Benefits of Mobile Giving When Sending or Donating Money

In today's modern world, mobile giving is gaining popularity. With the advent of numerous mobile phones, donating money has become more accessible and more convenient. This is where mobile giving enters the picture.

Unfortunately, many people have been talking about it without fully knowing what the term is all about. That said, we've prepared this essential guide to mobile giving.

From the definition to its key benefits, we'll explore everything about mobile giving. Let's get started.

Mobile Giving: An Overview

Because of technological innovations, mobile giving is starting to become a new way to give or donate. In essence, mobile giving refers to a fundraising technique that uses any of the different applications installed on a mobile device.

Whether it's a smartphone or tablet, it's a procedure where donors are given a chance to donate to a campaign using their mobile. Hence, any device that can access the Internet and install an app can send or donate money to a religious or non-profit organization. Similarly, mobile giving can also be a unique way to raise funds for political groups and causes. For instance, as part of a political SMS campaign, political parties can inform potential supporters about their work and explain where to find further information about a particular topic or issue.

Mobile Giving: Difference From Online Giving

In order to better understand the concept of mobile giving, let's differentiate it from online giving via an online fundraiser. Ideally, both terms are related since the user of the device needs to be online to perform a donation. To have an in-depth understanding, you can view mobile giving as the subcategory of online giving – that's because you can give money online through a mobile device.

Although the two terms are related, it's still important to know their distinction. In online giving, the payment process and the design of the fundraising page may be slightly different from that of a mobile device. For example, facets such as texting to give can only be effected through a phone's texting application, whereas QR codes can be scanned using an app installed on a mobile device.

On the other hand, mobile giving as a fundraising technique utilizes some basic terms. These may include:

1. Mobile-Friendly Design – It usually refers to an application or website's ability to react to the mobile device. For instance, the buttons should look more significant and easier to click. Lastly, content and other fonts should be organized.

2. PCI-Compliance – PCI stands for Payment Card Industry. It means that the mobile giving platform observes all the stringent requirements provided by the Payment Card Industry. Because of this, make sure the software provider is fully compliant.

3. Two-Factor Authentication – It refers to a method where the identity of the donor is verified. It's also a security measure that ensures that every mobile donor is a real person and is capable of sending or donating money.

4. Tokenization – It's a term associated with mobile payment security. Primarily, it's a process whereby highly sensitive information, especially credit card numbers, are converted into tokens. These tokens can't be translated by any person who isn't part of the actual payment process.

Mobile Giving: Four Essential Types

Knowing the various types of mobile giving is of utmost importance. They can provide convenience to several donors and an opportunity to improve the organization's fundraising campaign efforts.

If you're new to mobile giving, below are its four main categories that you should get familiar with from the get-go:

1. Mobile-Responsive Donation Pages

Donors are checking the donation pages on their mobile devices. Thus, organizations must integrate a mobile-responsive donation page into the fundraising campaign. Make sure the pages look good and functional on any devices. If you have badly-sized images, clumpy navigation, and small fonts, your donation pages will be less likely to attract supporters.

On the other hand, mobile-responsive donation pages are more functional because they have the ability to change the layout and enhance the button size and text size. With all these, it'll be much easier for anyone to navigate the donation page on their own mobile devices. For better fundraising and donating money, utilize the pages through emails, text messages, and social media pages.

2. Text-To-Give Campaigns

These days, texting is still considered the most frequently-used app on mobile phones. Since most donors are already sending text messages to communicate, using text-to-give campaigns can provide them a more convenient way of donating money.

For text-to-give campaign to work, non-profit and religious organizations should set a distinct text number to be disseminated to donors and supporters. When donors text a message to the number, they'll get a reply that includes a link to your donation page. Once they're there, the donor can complete the donation process.

With this text-to-give campaign, the organization can save the supporters time and effort of needing to open the browser and type the URL manually.

3. Mobile Giving Apps

Some people don't like using the Internet browser on their mobile devices. Instead, they prefer using apps to access products and services they use on a regular basis. Ideally, mobile giving apps can save time by removing the necessity to manually key in the URLs. It can also provide organizations an opportunity to send notifications to donors.

By creating customized giving apps, it'll be more convenient for you to share a link to install an app and attract donors to utilize it.

4. Mobile Email Campaigns

In addition to other types of mobile giving, organizations can also use mobile email campaigns for better fundraising. After all, more and more people utilize email both for personal and business purposes.

Because of this, mobile email can give donors a chance to send or donate via a tool they're accessing several times a day. Also, using mobile email campaigns can enable supporters to instantly take action with your email. Just add donation buttons to emails to make sure recipients will only use the button to complete a donation.

These are the four common types of mobile giving to keep in mind. Each of these types, for instance, can be freely used in different ways to come up with a great fundraising campaign. You can also have them integrated into some traditional methods to make the donation process easier, faster, and smoother.

