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Mobile Fundraising: Why aren’t we there yet?

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dickBy Richard McPherson
Fundraising Consultant, McPherson Advisor
Originally published by the Nonprofit Technology Network.

 Your mobile phone is probably within arm’s reach right now. And it’s probably on. Like everyone else on the planet (which reportedly has more mobile devices than toothbrushes), you probably use your phone to go online, make reservations, listen to music, take pictures, refer to maps, access social networks, text and occasionally even make a phone call. Mobile devices are fast becoming our all-purpose, constant companions. I could bore you with adoption and usage rates, but you know the bottom line…everybody uses mobile devices. And every time a function gets easier, people use [pounce on] it. Starbucks had 5 million mobile payments (14% of all transactions nationwide) – just last week.

It seems like money should be pouring into nonprofits through mobile phones.

If mobile is so popular, why is fundraising so hard?

Two key elements of “mobile fundraising” are in the way – the well-intentioned do-it-yourself culture of many nonprofits and a basic misunderstanding of the role of texting and giving.

First, if you want to send text messages to ask for gifts, you need an intermediary to deal with phone carriers. You’re only one charity, but your donor base uses multiple carriers. Mobile Cause, Mobile Giving and mGive are the services to which US charities often turn to arrange delivery of your text messages, manage opt-in and out, manage and track transactions – and not least, to guide strategy and practices in a channel which operates very differently from your other digital activities. Some organizations are used to outsourcing activities like canvassing, direct mail or telemarketing, but many rely on internal resources to manage tech solutions like e-mail, which is not an option for mobile campaigns.

Second, fundamental misunderstandings exist about what mobile giving actually is. Mobile campaign companies tell me that many nonprofits still think of mobile fundraising as the “text-to-give” process by which $5 or $10 is added to your phone bill. Let’s start there.

What mobile giving was – and what it is now.

Tragedies like hurricanes and earthquakes instantly dominate headlines and donors’ concern. Repetition of text-to-give messages delivered on television by US presidents and CNN screen crawls have created the understandable sense that this was mobile giving. In these circumstances, it certainly is.

But nonprofits whose mission is not emergency response, and who cannot command mainstream media attention, are turning to “text-to-pledge,” by which a donor texts any amount via their mobile phone and receives a link to a mobile-optimized online giving form to complete. This avoids using carriers as gift collectors, takes the limits off gift levels and promotes the kind of immediate communication fundraisers (and donors) prefer.

Of course if the nonprofit does not have a plan for mobile communications, and if it’s giving forms are not beautiful and easy on a smartphone, the process is dead before it even starts.

But for nonprofits who have invested in a mobile campaign company and the necessary planning, the numbers for text-to-pledge are intriguing:

  • Reported average gifts are in the $64-107 range
  • Pledge fulfillment ranges from 59-84%.
  • At fundraising events and dinners, attendee response rates have hit 22-37% with averages exceeding $100.

These results are a far cry from $5 or $10, delivered months after the gift was made. Clearly our sector needs more case studies of the cost-benefit of text-to-pledge and other expedited mobile giving solutions.

Caution: You’re already in the mobile game, ready or not.

All your organization’s e-mail with a donate button put you squarely in the fight for mobile giving. The number of Americans reading e-mail on their mobile devices has reach the tipping point – over 51% and climbing fast. So your year-end fundraising e-mail blitz will be read mostly on smartphones (some on tablets), and if your e-mail – and the donation form it links to – are not truly mobile optimized, you’re going to feel the pain.

What’s more, you’re probably also pushing your Facebook and Twitter supporters to go to your donate page – which they increasingly do from smartphones. (If you participate in Giving Tuesday this November, remember that over 30% of all traffic to giving pages on that day comes from Facebook, much of it via mobile.)

So the shift to mobile is not some distant trend. By the end of this year analysts say mobile internet access will top laptops and desktops. Whether you are sending text messages or not, your e-mail and online forms are in the mobile arena now.

Digital Wallets, apps and other cool tools. Will they help?

What if your donors never had to enter their credit card or bank information on their smartphones to give? Right now, umpteen millions of dollars are being pumped into creating secure “wallets” to hold this information for consumers so they can simply make a purchase on their phone and tell their wallet to handle the transaction. Financial behemoths like VISA’s V.me wallet, American Express and MasterCard, as well as PayPal, are all working on wallets which can be accessed online. (This is in addition to the current push for point-of-sale mobile payment services which are accessed through phone carriers. The Isis mobile payment service, jointly run by Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile, is an example. It recently went live, but is being renamed, since it inadvertently shares the name of the world’s now most infamous terrorist group.)

