Have a cell phone and want to help Haiti? It’s easy — just Text HAITI to the short-code 90999 and $10 will go to Red Cross and be billed to your account. Within 30 hours of launching the campaign, the Red Cross had already raised over $3 million and set a record for donations via SMS. Is this the beginning of a revolution in electronic fundraising?
The advantages of raising money this way are obvious: people’s phones are usually close at hand, meaning that we can move immediately to convert sympathy into action. And unlike most other forms of electronic donations, texting to a short code doesn’t require a credit card or even a bank account (a bartender friend of mine has neither but was still able to send in his $10).
One significant caveat: in the case of the Haitian earthquake, cellular providers in the U.S. have forgone their usual cut of the take, which can siphon off up to half of a typical donation-via-text. Other nonprofits and political campaigns won’t have this advantage in the future, which is likely to limit the broad adoption of SMS fundraising unless and until the providers relent. Another limitation is that while $10 donations can add up fast when millions of people make them, they’re essentially one-off transactions — donors don’t end up on an organization’s long-term supporter hit-list. But it seems inevitable that as cell phones become more capable and people rely on them for more aspects of our communications lives, fundraisers will try to use them to tap our immediate enthusiasm for a candidate or cause.
BTW, here’s another illustration of the potential of technology to help people take action easily: a Call2Action video widget that combines compelling imagery and the opportunity to solicit donations from any page in which it’s embedded. In this case the “donate” button directs you to the Red Cross short code, but it could just as well have pointed to an online donation page. Plus, the widget is easy to share online. A cool idea, well executed — and I’m not just saying that because Call2Action is an occasional client.
– cpd
Thanks so much for including our widget in your post. The Red Cross text-to-give campaign has been a huge success and the waiving of fees is an important step towards making mobile giving more common place. It will be very interesting to watch as the landscape shifts and changes.
[…] in a sense — fundraising via SMS is still difficult, despite its success around the Haiti earthquake earlier this year, but a piece of techology called Square (developed by one of the founders of […]
[…] One particularly interesting use of cell phones for fundraising in the 2008 election cycle: the John Edwards campaign contacted list members via text, urged them to call a number and listen to a recorded message, then connected them to operators to take donations right away. The results were said to be good, though the campaign did not repeat the attempt that I know of. Otherwise, cell phone-based fundraising has primarily been used for disaster relief and similarly high-profile and immediate purposes. […]