In the wake of the American Red Cross’ successful “Haiti” text message campaign, more nonprofits are looking at text as a way to boost donations. But there are some caveats.
The Red Cross raised $32 million in a month in $10 donations for Haiti relief. MobileActive.org, which promotes mobile giving, said they have had an upturn in interest since the campaign began from other nonprofits wondering if it would work for them.
According to a study of six nonprofits called “2010 Nonprofit Text Messaging Benchmarks” by M+R Strategic Services and MobileActive.org, text messaging is good for “call-in alerts” but is limited b/c of the character limits. The biggest success noted by the study was the response rate of 4.7%, nearly six times the rate for similar emails.
However, before you jump on the text donation bandwagon consider these issues:
- Wireless carriers limit donations to $5 or $10 amounts. This is far less than the $71 average donation garnered from email requests, according to the study. You may get a higher response but you may also be leaving money on the table from donors who are willing to give more through another channel.
- Text donations could be fairly expensive for donors and recipients if each text message costs 20 cents or more to send. The study notes that about half of cell phone users have unlimited texting plans but the rest pay 20 cents or more per text. Factoring in the first request and response as well as confirmation of the donation, this could add 80 cents or more to the cost of donation for a $10 gift.
For more details on how mobile giving works, visit Mobileactive.org for a rundown.
Thank you for posting those important considerations. While the text-to-give system is fine for some situations, you’re right that there are real limits that generate a big opportunity cost in terms of lower average gift and the lack of personal information required to follow up and cultivate a more valuable donor relationship, not to mention the time lag to receive the funds.
That’s why a lot of organizations who want to acquire and engage donors in the mobile space are looking for an alternative to the sms text based system promoted by the cell phone carriers, and are seeking a mobile web engagement platform that makes great use of the smartphone web browser, such as the platform available at http://www.urmobile.com . In the ur mobile platform, organizations can build more meaningful relationships with donors, and donors can give hundreds or thousands of dollars via their credit/debit cards, as well as recurring gifts. This is not simply making an existing web site “fit” on an iPhone or Blackberry – rather, it is a hosted solution that helps organizations strategically design a unique mobile user experience based on tested and proven best practices. (Besides, most online donation carts cannot be easily transferred to the smartphone environment, but http://www.urmobile.com has built that solution into their platform.) The organization’s team can update their mobile web presence based on changing news, needs and priorities, and once updated, it is served to the various smartphone browsers to create the best user experience. Beside generating larger gifts and deeper relationships, the hosted solution allows for smartphone-ready email delivery, as well as volunteer registration, etc.