Fundraising

Now it’s time to tell friends, so the participant sends out an e-mail with a link to his or her online fundraising page, which can also be posted on Facebook. His or her friend receives the e-mail on her smartphone while riding home on the bus; she opens the link and then visits the mobile Web version of the fundraising page. She clicks the donate button and sponsors using PayPal mobile express checkout. It takes just a few clicks and less than a minute to make the donation.

After the donation, the friend shares the fact that she donated on Twitter right from the donation confirmation page. Another friend sees the tweet, and the cycle continues.

On the receiving end, the participant opens his fundraising app on his iPhone at a restaurant that evening to check his fundraising total and post the total on Facebook right from within the mobile fundraising app. A friend working at home on his laptop sees the post and clicks through to the online fundraising page to make a donation.

In this scenario, the use of mobile devices, social media, single sign-on, Web pages, mobile apps, e-mail, laptops and mobile Web all work in harmony rather than as individual devices or channels. The activities (of registering, fundraising and donating) are central, and the channels (devices and methods) used move to the background.

Phase 3 is driven by how people use technology in the post-PC era. The question becomes how to enable this sort of scenario at your organization. A great start is to ensure that you are putting the building blocks for phase 3 multichannel fundraising in place:

• mobile Web-optimized Web and donation pages
• enabling single sign-on for areas of your site, event registrations, etc.
• Social-media sharing (with Facebook Connect, Like, Google +1, AddThis, etc.)

These building blocks aren’t gated by significant investment, but there is a learning curve that starts with asking the right questions about how to integrate these building blocks as you meet with your vendors, webmaster or internal IT staff. As you get these phase 3 building blocks in place, human behavior will take care of the rest.