Pioneer if the field, Google Wallet, is already 3 years old and still battles for universal adoption, suggesting it will probably be credit card companies, not tech services, which will tip the scales. After all, credit cards are universally used…and control your credit line.

Another school of thought believes that apps will increase mobile giving. Examples of apps for smartphones and tablets, include Check-in for Good, which is tied to merchant purchases, and Give Mob, which uses the traditional text-to-give function and thus limits gifts to $5 or $10. Neither seems to be used widely by donors and holds little interest for nonprofits seeking a closer relationship with donors – and bigger gifts.

More promising is Give App, the new, free mobile app released just last month by Network for Good and Guidestar. Still in beta, the app allows a donor to search among 1.9 million US nonprofits, give or set up ongoing giving, and store information for future gifts. It also allows donors to set up peer-to-peer fundraisers and share news via social media. Give App will no doubt add features over time, and its value to nonprofits, like any tech tool, will depend on promotion.

There is always the option of creating your own branded app. NPR is releasing such an app this summer, NPR One, aimed at making public radio stories more searchable, accessible and sharable. And right underneath the “Change your Station” button is “How to Donate.” Tests will be underway this fall among public radio stations on the impact and implications of an app which provides content delivery along with an option to give.

It’s easy to imagine large nonprofit brands like the American Red Cross, or major faith groups, deciding to develop their own apps to serve, inform and solicit gifts, though one wonders if consumers’ “app tolerance” is already being tested. Time will tell.

Predictions and Advice

It’s been said that developers always overestimate the speed of technology change and underestimate the impact when it happens. In that spirit, it’s likely that when true mobile transaction convenience arrives, it will change everything about the way we acquire and renew donors. But when? Mobile enthusiasts say 18 months, but developers say that about every tech advance. Mobile skeptics say it will be years. More realistically I believe we can expect major shifts in donor behavior to occur within the next three years, while apps and digital wallets battle for adoption.

Of course, like e-mail and online giving, there will be a learning and testing phase for nonprofits, and the wise get started early. You didn’t wait until everyone else had websites or e-mail programs before starting your own. Playing catch-up with the world’s most universal technology is not where you want to be. So the smart move right now is:

  • Learn the facts and issues. Your schedule should include at least a quarterly webinar on mobile giving from Heather Mansfield, Darian Rodriguez Heyman, or from one of the mobile campaign companies listed here. Sure they want you to buy their services, but they have the best, most current case studies and in my experience genuinely want to help you learn.
  • Learn about the tools. A simple search on “mobile devices” on the NTEN site yields data specific tools for mobile optimizing tools for content and secure giving. Go beyond the nonprofit community to publications like GeekWire and cnet.com. Plus all the credit card sites have clear explanations and current status updates on their wallets. International charities should take note that many mobile payment developments start elsewhere; VISA’s V.me wallet has been live in Europe for several months now.
  • Fix your e-mail and online giving pages. Optimize your e-mail content for mobile devices, and at least your major online giving pages. Check with the NTEN community for services that do this inexpensively.
  • Be a mobile donor and shopper. Sign up for mobile alerts, and join or give to a charity you like. The Heifer Project is everyone’s favorite example of most digital fundraising and mobile is no exception. Join any walk-a-thon or other peer-to-peer event offer mobile engagement and giving. And use a digital wallet at the ball game, coffee shop or department store and compare the experience to giving to your organization.

The key is to admit what you know in your heart…when the convenience part of mobile transactions gets, well, more convenient, everything is going to change. And that may not take much longer.

Support Volunteers Who Drive Your Organization Forward

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CalNonprofits is notifying nonprofits of a little-known provision of the Obama Administration’s 2015 proposed budget: an increase in the rate at which volunteers can deduct the costs of mileage when they drive as part of their volunteer work.

CalNonprofits is encouraging nonprofits statewide to send a letter or message to their Congressional Representatives.  Here’s an easy way to get their contact information if you need it, and a sample letter is below.

