Everyone has a smartphone these days. With everything being at the fingertip, businesses are moving towards a “mobile first” approach. Nonprofits can also tap in the advantages that smartphones have to offer and it will turn out to be a very useful and a handy resource for your fundraising campaigns. Here are 4 ways by which you can make the best use out of these devices.
- Text-to-Give
Who is not aware of text messages? Your donors are already acquainted with this feature of their phone. Start using this simple feature of your phone that has the potential to raise a huge amount of funds for your fundraising campaigns. With Givecentral texting feature, Text-to-Message campaigns have been made simpler.
So, how do you start a Text-to-Message campaign? Start circulating out your fundraising phone number to potential donors. The donor will then send a text on the number pointing out their interest in donating. The donation is carried out via a phone carrier which reflects in the donor’s phone bill. Once the donor pays the bills, the donation amount is conveyed to the nonprofit. This will take a couple of weeks time and the amount a donor can donate is limited to 10$. This may sound to be a major downside of Text-to-Message method, but let me bring to the notice the 2010 international Text-to-Give campaign undertaken by American Red Cross to support Haiti after the 2010 earthquake. The Red Cross, with this campaign, raised $43 million in funds. Also, this feature serves a great advantage at the donor’s end. The donor, since donating directly through the message, does not have to open the mobile browser or even the app.
- Mobile Email Campaigns
Once, emails were not something that people used to check frequently. Now, emails are just a touch away and people get notified when they receive a new email.
For sending emails, you are required to collect email ids of your supporters and maintain an email database. At Givecentral, we help you collect email information of your donors and also help you customize emails with our Email Manager feature.
When should you send emails and how will it prove to be beneficial?
For new donors – Send out emails when a new donor get registered. This can be a welcome email but you can simply go a step ahead and attach causes for which they can donate. This can probably nudge the donor to give if they haven’t yet.
For new fundraising causes – Send out emails when you launch a new fundraising cause to all your existing donors and to your potential donors.
For reminders – Send reminders through emails which may be for an ongoing cause or for donor’s whose cards are about to expire.
Let the email be for any of the purposes, but definitely add a Call to Action button so that your donors can give by simply clicking on the button.
- Mobile Giving Apps
This is a well-known fact that people tend to use mobile apps rather than the websites. Typing in the website’s name or the URL is outdated and people find it too cumbersome. The answer to this is a Mobile Giving App. Develop a mobile app with your name and logo on it and customize it as per your nonprofit’s requirement.
But an app just for the purpose of donating will be long lost in the list of apps present in your donor’s phone as in the long run, they will tend to use it lesser and lesser. Integrate your app with a purpose that may be useful for your supporters and probably which they might use once in a week or so. Apps will enable your nonprofits to send out notifications to your supporters.
- Mobile-Responsive website
An app is definitely handy than a website but an app can have limited information at times. There can be various reasons for which your supporters may visit your website and high chances are that they do so via mobile. This makes it mandatory that you have a mobile responsive website. Mobile-Responsive website means optimizing the website in such a way that the user gets an easy reading and seamless navigation experience.
So don’t wait and unleash the potential of the phone for your fundraising.
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