Mobile Giving Power – KIMBIA for Mobile Devices
As smartphones and mobile devices become a more ubiquitous part our everyday lives, your supporters expect to be empowered with mobile-ready donation and registration systems. Therefore, every organization should address this need by asking the following questions.
- What will become the prevailing technology platform for mobile donations
- What technology will be reliable and efficient enough to meet our needs?
- What technology provides the levels of security and authentication needed to meet your donors’ expectations and can stand up to the scrutiny of strict fundraising guidelines.
- What technology can offer fully functional forms that capture all the data needed to build a relationship with donors.
Our Mobile Donations Approach: Web standards-based technology
In the recent history of mobile Internet browsing, it would be safe to say that user experiences varied widely from one donor to another. However, this has recently changed with the advent next generation mobile browsers like Safari for the iPhone and Google Android. These newer devices with increased processor speed, built in keyboards & touch screens promise a more 'personal computer'-like browsing experience than the text based mobile browsing of just a few years ago.At KIMBIA, we build all of our applications to work with Web standards. For mobile devices, this is an important distinction. Building applications to work with Web standards means that as mobile Web browsing becomes more prominent, mobile browsers will be forced to adopt more a more standards-based approached. Therefore KIMBIA is positioned to become the platform best-suited to provide a rich online donation experience whether the donor is browsing from their desktop, laptop, netbook, tablet, or smartphone.
KIMBIA is ahead of the curve on this transition, having already launched customer solutions built around this standards-based approach. KIMBIA's apps rely on standards-based security features, JavaScript functionality, and CSS 2 support. These technologies are commonplace on todays desktop browsers (Firefox, IE7 & 8, Safari & Opera), and the newest, most popular mobile browsers also currently support these same standards. The following standards-based mobile browsers support KIMBIA applications today:
- Safari (available on iPhone & iTouch)
- Google's Android
- Opera Mobile (available for Google's Android, Most Blackberry devices, Windows Mobile, & Symbian OS)
Efficiency & Reliability
Another benefit of using KIBMIA as a mobile donations platform is the fact that it uses the same payment infrastructure, deployment model and data accessibility standards you already have in place. For example:- The process for building a mobile-optimized KIMBIA form is no different than building any other KIMBIA form.
- Mobile donation/registration applications have full KIMBIA functionality.
- All funds collected through the form go directly from the donor’s credit card to the merchant account you’ve already established.
- Any database and compliance integrations will continue to work as expected.
- All donor data will be instantly available in your KIMBIA reports immediately after a donor makes a transaction.
Security, Integrity & Donor Authenticity
Some very important considerations for any organization looking into mobile donations is the security, system integrity and donor authentication involved in each transaction. We believe that KIMBIA is the only platform that is prepared today to meet all of these needs on mobile devices today. For example:- All data being sent through a KIMBIA form on a mobile device is sent through SSL encryption and is PCI compliant. A donation made through a mobile-optimized KIMBIA form uses the same high level standard of security found on your current site.
- KIMBIA forms in a mobile environment take direct credit card transactions. Nothing is being charged through a cell phone company or other third party. The transaction will require the CVV security code to complete a transaction ensuring a high threshold of donor authenticity.
- KIMBIA forms will accept all the required fields needed by your organization. Fields like ‘Full name’, ‘email address’ ‘mailing address’, and custom questions like ‘employer’ and ‘occupation’ are all fields that you may need to be submitted along with a donation. With KIMIBA mobile-optimized forms, you can get all the information you need.
Example
To show the flexibility and readiness of KIMBIA forms in a mobile environment, we’ve built an example of mobile-optimized application using a standard KIMBIA donation form on our Demo site. Pull up the link below on an iPhone (or other webkit browser) to see and use this live donation form for yourself. (Source: http://www.amhope.org/mobile )
Where other mobile donation technologies fall short
Recent events in Haiti have brought the promise of mobile donations into the news. While there has been vast public interest in mobile giving, there are some important limitations to the various mobile options that should be considered. Below are some examples of considerations for text-based giving, mobile giving apps, and other kinds of giving widgets.Donations by Text (SMS)
- There is only one donation level per SMS shortcode. This is usually set at $5 or $10. Fixed service fees and transactions fees associated with a text-based transaction can be considerably higher than a traditional online donation, depending on the pre-set donation level.
- The charge appears on the donor’s cell phone bill, and since mobile carriers are not creditors, they are not able to release funds until their users’ bills have been paid. Therefore, funds are typically not released for up to 90 days after a text donation is made. ( http://money.cnn.com/2010/01/15/technology/haiti_text_donation_delay/index.htm )
- When funds are released, they come in the form of an aggregation payment from the mobile carrier. For example, if a political organization used this system to raise money, the funds would likely come from an organization like AT&T or Verizon rather than from individual donors.
- Confirming the donor identity through text is not possible. Unique identifiers like physical address (country of residence) and credit card CVV are not required, anyone can make a donation on any SMS-enabled device. In many cases, the person making the text donation is not the person paying the cell phone bill.
- No additional donor data is delivered by the carriers. This means that organizations that are required to ask for ask for other data with the donation (e.g. ‘employer’ and ‘occupation’) will be unable to take donations via SMS. In addition, there is no other information available (e.g. email address & home address) to use for building a relationship with the donor.
- Giving applications (like apps download on the iPhone) are only available to work on certain approved devices.
- A different app must be custom designed, submitted and approved by each respective device’s app store or marketplace. (e.g. iTune App Store, Android Market, Blackberry App World, etc...)
- User adoption is difficult, requiring marketing efforts to convince users to download the app for future donations.
- Many companies like Google are pushing their development resources towards Web standards-based applications rather than downloadable apps. ( http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2009/07/google-app-store/ )
- Other online donation platforms may claim to have a donation form “widget”. However, these are often not standards-based and use proprietary technologies like Adobe Flash in order to work.
- Flash is not supported by many of the top mobile devices like the iPhone, ITouch, and new iPad. This means that at least 57% of US mobile Web users will not be able to even load the donation form on their mobile device.
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