CalNonprofits acknowledges that, while there are many issues in the budget that have higher impact than volunteer mileage reimbursement, it’s important for nonprofits to speak out on this issue to collectively raise the profile of volunteerism as an important economic and social force for communities.

SAMPLE LETTER

Dear ______

I/we write this letter in support of the Volunteer Mileage Reimbursement Rate portion of the Administration’s 2015 budget proposal. As documented on page 272 of “General Explanations of the Administration’s 2015 Revenue Proposals,” it states:

“Under current law, taxpayers may deduct unreimbursed expenses directly related to the use of an automobile in giving services to a charitable organization. As an alternative to tracking actual expenses, taxpayers may use a standard mileage rate of 14 cents per mile. This rate is set by statute and is not indexed for inflation or otherwise adjusted overtime. . . .  The proposal would set the standard mileage rate for the charitable contribution deduction equal to the rate set by the IRS for purposes of medical and moving expense deduction [23.5 cents per mile].”

We still believe that when taxpayers use their own cars as volunteers to drive patients to doctor appointments, deliver meals to the homebound, or to get to a Habitat for Humanity worksite, they should be able to deduct the same amount per mile that business owners can — which is currently 56 cents per mile. Nonetheless, an increase to 23.5 cents per mile is a helpful improvement from the extremely low and unfair rate of 14 cents per mile.

As was demonstrated in the recent economic impact study of California’s nonprofit sector — Causes Count — more than one in four Californians volunteer, and California volunteers do the equivalent work of 450,000 full-time workers. In nonprofits of all sizes, there are more volunteers than paid staff. In short, California nonprofits are not only major employers, they leverage the work of millions of volunteers in service of their communities. It makes no sense for a lawyer, for instance, to be able to deduct 56 cents per mile when she drives to see a client, but only 14 cents a mile when as a volunteer she drives to a school to talk about the Constitution to high school students.

We urge you to support the inclusion of this provision in the final bill that is passed.

Sincerely,

Name, Title, Organization

Give It A Break Already! Working too much can hurt productivity.

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What do Americans, Japanese and Korean workers all have in common? They all come from cultures that equate working long hours with high performance and productivity. And, they’re all wrong.

In fact, Japan and Korea rank lowest worldwide for individual worker productivity.  And, the United States is ranked by the World Health Organization as the most anxious country in the world.

The American nonprofit sector tends to take this myth a step further with its chronic understaffing and a pervasive martyr-complex, which implies that creating meaningful change requires great personal sacrifice. As a result, burnout rates among nonprofit employees are rising with 3 out of 4 executive directors planning to leave their jobs within the next 5 years.

For the sake of the public that relies on the programs and services of our nonprofit organizations, it’s time for us to shift our definition of a “good employee.” Would you rather have an employee who works 60 hours in the office to complete his/her tasks, gets bored and cruises social media sites throughout the day and frequently misses work days due to illness? OR, would you rather have an employee who works 32 hours a week to complete his/her tasks and spends more time rejuvenating with friends and family and practicing good self-care?

Brigid Schulte has written a new book, Overwhelmed: Work, Love, and Play When No One Has the Time, about why work has become overwhelming for so many people and how nonprofit leaders can ease the burden for their staffs. Her tips include encouraging staff to take regular breaks after each 90 minutes of concentrated work. And, to stop scheduling so many meetings!

Stop Losing Productivity In Your Inbox: Delegate to an Assistant

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In this below July 1st HBR Blog Network article How To Delegate Your Email to An Assistant, author Alexandra Samuel provides insight on ways nonprofit upper management can relinquish control and time lost in your inbox. In summary she suggests…

  1. Determining who can provide you with email support
  2. Setting up a system where they can manage your inbox collaboratively
  3. Creating rules and guidelines to make most of your delegation

How To Delegate Your Email to An Assistant, by Alexandra Samuel

In the early days of the internet, email natives loved to trade tales of executives who asked their assistants to print out emails so they could read and respond to them on paper. Now we all use email, and assistants are a seemingly rare commodity. But they can still play a useful role in managing your messages.

That kind of support is no longer limited to the lucky few who have administrative help on staff, either. Thanks to the emergence of the collaborative economy, in which people can access services on a pay-for-use model, there are more and more options for getting administrative support, whether it be using a virtual personal assistant service like Zirtual, hiring a part-time assistant through Craigslist, or having more traditional access to administrative support through your company.

