Between the Buttons

Giving kiosks offer convenience to donors, but critics question their effectiveness

On her way to church most Sundays, Meagan Cummins used to have to make a detour to an automated teller machine to withdraw money for her weekly donation. But sometimes she would be running too late or forget to stop at the bank altogether. On those mornings she would go to church with nothing to put in the collection plate.

“That was a bad feeling,” says Ms. Cummins, a member of Journey Church, in Springfield, Ohio.

Since September, though, Ms. Cummins has not had to worry about going to church empty-handed. She can use the debit card she always carries at the church’s new “giving kiosk,” a touch-screen computer in the vestibule that takes donations with one swipe of a debit or credit card.

“I hardly ever, ever carry cash,” says Ms. Cummins. “I use debit for everything.”

Journey Church is one of a small but growing number of churches, hospitals, arts organizations, and other charities that have installed self-serve donation kiosks to cater to visitors who may be inspired to give on the spot. The ATM-like machines accept donations and provide receipts that donors can use to claim tax deductions for their gifts.

Big Dollars

Donation kiosks are hoping to get a share of the estimated half a trillion dollars that Americans spent last year at self-serve machines, using credit or debit cards to pay for such things as groceries, movie tickets, and fast-food meals. That figure is expected to rise to a trillion dollars by 2011, according to the IHL Group, a Tennessee research and consulting company.

Still, it is difficult to predict whether card-swipe contributions will ever become a major fund-raising technique, fund raisers say.

Some observers say the machines are tacky and impersonal, and they doubt whether large numbers of people, particularly older ones, will feel motivated to make a donation in the same way they use an ATM.

Other critics have raised questions about whether some arrangements, like when kiosks are owned and run by a third party, not the charities themselves, meet ethical standards for fund raising.

Nevertheless, a growing number of companies are experimenting with kiosks for charities.

SecureGive, a Georgia company that two years ago sold one of the first giving kiosks, reports that more than 50 nonprofit groups are using its products, and that orders from churches and other organizations are on the rise.

At least two other giving-kiosk companies, one in the United States and one in Canada, are set to start doing business. And a fund-raising consultant in California is working to place hundreds of kiosks in shopping malls around the country that enable people to contribute to local pet shelters and search databases of adoptable animals.

“There’s definitely a niche for charities to use kiosks,” says Francie Mendelsohn, president of Summit Research Associates, a Rockville, Md., company that consults in the self-serve kiosk industry. “People are no longer afraid of the technology, and they are used to that kind of convenience.”

She warns, though, that nonprofit organizations ought to be careful to present the machines in a tasteful way.

“It’s not going to be welcomed if you put a neon-colored unit in the lobby of a church,” Ms. Mendelsohn says. “You don’t want to put these kiosks out there like a shameless electronic hand.”

Purchase Fee

Typically, giving kiosks cost charities about $5,000 each to purchase, with higher charges when companies do more to customize the equipment or software.

In addition, the charities pay monthly fees of about $50 to use and maintain the software. And, as with other gifts made by credit or debit cards, charities also have to bear the fees that financial institutions charge for every transaction.

Some charities are getting better returns with kiosks than others. Marty Baker, pastor of Stevens Creek Community Church, in Augusta, Ga., and founder of SecureGive, says the kiosk in the lobby of his church brought in $310,000 last year, before accounting for transaction fees, helping to increase overall giving to the church by 9 percent from 2006.

But Michigan’s MetroHealth Hospital Foundation, which put a kiosk in the lobby of its new hospital near Grand Rapids in September, has received only three gifts thus far, each for $25 or less.

Laura Staskiewicz, the foundation’s chief development officer, praises the kiosk as innovative but says it will take early adopters of the approach some time to figure out the best way to get people to contribute through the device.

The foundation plans to move the kiosk to a different location where it may attract more attention, she says, and to step up efforts to promote it. The foundation also wants to upgrade software on the kiosk’s computer so that donors can make a gift in honor of a hospital staff member as part of the hospital’s effort to acknowledge top-performing employees.

“We want to use the kiosk to connect to people while they are still at the hospital, still thinking about the care they received and are particularly thankful for it,” she says.

The Oregon Ballet Theatre, in Portland, installed two giving kiosks in its lobby with a similar idea in mind: to capture the audience’s interest during a performance.

“They have an immediate opportunity to give,” says Dan Ryan, the ballet’s chief development officer. “This gets them when they are inspired, then we can continue to cultivate their interest beyond that evening.”

While the kiosks collected less than $6,000 last year, many of the donations have been from first-time donors whom the organization might not have otherwise identified, Mr. Ryan says.

Fund raisers at the Jones Center for Families, a nonprofit recreational center in Springdale, Ark., also want to capitalize on visitors’ interests and good will.

But those interests are so varied that the center’s officials plan to move its new kiosk among seven locations throughout the facility, depending on what events are scheduled. When there’s an ice-hockey tournament, for example, the kiosk will be plugged in near the skating rink. When there’s a swimming event, it will be carted over to the pools.

