The
Direct Marketing Association hosted the
2010 Nonprofit Mobile Day Thursday, Aug. 26, in New York City, and
I participated on a panel session titled “
Why SMS is the Killer App for Charities,” along with
Shira Simmonds, president of
Ping Mobile;
Tim Miller, president of
Sumotext;
Christian Zimmern, vice president of the
Mobile Giving Foundation; and moderator Dan Butcher, staff reporter for
Mobile Marketer and
Mobile Commerce Daily. Here are some of the key points from the discussion.
Mobile presents a huge opportunity for nonprofits to expand their fundraising and outreach efforts. Many nonprofits have already run successful fundraising campaigns; the biggest example to date is the mobile campaigns during the
Haiti earthquake, where the
American Red Cross alone
raised more than $30 million using a common
short code.
Common short codes are an effective way to elicit donations, and organizations such as
mGive and Mobile Giving Foundation have been approved by carriers to do common short codes for $5 or $10 donations that can be billed directly to subscribers’ phone bills. This method provides a great way to collect donations quickly and easily. These programs run on shared short codes so they are already provisioned by the carriers. But charities can only run donation programs on these shared short codes and only in donation amounts of $5 to $10, and there are limits on how many times someone can donate using one of those shared short-code programs. Also, these codes may be shared by multiple charities at once, and nonprofits cannot develop brand equity with these codes.
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