An assistant can reduce the burden of email management in ways automated systems can’t, be they third-party plugins or rules and filters that you set up within your inbox. They can function as your email triage system, conduct your daily inbox reviews, or even reply to individual messages. The most effective setup combines human support a smart set of email rules and filters—so that you’re not wasting your assistant’s time on the routine job of deleting junk mail or filing missives that you don’t need. Considering how much of your workload likely involves reviewing incoming messages, replying to calendar requests and ensuring your top-priority emails get answered promptly, asking for assistance with email triage is in fact one of the best uses of administrative support.

The decision to delegate

If the idea of delegating email management fills you with alarm, know that you don’t need to give someone full access to your email in order to get meaningful help managing your inbox (more on this in the setup section below). How much of your email you delegate depends not only on how much support you have available, but also on your working style, your relationship with your assistant, and your office culture. Here are few questions to ask yourself before deciding how much email management you can delegate, and whom you want to hire for that support:

How much skill and discretion can you expect? In the most ideal situation, you’d get daily support from a highly trusted assistant who has direct access to your inbox and outbox, so they could work through calendar invitations, billing or financial admin, or other routine requests. But trusting someone with your outbox is only advisable if you trust that person’s judgment about your work and priorities, and know that their grammar and spelling is at least as good as your own. And trusting someone with direct access to the whole of your primary inbox is only advisable if you can expect that person to exercise as much discretion as you’d get from a priest or therapist. If you’re working with part-time or virtual support, you’ll need to scale back these expectations; it will be your job to decide which emails your assistant sees and addresses, rather than vice versa.

What kind of relationship do you have with this person? If you rely on a certain amount of professional distance to make your working relationship successful, it may feel awkward for your assistant to come across personal email from friends or family. If your assistant is paid by your company, rather than you personally, take care to avoid exposing your assistant to messages that could create any conflicts of interest (for example, correspondence about a possible job change).  And if you share your assistant with others, think carefully about whether managing your email is feasible in the context of your assistant’s overall workload.

What’s normal in your office? If your peers get help managing their email, or there’s a common practice of delegating certain kinds of email management (like calendaring), then don’t hesitate to do the same. If you would be the first person at your level to get email triage assistance, talk with your manager, HR team, or IT department (to ensure you’re complying with email security guidelines) before asking your assistant to help. And if you’re thinking of hiring an outside assistant on your own nickel, make sure that you only forward or share email in a way that complies with your company’s email policies.

Setting up delegation

Once you have determined who will provide you with email support and to what degree you will rely on them, you need to set up a system that will allow you to manage your inbox collaboratively. That system includes both the technical set-up that will let you share email, and establishing clear expectations about how you and your assistant will work together. I recommend:

Using delegation services: Since sharing your password is a risky proposition, it’s a good idea to share access to your email by using a delegation service like those provided by Gmail or Outlook. Delegation allows someone else to access your email using their own password; you can revoke that access at any time. Outlook even allows you to customize your delegation setup to limit which items your assistant can view.

Creating a second email address: If you’re concerned about providing an assistant with direct access to your email, creating a second email address can be a useful strategy. This can work in one of two ways, depending on how much of your email you want your assistant to handle. If you’d like your assistant to see virtually all your email, provide her with access to your primary inbox, and create a separate email address that you share with people who need to be able to communicate with you on a confidential basis. (You can also use that second email address when you’re on vacation: ask your assistant to forward only those emails you must see, and enjoy the peace of ignoring your main email address.) If, on the other hand, you want your assistant to only handle selected correspondence, set up an address you can forward incoming mail to (possibly via mail rules) and give your assistant access to that address instead.

Specifying your reply protocol: Agree on whether your assistant will reply to emails as you, or by forwarding your emails to an account in his own name, and replying from there (“Sarah forwarded your email, and asked me to find a time for you to meet”).

Drafting sample replies: Particularly if you have a new assistant, or are trying to delegate email for the first time, write a few sample replies your assistant can use as the basis for her own messages. This is especially important if you are authorizing your assistant to send messages as you. While you’re at it, create a few standard replies that you can use yourself whenever you’re forwarding an email to your assistant (“My assistant Jim Smith, cc’ed on this email, can get back to you with a meeting time.”).

