March 22, 2011 | Read Time: 1 minute
Washington
Text-message giving is relatively new, and donors are still getting the hang of it. In the wake of the disaster in Japan, the Salvation Army is trying to ensure that more of them complete the transaction.
To make a donation via cellphone, donors send a specific keyword, such as “Japan” or “tsunami,” to a five-digit short code. Then they receive a text message asking them to confirm the gift.
If a donor doesn’t respond to the confirmation message, the charity does not receive the donation–something that happens fairly often, Jason Wood, a technology official at the Salvation Army, told participants at the Nonprofit Technology Conference, in Washington last week.
During the Alexandria, Va., organization’s year-end fund-raising drive, text-message gifts totaled $26,000, but he said that number would have been $12,000 higher if everyone who started the donation process had confirmed the intention to give.
To try to cut down on the number of unrealized gifts, the organization now asks donors to “please ensure that you respond ‘yes’ to the thank you message you receive” whenever the group talks about the text-to-give option or sends that information to the news media.
The education effort appears to be working, Mr. Wood told conference participants.
In the first week after this month’s Japan disaster, completed text-message donations to the Salvation Army totaled $135,000, while only $11,000 in potential gifts were lost when donors failed to respond to the confirmation message.
