The Rise of Mobile in Charity Communications

This post was written by Ben Matthews for the CharityComms askCHARITY blog, a blog with posts about charity communications from a host of experts. You can read the original post here.

Although I’m usually wary of making predictions about the year ahead, I’m fairly confident that 2010 will be the year of the mobile for charities.

Barriers to adoption are crumbling and with a growing number of successful case studies and the removal of VAT on donations by mobile, now is the time more than ever for charities to take a closer look at how mobile fits into their communications activity.

Donations via mobile got given a big boost earlier this year when O2 announced that charities of all sizes will now be able to receive an estimated extra 10p in the pound for text donations of up to £10 made via dedicated 70 prefix short codes. This means that 90p out of every £1 is going to the charity through mobile donations and it should be expected that in 2010 all operators should fall in to line and Inland Revenue will be forced to treat everyone equally, with no VAT taken from charities through mobile donations.

That’s fantastic progress, as just 1 year ago out of every £1.50 donation only 95p went to charity. For more background information on the rise of mobile giving, take a look at nfpSynergy’s report, ‘Sending Out an SMS’.

Mobile donations uptake may still be slow among charities without strong case studies to point to. Text donations are currently encouraged by strong national campaigns, such the Tsunami Relief campaign that saw over 1 million text donations were sent within days. Similar take up has been seen with the Bhurma Relief and Children in Need campaigns, but perhaps the biggest case study so far is March’s Comic Relief campaign, which saw 7.8 million raised through text donation.

Success may be due to anonymity. Supporter can give small amounts without being seen to be giving “too little”. Giving via mobile is also a simple process – text messaging is easy and second nature for most participants.

Because of this anonymity and ease of giving, marathons are set to become a fantastic opportunity for mobile donations. Charity’s communications teams should be encouraging runners to print short codes on their t-shirts and fundraising materials, creating a moment of spontaneity and opportunism when potential donors spot a runner whose cause they can donate quickly and easily too through mobile donations.

Communications teams in charities also need to think about where they are looking to use mobile – is to recruit volunteers, ask for donations, spread thank you messages, drive awareness, or send traffic to mobile sites? Mobile communications are also good for charity’s internal communications, an efficient way of updating team members on a regular basis.

There is a real opportunity to create a healthy mobile communications ecosystem for charities, with charities making money through mobile donations and with communicating easily and efficiently supporters. I’m looking forward to seeing whether my predictions come true and to see whether 2010 is the year of the mobile for charities.