Monday, January 19, 2009

Every Non-profit should have mobile Tools

excerpted from Mickey Alam Khan's post today

Average individual donations are falling to below the $10-level, especially when large nonprofits such as the American Red Cross suck up all the household charity budgets during hurricanes and large-scale calamities.

So it is critical for smaller nonprofits, and even the bigger charities such as the Red Cross or The Salvation Army, to raise donations by text to rapidly respond to emergencies.

The Red Cross, for example, has successfully worked with the wireless carriers to encourage $5 donations for its disaster relief fund. The organization raised more than $200,000 in its most recent September through December appeal.

Subscribers of participating wireless carriers can donate $5 up to five times per month by texting the keyword GIVE to 2HELP (24357).

Charges for these donations will appear on the subscriber’s mobile phone bill each month. They can also be debited from prepaid account balances for those mobile consumers without a contract.

Standard text messaging rates may apply to those texted donations.

Other charities can follow the Red Cross’ example. Publicize the short code on the direct mail, email and Web sites. Encourage donors to sign up with the mobile program. Strike a similar billing relationship as the Red Cross did with the carriers and also work with an SMS aggregator.

Building a mobile database not only will save smaller charities in these hard-pressed times, but will also result in repeat donations.

Mobile also cuts creative, printing and postage costs out of a charity’s operations. Thus, a larger percentage of the donations can go to the actual cause for which the funds are raised.

Thursday, January 15, 2009

40% of Non-Profits Say They are Worse Off than Last Year


MobileCause client, The Direct Marketing Association (DMA) wanted to find out how the tough economic times are impacting charitable giving and organizations in general, so they put together an informal survey of nonprofit organizations through their non-profit arm (www.nonprofitfederation.org). Below are the results of the survey which give a snapshot of the nonprofit fundraising industry as of October 2008.

How are your response rates now compared to the same period last year?
Worse [63.0%]
Same [24.1%]
Better [13.0%]

What are you seeing with regards to individual donations compared to the same period last year, please select one:
Smaller gifts, fewer individual donors [40.7%]
Larger gifts, fewer individual donors [33.3%]
Smaller gifts, more individual donors [13.9%]
Larger gifts, more individual donors [8.3%]
User Provided No Response [3.7%]

Are you planning to change your marketing strategy because of the economy?
Yes [65.7%]
No [31.5%]
No Response [2.8%]

Is your organization making any changes due to the economy such as (select all that apply):
No Response [31.5%]
Other - please comment below* [21.3%]
Hiring freeze [18.5%]
Reduction in marketing budget [13.0%]
Reduction in staff [8.3%]
Reduction in programming [6.5%]
Change in mission [0.9%]

Are you planning to use newer marketing techniques in the near future? (Web 2.0, blogs, social marketing, mobile marketing)
Yes [67.6%]
No [22.2%]
No Response [10.2%]

Overall, how is your organization doing financially now compared to last year?
About the same [40.7%]
Worse [38.9%]
Better [19.4%]
No Response [0.9%]

Mobile phone adoption is grow­ing in spite of the economy


There were more than 267 mil­lion mobile phone users in the US for the third quarter of 2008 − a 6% increase over the fourth quarter of 2007, which saw 251 million users, according to the Mobile Advertis­ing Report published by Limbo and GFK/NOP Research.

As a result, mobile broadband is transitioning into a mainstream service, according to a new report from international research firm Parks Associates.

Mobile Broadband: Beyond the Cell Phone predicts that the num­ber of US mobile broadband users will increase by more than 200% by 2013. The report also expects more than 60 million smartphones to be sold in 2013. read more

Saturday, January 3, 2009

Advertisers and Charities are "All Thumbs" in 2009


According to Nielsen Mobile, we know the typical U.S. mobile subscriber sends and receives more SMS text messages than telephone calls. Be honest. Do you know anyone (with a pulse) who doesn't have a mobile phone? They may not all be "textperts" but we all know the audience is huge and growing rapidly (roughly 500% increase in two years).

The big advertisers are paying attention: Coke engaged over 1 million mobile customers in Q3 of 2008 for the My Coke Rewards program.

Politicians are listening: Obama revealed his pick for running mate via SMS (text message) to millions of anxious mobile subscribers.

Hotels are getting heads in beds: Marriott reported more than $1.25 million in gross revenue in the first 100 days since the hotel chain introduced direct mobile Web bookings.

Restaurants are putting mobile where the mouth is: Papa Johns Pizza reported $1million in revenue from mobile phone pizza orders in just 6 months.

Charities, however, may be the biggest winners: According to 2009 forecasts, charities will benefit from micro giving. Donors who normally write checks or call in with a credit card can now text in a donation and leave their wallet and checkbooks alone. 2008 marked the first year a non-profit organization could receive a donation via text message without the carriers taking a cut. The result? Donations made via mobile phones this first year surpassed all donations made online in its first year (1997). Annual online donations have grown to a whopping $10 billion for 2007, but you can expect exponential increases for mobile giving as well.

According to Nic Covey, Chicago-based director of insights for Nielsen, “The text-message audience is there, it’s now up to marketers to create a reason that consumers would want to relate to them through such a personal and immediate medium."

In addition to the core financial needs facing non-profit organizations, Causes have struggled with the perception that they are simply advertisers trying to sell us something. The audience is there. The means to communicate are in place. Now it simply comes down to the Message.

This is what has us here at MobileCause so excited. It's the ability for causes to reach a large audience with a convenient, timely message and allow them to interact and give wherever they are.

What will that Message be? We'll keep you posted.

The audience is all ears.
...and all thumbs.

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Welcome!

Welcome to our blog. This blog will focus around what is going on in the mobile space, cause marketing, and to be honest whatever else we care to share :)

We at MobileCause have over 50 years combined experience working with non-profit organizations, ministries, and causes. We are not only a mobile service provider with decades of marketing, media and telecommunications experience, we have fundraising in our DNA.

Our three core areas are:
-Text2Screen
-Text2Give
-Text2Broadcast

We'd love to work with you to meet your mobile goals.
Cheers!
~The MobileCause Team
steve(at)mobilecause.com
george(at)mobilecause.com
doug(at)mobilecause.com
danny(at)mobilecause.com
jon(at)mobilecause.com
hendre(at)mobilecause.com