Most giving kiosks, like the one at the Jones Center, are owned by a single charity and stay on its premises. As technology and interest in the kiosks are developing, however, different uses and fund-raising approaches are cropping up.

Donation Kiosk Centres of Canada, a new company outside Toronto, plans to set up self-serve kiosks in funeral homes in the coming months to help people make memorial donations.

Mourners will be able to earmark a gift to charity in the name of a person who recently died.

Donation Kiosk Centres also hopes to make arrangements with national charities to make giving kiosks available in response to a particular need, like a disaster-relief effort.

“The Red Cross or the Salvation Army needs to raise money because there’s a hurricane somewhere, and so they put kiosks in retail malls and high-pedestrian areas,” says Rob Schieren, the company’s president. “The idea is for the charities to bring the payment system to where the need is and where the donors are.”

Jeffrey D. Kroll, a professional fund raiser in Ojai, Calif., is working on a variation of that theme. Starting in the next couple of months, he says, he will rent space at five shopping malls for five kiosks to raise money for the Humane Society of Ventura County.

A former board member of the charity, Mr. Kroll intends to get local businesses to sponsor the kiosks, which would also feature pet-adoption information. Kiosk visitors would be able to see photos and videos of available pets on a large monitor mounted above the kiosk, and even start the adoption process with the help of a volunteer who could be seen on the monitor through a video-conferencing feature.

Mr. Kroll, who is paying for the machines and all the associated costs, will split the net proceeds of the donations and any sponsorships with the animal group 50-50.

But that arrangement could raise eyebrows among donors and officials at the Association of Fundraising Professionals, whose ethics code prohibits members from accepting compensation based on a percentage of charitable contributions.

Mr. Kroll, however, says that his plan is perfectly legal, and he has registered his humane-society contract with state charity regulators. What’s more, he says, once he recovers his initial costs, the humane society will have the option of taking over the operation and keeping all the donations.

Mr. Kroll’s arrangement also raises questions among watchdog officials who advise charities to disclose to donors exactly how much of their contribution goes to charity. Mr. Kroll says donors will be alerted by a message on the computer screen that the kiosk is run by a commercial fund-raising business, and contact information for his company will appear on the screen, on receipts, and on the kiosk itself, but watchdog officials say that the disclosure should do more.

“This is a new form of collection,” says Bennett Weiner, chief operating officer of the Better Business Bureau’s Wise Giving Alliance. “If it wishes to establish transparency, then disclosure should be made of how much is going to charity. Most donors would be concerned if they knew it was only half. The public perception is that it’s low cost, when it’s not.”

Mr. Kroll says that donors are given sufficient notice that his company, J.D.K. Enterprises, in Ojai, is providing the kiosk services, and that providing more detailed information might bog down the ease of the transaction.

As one of the first businesspeople to use the kiosks for fund raising, he says, he continues to work closely with state officials to make sure he does what is best for the animal shelters, their supporters, and the public.

In the meantime, Mr. Kroll says, he plans to set up a nonprofit organization of his own that would offer fund-raising and pet-adoption assistance to animal groups, and he is in talks with national animal organizations and local shelters around the country that are interested in the kiosks.

Volunteer Jobs

ChurchLink, a new company in Springfield, Mo., that is just starting to sell its own version of giving kiosks, plans to offer a variety of add-ons to the software to allow charities to do more than just collect contributions from the machines. One feature would allow people to navigate the kiosk’s touch-screen computer to learn about and sign up for volunteer jobs.

“The kiosk is a computer that you can do unlimited things with, so why not let charities decide what value-added they want besides just a straight donation,” says Kurt Theobald, one of ChurchLink’s founders.

The USS Arizona Memorial Museum, in Hawaii, which put up a kiosk in October, is considering adding a special feature to its machine: Donors would be allowed to add their names immediately to a computerized list of contributors that is already posted on a separate video screen above the kiosk.

Linking the kiosk’s computer system with the one that generates the list for the video monitor could be costly, however, and Laurie Moore, director of development at the Pearl Harbor Memorial Fund, which raises money for the museum, says she is not sure it would be worth it.

So far, most museum visitors are not looking for the bells and whistles of high technology when they contribute, she says. In November, 65 people made donations at the kiosk, compared with 433 people who contributed at a visitors’ desk across the lobby. And gifts made at the desk averaged nearly $20 more than at the kiosk.

“We have found that our visitors would prefer to deal with a person,” she says, noting that one reason may be that people who come to the museum tend to be military veterans and older adults.

The demographics are very different at Journey Church, where at least half of the church’s 240 members are younger than 25.

Ms. Cummins, who is 22, says that not only does the kiosk make giving more convenient, but it also allows her to give with more spontaneity.

“I used to have to give whatever I took out from the ATM,” she says. “Now, if I come out of services and feel inspired, I can use my debit card and make the decision. Using the kiosk actually connects me more closely with my giving.”