Top Mobile Trend: Mobile Giving

Thanks Next Great Thing for this on Mobile giving. Who says gen Y are a bunch of self-obsessed, navel gazing shifters?

November 17th, 2008 by Allison

Gen Y is often called “socially-conscious,” but they’ve also been tagged with “impatient,” “distractible,” and—like most youth—a bit “poor”. After throwing virtual change at Obama for a year, though, young philanthropists seem to be in the swing of giving. The Democrats just made it so easy; they didn’t even have to leave Facebook! They also rallied young supporters at events to text in small donations. This method of giving works for youth because it’s very impulsive—like them—so the donor barrier is lowered significantly. Now we’ve noticed a handful of new charity platforms looking to quite literally “mobilize” this young civic-minded generation.

This new trend hinges on the work of the Mobile Giving Foundation, which effectively eliminated the “carrier barrier” to mobile charity. Previously, carriers would take a big chunk (HALF!) of every donation. Combined with a cap of $5 donation per text (with a max of 5 texts = $25), the model was completely unfeasible. Now MGF has positioned themselves as a clearinghouse, managing to get fees waived for select non-profits so 90% of the donation goes to the charity, while they take 10%. The only stickler is Verizon, which only approved about 20 non-profits on its network.

Several application service providers are working with MGF to help non-profits run and manage their campaigns across platforms, while other companies are reimagining donation models to work on mobile.

• mGive from Mobile Accord allows micro donations via text with carrier billing through MGF. Alicia Keyes used this text-to-donate platform during her As I Am concert tour, asking her fans to text the word ‘ALIVE’ to shortcode 90999 to donate $5. Her effort raised $40,000 in donations for Keep a Child Alive.

• MobileCommons helps non-profits, advocacy and political groups create, manage and report on SMS communication campaigns. Campaigns are already learning how to engage women through mobile technology. Using MC technology, the Women’s Campaign Forum obtained 150 nominations of pro-choice women who should run for elected office via text message for its She Should Run program in about five minutes (more on it here).

• CredoMobile is an MVNO that builds giving right into their revenue model. They started back in 1985 with a long distance service where 1% of your charges went to progressive nonprofits of your choice. As they put it “your bill serves as a progressive newsletter and your phone company as a progressive lobby.” Now they’ve switched to mobile and to date, the company and its members have donated more than $60 million to NPOs. The company raises money–and awareness–for voter registration. Last year they staged political street theater using projected cartoon images on the sides of buildings drawn by political satirist Tom Tomorrow. Passerby could text dialogue inside the thought bubbles of Bush and Cheney.