Mobile Giving: 3 Ways to Utilize It for Your Nonprofit

With 57% of nonprofit website traffic coming from mobile devices and 1 in 4 donors using their phones to discover nonprofits, it’s impossible not to incorporate mobile giving into your fundraising strategy. After all, mobile fundraising is the way of the future for nonprofits, and innovation is a key nonprofit skill that can set your organization apart from its competitors.

Meeting your supporters where they are—often on their phones—can also strengthen your donor engagement strategy. When you make it easy for donors to interact with and support your organization, you can keep them continually invested in your mission. Let’s explore the top three mobile donation methods that your nonprofit can implement today.

1. Text-to-Give Fundraisers

Because 97% of Americans own cell phones, a fundraiser that utilizes the convenience of supporters’ mobile devices can be very effective. With text-to-give, donors can donate from anywhere by texting a keyword to your nonprofit’s unique shortcode number. Such a simple fundraiser is both easy to host and participate in.

Snowball’s text-to-give guide recommends the following best practices for launching this type of fundraiser:

1. Focus on clear campaign messaging. Be specific about your goals and highlight why your cause is worth supporting. 
2. Feature it on marketing tools. Include your nonprofit’s shortcode number and keyword in all of your communications.
3. Input collected donor data into your CRM. Input donors’ names, phone numbers, email addresses, and billing addresses into your existing database.
4. Track and analyze your data. Measure text-giving frequency and average text donation size to help inform your future donation appeals.
5. Host it with an event. Launch a text-to-give campaign concurrently with another fundraising event to maximize revenue.
6. Try a peer-to-peer campaign. Encourage volunteers to promote your shortcode and keyword on personal fundraising pages.
7. Assign someone to be in charge of new donor data. Assign a staff member to take charge of the incoming data to keep it organized and make it easy to utilize in future campaigns.
8. Host a pledge campaign. Allow donors to pledge their support by texting their gift.
9. Incorporate matching gifts. Your text-to-give campaign is the perfect opportunity to contact donors about matching gifts because their text donation might be eligible for a match through their employer.
10. Make text-to-give part of your Giving Tuesday efforts. Enable donors to participate in Giving Tuesday via text. 

With the right amount of marketing and instructions to help your supporters submit mobile donations, a text-messaging-based campaign can be a great success. Consider creating social media graphics or sending out an email newsletter that illustrates how text-to-give works. Also, be transparent about the purpose of the fundraiser, debunking any myths about your nonprofit’s spending.

2. Mobile Bidding at Auctions

Mobile bidding can make any auction more efficient, whether you’re hosting an in-person, hybrid, or virtual format. With the right nonprofit auction software, you’ll be able to create a digital catalog for supporters to view during and before the auction. When they’re ready to bid, they’ll be able to do it right from their phones.

To simplify mobile bidding for your attendees, consider the following tips:

• Include instructions in your marketing materials. Promote mobile bidding ahead of the event, posting brief instructions on your social media channels, email newsletters, and other marketing materials.
• Train staff members and volunteers. Educate your staff and volunteers on mobile bidding through workshops and training sessions. Offer walkthroughs of the specific mobile bidding platform your nonprofit uses.
• Remind attendees during the event. Hang engaging flyers with brief mobile bidding instructions at the event venue. If there is a screen at your event, display a slide with this information.

Prepare your auction volunteers to answer questions about mobile bidding during the event. Auction software offers numerous capabilities, including checking out from their phones after winning. This streamlines the payment and delivery process for auction items but may require extra instruction for your less tech-savvy guests. 

3. Mobile-Friendly Donation Pages

As a nonprofit professional, you know the importance of converting donation page visitors into committed donors. Because many of your prospective and existing donors likely open or interact with your marketing materials on their mobile devices, your donation page should always be mobile-friendly, even if you’re not currently utilizing text messaging for your fundraising.

Incorporate the following donation page best practices from Bloomerang:

• Reduce the page’s load speed.
• Eliminate distractions on the page, such as pop-ups.
• Specify the tangible impact of gifts.
• Ensure form fields are easy to click on.
• Make your submit button stand out.

While your donation page needs to function properly on mobile devices during a mobile giving campaign, it’s also important that your website as a whole prioritizes accessibility. Follow the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) to make your site as widely accessible as possible.

Mobile giving can be your ticket to increased engagement when done correctly. Take the time to not just implement mobile giving but to familiarize yourself with best practices and educate your supporters on the safety and convenience of mobile donations. By effectively marketing mobile giving, your fundraising efforts will reach and appeal to a larger audience than ever before.

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