Mobile Giving and Why People are Bad at Poker

"Your org doesn't have mobile giving!!?? How are you supposed to collect the thousands of dollars people could be texting you right now? All you need is a mobile donation short code, that's all the Red Cross did and look how well they're doing." -- Someone you probably know

Mobile giving around Haiti has had another externality that the Mobile Giving Foundation (MGF), the organization behind all text based giving, is now realizing. Everyone thinks getting a mobile text-2-donate short code will win them a huge pot of money (or medium pot). There are currently a little more than 400 approved charities through the MGF and -- in the three weeks following Haiti -- there were more than 800 requests from non-profits about mobile giving.

The numbers don't lie, mobile giving is hot. Traffic to MobileGiving.org is up, organic search for "Mobile Giving" is up, and inquiries to the foundation have sky rocketed.

Traffic to MobileGiving.org



Google Searches for "Mobile Giving"

Bad Poker

Experience is the best teacher, however not every experience teaches a wise lesson. Bad habits can be reinforced, like playing seven two off-suite in poker because you won a lot of money one time with the hand. Seven two off-suite is the worst hand in Texas Hold 'em poker and -- if played regularly -- the player is guaranteed to lose money over time.

Starting hand strategy says only put money on the table when you have the right cards in the right position. New poker players frequently jump into a game and go with their gut, which is largely based on past hands won through luck and quickly create bad, money- losing, habits. These players ignore the data about what hands should be played or not played and lose over time. (More on poker starting hands)

Similarly, orgs are jumping into the mobile-giving game with donation as their whole mobile strategy because they saw the Red Cross rake in tens of millions. I spoke with Christian Zimmern, Co-Founder and Vice President of MGF, and when asked if every org that has an existing mobile giving platform was seeing success he said "20% of our not-for-profits earn 80% of the revenue generated from text-2-give programs." This data follows a standard power law distribution, it is clear simply having a mobile-giving program will not ensure success.

A well thought-out strategy is critical. Christian went on to say that "the biggest opportunity for charities is to reach a different donor base and a younger generation of donor."

Tips for getting into mobile

1. Go with an ASP.
Approved Application Service Providers (ASPs) are the only ones that are officially sanctioned to provide mobile-giving solutions through the MGF. There are many companies that are beginning to sub sell MGF short codes for a discount. If a company or org isn't listed on this site mobilegiving.org, beware.

2. How are you like the weather?
I check the weather in my ZIP code regularly. DoSomething.org offers localized teen volunteer opportunities via text, so at any time users can request a volunteer opportunity in their area -- as though they were checking the weather by texting their ZIP code. What about your org can be as useful as the weather?

3. Try a conversation first.
Just asking for money will exhaust your list. Remember, a conversation is two-way and that your constituents can use mobile to respond with more than just dollars. Textmarks.com is free and will let you send and receive messages from your constituents. Once you have a list, you can then jump into the fee-laden world of mobile giving. You also can determine whether mobile is better for you as a communications platform or a donation vehicle.

Team Fox tried this strategy during the 2009 NYC Marathon and used Textmarks.com to update its runners during the day and receive instant reports about how the race went. The runner's responses were filtered and then fed to the @TeamFox twitter account. (See the conversation)

4. Collect mobile numbers!
Even if mobile giving is not for you, mobile communication is. Mobile messaging achieves a 90% open rate and it is one of the few less-spammed communication channels left. Use every website form, contest, and petition as an excuse to collect mobile numbers.

Take a page from Peta2.com. It has amassed more than 120,000 mobile numbers through sign ups and done basic messaging to keep its list warm. Guess what will happen when they push a full mobile strategy...

 

 

 

Follow George Weiner on Twitter: www.twitter.com/georgecaweiner

Comments

[brad at mobileaccord]

06:05 PM on 04/16/2010

George, I appreciate the article, but some of the facts are way off. Mobile Accord, and the mGive Foundation are responsibl­e for the Red Cross text "Haiti" to 90999, the MTV Hope for Haiti Concert (text "give" to 50555, and dozens of other campaigns that collected more than $40m during the days and weeks after the Earthquake in Haiti. There is a lot the Mobile Giving Foundation should take credit for, but the facts are the facts. My contact informatio­n is available by texting "brad" to 50555. We have several hundred NPOs that we are proud to be a service provider for. The founder's of Mobile Accord and the mGive foundation we there from the very beginning of the mobile donation channel.

While I don't tend to engage in "he said, she said" conversati­ons, out of respect for your work I wanted to reach out. Please feel free to reach me to discuss. Also check out www.mgive.­com

[dustylieb]

12:32 AM on 03/23/2010

Great points. I've always felt that texts should be used as part of a total social media strategy. The key, as you point out above, is to foster engagement through multiple mediums.