Making the most of delegation

Once you have your delegation system in place, there are a few practices and tools that facilitate collaborative email management:

Timing: Agree on when and how often your assistant will review your inbox. If you have access to daily support, your assistant can review your messages first thing, and perhaps at a couple of other agreed-upon times during the day; you’ll look at your inbox after your assistant has moved all extraneous messages into a folder (or folders) that he will work through himself. If your assistant is only providing a few hours of support each week, forward him the messages you’d like him to handle, or put them in a designated folder — just be sure to also reply to your correspondents, letting them know you or your assistant will get back to them in a few days.

Flags and tags: If your assistant has direct access to your inbox, ask her to flag every email in your inbox that you should personally read or address, or conversely, tell her that you will flag any email you want her to handle. This will work best if you are using a system of mail folders, labels or tags to file emails of different types: set up a category or label (“Assistant”) that you can apply to any message your assistant should address, and one (“ReadThis”) for any message you need to read yourself, and make sure you each apply those labels as needed when either of you go through the inbox.

Forwarding: Set up mail rules that forward specific kinds of messages to your assistant, such as meeting requests or invoices. You can also set up a rule that forwards any flagged/starred message, or any message with a specific label; that way you can quickly tag any message you want forwarded, without having to manually forward each one.

Filter-proofing:  If you’ve been reluctant to set up rules that move messages out of your inbox before you see them, an assistant can provide a safety net in case things go astray. Just ask your assistant to regularly review all your unread mail (for example, by looking in Gmail’s “all mail” folder, or doing an Outlook search for all unread mail) so that if an important message gets caught by your mail filters, he can move it back into your inbox.

While I came up with most of these tactics at a time when I had a wonderful full-time assistant, they are still useful to me even though now I have only occasional, part-time help. When I hire or task someone to help me on a major project, I often include email support as part of their mandate — and use tactics like selectively forwarding email, or delegating my helper to reply on my behalf.

The biggest challenge in getting email support is making the mental shift away from thinking of email as an area of responsibility that is yours and yours alone. Email is an enormous part of the workload for most professionals. Get help with this area of responsibility, and you’ll not only find it easier to stay on top of email — you’ll find it easier to stay on top of all your work.

See the article on blogs.hbr.org.

5 ways to liberate your team from email overload

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This story published in the June 16, 2014 issue of Fortune magazine rings true for every nonprofit we serve.  Sending clear, concise emails can help us all stay more productive. You and your employees can waste several hours a day wading through the inbox. Here’s how to say more while mailing less.

1. Quit trying to solve problems by email
Gather everyone for a 15-minute huddle at the same time every day or week. With the right people in the room, it’ll take you seven minutes to resolve issues that might otherwise lead to an hour and a half of emailing back and forth. Plus, since you all know when you’ll see each other next, you’ll spend less time messaging one another to set up other times to talk.

2. Use hyperspecific subject lines
Be nitpicky! It’ll keep everyone from wasting time searching in-boxes for lost messages. To set up a June 15 call about your budget, use the subject line “June 15 call re: budget.” If the date switches to June 17, take three seconds to update it in the subject line. And when you get an email with a vague subject line like “Two questions,” change it to something more precise in your reply.

3. Insist on extreme brevity
Keep emails Twitter-tight, and tell your team not to send you missives that you have to scroll through, advises Joseph McCormack, author of Brief: Make a Bigger Impact by Saying Less. “Write them on a smartphone, for a smartphone,” he suggests. And don’t barrage employees with giant attachments. Instead, take a cue from Jeff Bezos: Read the material silently at the start of a meeting — then discuss it on the spot.

4. Ban emails with multiple parts
More than 43% of professionals abandon complicated emails in the first 30 seconds, according to McCormack’s research. “They either pause and say, ‘I’ll get back to it later’ — or don’t read them,” he says. Ask your team to stick to one topic per email and to send a new message for other, unrelated requests. And if you get a three-part message, respond to each one with a separate, accurately renamed email.

5. Close the conversation quickly
Long acknowledgments or thank-yous can lead to email clutter — but no one wants to be rude by leaving messages unacknowledged. To thank someone or answer a simple yes-or-no question, put your response in the subject line followed by “(EOM)” — short for “end of message.” Recipients will know they don’t need to open the email. Hint: Spell out EOM the first time. It’ll save you from getting a bunch of responses asking what “EOM” means.

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