1. What will become the prevailing technology platform for mobile donations
2. What technology will be reliable and efficient enough to meet our needs?
3. 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.
4. 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

• Safari (available on iPhone & iTouch)
• Google's Android
• Opera Mobile (available for Google's Android, Most Blackberry devices, Windows Mobile, & Symbian OS)

Efficiency & Reliability

• 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

• 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

Where other mobile donation technologies fall short

1. 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.
2. 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 )
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. 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.

1. Giving applications (like apps download on the iPhone) are only available to work on certain approved devices.
2. 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...)
3. User adoption is difficult, requiring marketing efforts to convince users to download the app for future donations.
4. 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/ )

1. 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.
2. 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.

The Heritage Foundation Facebook fan page features many options for its fans including links to advocacy tools, special content features and events calendars.  Uniquely, however, it also features a “Donate” tab that gave Heritage Foundation fans a one-click access to a fully functioning KIMBIA donation form. Donors are able to complete an entire transaction on their credit card with a trusted organization without ever leaving the Facebook website. This feature is critical in respecting and supporting the users who have integrated Facebook into their daily online lives.

Launched last week, this excellent example of next-gen online fundraising is the result of great strategic thinking combined with a little technical expertise.  The Heritage Foundation was able to realize this concept with standard KIMBIA snippet codes combined with  custom Facebook development from the David All Group, a modern grassroots communications firm based in Washington DC.

If you or someone in your organization is familiar with building applications in FBML, you too can have your own KIMBIA donation forms placed inside of Facebook.   If your organization would be interested in having a custom Facebook application developed with KIMBIA integration, please feel free to contact us at info@kimbia.com.  We can put you in touch with one of our services partners like the David All Group, who can help you plan and build a fundraising application that is right for you.

What if we replaced “Facebook” in this story with “your website”?

The key points would read like this:

• Your staff doesn’t participate in conversations on your website.
• Your staff doesn’t actively recruit donors to fundraise on your behalf on your website.
• You don’t use your website as a distribution point for content your supporters can use to promote your cause.
• Instead of coming to your website you send your donors to a technology company page with our logo on it.
• On your website your send donors away to a technology company site to “check out” and pay.

Pretty much describes what most fundraising organizations are doing with their web sites and it is also an accurate description of how most fundraisers use Facebook.

And it doesn’t work very well in either case.

I applaud the work the Causes folks have done. It may not be the best solution, but the problem is not Causes.

Billions will be raised from personal networks in the next few years. Those dollars are going to go to organizations that are active in those networks.

Donors want to interact with *you* not a stack of third parties. Social networks are just another place to connect with your community. And just like any other form of outreach, you need to go to the
community and participate.

So take the conversation to sites that support you. Take it to the blogs. Take it to personal pages. And yes, take it to Facebook.

It is easy. We’ll show you how to do it right.

It is less time and effort than one big mailing.

"We know how to ask for money using the mail, but most organizations are still trying to figure out how to do that online."

Very true. The timing is interesting since we just blogged a piece about finding yourself online in which we challenged fundraisers to try to give themselves a gift.

How about this for a follow up question: Do your online giving options ever change?

When a hurricane happens, a donor may be willing to go through a cumbersome online giving process because they know you need money immediately. But if your giving forms are clunky and never change they will probably "lapse" back into giving through channels where you are spending time and effort - like mail. If you send a donor six beautiful print pieces a year with unique stories in them but you never change your online donation forms or content, you are sending a powerful message to your donors about what is important - and your donors will respond accordingly. This may go a long way towards explaining some of the findings detailed in the article.

We think some of the solutions are simple. For example, check out our ideas on email landing pages and contextual giving. Kimbia makes it easy to quickly create donation options for all your marketing ideas and programs that fit beautifully into your content.

In short, take better advantage of what you already have. If you have successful mail campaigns, we are confident you can have successful online campaigns too. Kimbia takes the technical difficulty out of the way so you can concentrate on your message and your relationship with your donors.

1. Google yourself.
2. Look yourself up on Facebook.
3. Look at the web logs for your site.
4. Try to give yourself money. All the way through to a closed transaction.

What do you see?

1. Google. Does your organization come up first when you type in your organization's name? Hopefully it does, but here's a better test ... type in the names of some of your major programs. How do you do?

2. Facebook. If you've started a group on Facebook, you'll probably pass this one with flying colors. If you haven't you might be surprised to find at individual supporter pushing your cause. Or, you might not find your organization at all.

3. Web logs. So, what are the top 10 or 20 sites sending visitors to your site. This is what your supporters saw that caused them to visit you. I'll bet Google is #1 and one of the social networks may be close to the top. But where else are visitors coming from?

4. $. If you're using Kimbia, you probably were able to give anyway you wanted quickly. Otherwise you probably went through lots of screens. Did you have to leave your site and go to a "branded" page with a technology vendor? Did the giving options have anything to do with your organizations cause or programs? There are two reasons why somebody showed up here. First, would be because you did a great job marketing one of your programs. Second would be because the donor found something about you online (see 1, 2, and 3) and wanted to express their support. Are you honoring what inspired this passion?

What should you do?

1. Google. If your organization or your individual programs are not well placed on Google they should be and it isn't that hard. The other good news is, doing the stuff below will help you stay at the top of the list.

2. Facebook. If you haven't set up a Facebook group and invited your whole email list to join it is time to do so. As I mentioned above, you are probably getting lots of traffic from Facebook or other social networks. It is time to participate in the conversation about you that is happening in online communities. With Kimbia, your supporters can promote any off your programs directly on Facebook. And while we are on the subject, they can do the same on their blogs, on LinkedIn, and on Twitter.

3. Web logs. Other than Facebook and Google, whoever else is sending you traffic is a potential friend. Make a person-to-person connection with these sites and ask them what you can do to help their efforts. You may not be surprised to find that many of these sites are partner organizations or corporate supporters. You may be surprised to discover that many of these sites are blogs that talk about your cause. With Kimbia, it is easy to send these folks all kinds of applications, from branded information widgets, to weekly videos, and of course really nice looking fundraisers.

4. Time to get rid of that crummy PayPal link or that boring "co-branded" page. Your constituents don't want to give to some technology vendor, they want to give money to you. And, yes, they do notice the URL changing. They also want to express their support specifically not just generally. So, instead of making just one fundraising form, make one for each and every program and place it directly on the page for that program. When all the new traffic shows up from Google, the social networks, and your partners, you'll have a lot of new donors.

There was something implied in the article that I think is worth restating explicitly – try stuff. With KIMBIA, there is no penalty for trying out a new campaign idea to see if it works. So, why not try 8 or 10 new things this year? You might find something that gets existing donors excited again and that reaches coveted new donors.

If you use complex software for fundraising, you are probably pretty cautious about launching new campaigns because you know you need to recoup the extensive time and money investment. As a side effect, your organization may have developed a lengthy process for approving new ideas.

Growth in 2009 is going to go to the innovators. If you’ve got 8 great ideas for new campaigns, instead of having months of meeting to pick the best two, why not launch them all and let your supporters tell you what works?

Read the original post: Debunking Five Myths of Online Fundraising