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Can You Text "Donate?"
by Ashley High The Mobile Giving Foundation, a Bellevue, Washington organization, was established after the Hurricane Katrina and Asian tsunamis to assist people in making donations via their cell phones. Founder and CEO Jim Manis, believes that such a system will reach young donors and will allow people to immediately act on that impulse to help.
In order to donate, a person texts one word to a designated short code. For example, texting HOPE (American Cancer Society), RIGHTS (Amnesty International), NET (Malaria No More), or MEALS (Food Lifeline) to a certain number will allow a person to donate $5 -$10 dollars to these organizations. Then, the donation will appear on the donor’s monthly cell phone bill.
The Mobile Giving Foundation works as a clearinghouse as it helps nonprofits set up codes and settles bills between cell phone carriers and charities. Cell phone carriers have agreed to process the donations free of charge (although they do earn something from text messaging charges).
While mobile giving is fairly new, it has the potential to drastically grow, especially considering that there are 270 million cell phone users in the United States and more than 4 billion mobile users worldwide.
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