[ntully23]

11:31 AM on 03/19/2010

I dont think the problem that George describes is an inherent problem with mobile giving, rather I read this article as pointing out that many NFPs dont have the publicity, either for their cause or for their organizati­on, to make mobile giving worthwhile­. The reason, to my mind, that mobile giving was so successful for the groups that have had great success with it is that those groups and causes had tremendous publicity behind them.

So, although I surely agree that mobile giving caters to impulsiven­ess and laziness, I would submit that mobile giving falls short for many groups because they don't reach the impulsive and they certainly don't reach the lazy. Therefore, using mobile technology beyond the context of simply donating can do two things: first, it can help increase publicity for your cause without the pretense of asking someone for money (don't worry, you can do that later) and second, it will allow you to gain more from the web of dedicated followers that you already have. If someone is a volunteer on weekends, but they begin to receive text messages regarding opportunit­ies to volunteer on weds. nights, they will likely do that.

[George Weiner]

08:19 PM on 03/20/2010

You're right that this points to a larger communicat­ion's strategy for NFPs.

Reaching the impulsive and lazy is an interestin­g way to put it. Hopefully the lazy can be converted through conversati­on...

[Eric Seymour]

09:47 AM on 03/19/2010

Great article George! Have you looked into overcoming some of the limitation­s of TXT donating? There are some crazy fee issues here - non-profit­'s end up paying a transactio­n fee of 5-10% back to the vendor, plus 50% of the donation amount to the wireless carrier. It seems like a really inefficien­t way to support a good cause. My friend Kate Kablash wrote a great post on her blog about some of the limits here that I thought were pretty interestin­g:

http://www­.artez.com­/blog/chal­lenges-tex­t-based-gi­ving

[George Weiner]

08:21 PM on 03/20/2010

The costs are real and they do cut into fundraisin­g efforts. Another pitfall to consider is that a mobile donor may feel like they have done there part after a $5 donation where in the past had they gone online to donate for a disaster they would have donated $20... Hard to track but it is definitely a concern.

I am glad you stated these costs, they add to the piece.

[George Weiner]

08:36 PM on 03/20/2010

"50% of the donation amount back to the wireless carrier" This is not exactly true if you go through the MGF - they have arranged a rate with the carriers so that the rate is actually closer to 15%

[Network4Good]

04:06 PM on 03/18/2010

#nptech

[jsgaetano]

02:27 PM on 03/18/2010

"Mobile Giving" succeeds because it caters to two fundamenta­lly human drives- laziness combined with impulsiven­ess.

Plus... people hate writing checks.

[George Weiner]

08:27 PM on 03/20/2010

Laziness is not really a drive, though those elements are both in play. I would agree that
"Compassio­n is not a stable emotion" -Susan Sontag, having a low friction way to collect donations at the right time is a tremendous tool.

... people hate giving money.

[ntully23]

10:32 AM on 03/18/2010

Another great article by George. I think that the interestin­g thing here is how one event that everyone would admit is extraordin­ary, the earthquake in Haiti, can alert the general public to a something novel. More pointedly, I had never heard of mobile giving until the earthquake­, in fact, I didn't even know how it worked [a ten dollar charge on my phone bill confirmed my suspicions­.]

Anyway, it is clear that the success of the recent mobile giving campaigns has inspired copycats. However, I agree 100% with George's point, which I read to be that NFPs should learn lessons from the success of these technologi­cal methods, without mimicking them. The "checking the weather" example illustrate­s that. As with similar "power law distributi­on" situations­, the most is to be gained by recognizin­g that the majority of success emanates from the top few percentile­s. Learning lessons from these successes without copying them exactly is likely the best route to success.

[RAHoff]

05:48 PM on 03/17/2010

Great perspectiv­e! I especially liked the "less-spam­med" channel aspect of mobile messaging, and basically everything else you wrote. But, what if your organizati­on doesn't have the volume and frequency of new content like DoSomethin­g? Or an event run by Team Fox?

PS - I think I should never play poker with you!

[George Weiner]

08:32 PM on 03/20/2010

1. The simplest form of communicat­ion is the one to many newsletter approach - sending one message out to all of your subscriber­s.

2. Customized news is another method - where you can offer different alerts based on a user's opted in preference­.

3. Sending a simple fact related to your cause with a request to forward it can also prove effective as a simple strategy.

I think every org can figure out a unique piece of content to send that drives engagement­.
Good question.

[jonesrv]

12:23 PM on 03/17/2010

Very good advice from an excellent poker player

[georgecaweiner]

11:44 AM on 03/17/2010

I love that this article triggered Poker Google ads.