Mobile Giving: Key Benefits To Consider

Now that you know the fundamentals of mobile giving, it's time to tackle the critical benefits of this fundraising technique.

Typically, the concept of mobile giving is great for both organizations and donors. Aside from improving the performance of the fundraisers' performance, it can also be an ideal way to make the act of giving more appealing to supporters.

Here's how mobile giving becomes beneficial when sending or donating money:

1. Convenience

In today's busy world, people are always spending every minute of their available time. That's what you call convenience. Essentially, the whole idea of convenience is fundamental. If you want your organization to raise funds better, you need to make the donation process more seamless. Sending or donating procedures that take too long will not attract supporters. They'll just disregard your campaign and move on to their next task.

If you're looking for ways to make the donation process more convenient, you need to use technology that donors are using every day. By doing it, you can motivate them to donate since the whole method doesn't need to interfere with their busy schedules and to-do lists.

2. Easy To Use

Mobile giving doesn't only come with convenience. It also makes the whole donation process fast and simple. It's worth remembering that several people use their mobile phones for almost everything they do. From communicating to paying their monthly bills, individuals rely on their devices to accomplish these tasks. It means they like using mobile technology.

Because of the full range of mobile options, organizations and other fundraisers can use mobile giving for making donations easier.

3. Safety And Security

It's common knowledge that cold cash can be lost or stolen. Luckily, with the inception of mobile giving, these problems will never bother the donors again. Since it's instant, the process of donating money is both safe and secure. There'll be no cash involved in the transaction.

Mobile giving is also useful for donors who are using credit cards. It uses a particular payment processor that protects sensitive and delicate information. By using mobile giving technology, organizations and supporters will have peace of mind knowing that the donations are in the safe hands.

4. Increased Communication

Just like in any transactions, donors and supporters will more likely opt to donate to organizations that they feel connected to. By using mobile giving technology, the organization can be able to communicate with donors at any time and any place.

These days, you can send messages through mobile devices in an instant. That's what a mobile giving platform does. Apart from streamlining the donation process, it can also help fundraisers keep up with all the donors and make sending money as quick as possible.

5. Time-Saving

Since donors give some money using their mobile devices, their donations are quickly processed online. With mobile giving technology, fundraisers don't require people to handle the mail, check and encode the information, and make money deposits. And since the organization doesn't need these human resources, time will be saved.

On the part of the donors, mobile giving can save you time and effort. They also don't need to go to a physical store just to send their donations. As long as they're using their mobile phones, donating money will become a time-saving effort.

6. Improved Social Media Sharing

No doubt, social media is a powerful tool you can use online. The increasing influence of social media channels has contributed to the rise of mobile giving nowadays.

With a stable internet connection and functional mobile devices, donors can easily share the mobile giving page with their family, friends, and colleagues through social media. Since many users have access to their social media accounts, donating can be done instantly with a simple click on the link.

Mobile Giving: Getting Started With The Process

After learning the benefits of mobile giving when sending or donating money, let's proceed with the five significant steps to get started with the fundraising technique.

To make it easy, below are some tips to remember when utilizing mobile giving tech:

1. Examine Your Fundraising Efforts

For fundraisers, it's crucial to identify the right fundraising programs to consider at the moment. Here, you need to determine how incorporating mobile giving platform can attract donors to give.

2. Determine The Mobile Giving Options That Work Best For The Donors And Organizations

Having more than mobile giving avenues for donors is beneficial. So, conduct a survey for your supporters and know which giving options suit their needs and the organization.

3. Choose The Best Mobile Giving Software Provider

As soon as you pick the giving avenues that work for you, look for a giving software provider that fits your organization and donors. When finding a provider, consider some features such as PCI-compliance (Payment Card Industry) and two-factor authentication.

4. Ask Help From Influencers

To achieve better fundraising, enlisting the help of key influencers is essential. These people are known for being movers, shakers, and well-connected professionals. The point is that these influencers have a wider scope which can help boost your fundraising efforts.

To get the most out of these individuals for your fundraising goal, think about incorporating a peer-to-peer fundraising strategy with them as your key persons.

5. Keep Track And Analyze Data

Tracking and analyzing data is an integral part of a fundraising campaign. To improve your mobile giving strategy, it's crucial to consider many vital metrics. These may include donor growth, donor retention, participation rate, conversion rate, average gift size, and many more.

If you start seeing adverse fluctuations in any of these metrics, it may be time to re-evaluate your fundraising efforts.

Final Thoughts

Indeed, mobile giving is a powerful technique because it offers excellent benefits to both donors and organizations. With the help of a reliable giving software provider, both parties can streamline the tasks of donating money and save time.

Hopefully, you find this article informative if you want to get to know the concept better. By learning everything about mobile giving, you can make informed decisions for your organization's fundraising campaign.