"Crisis relief to Haiti put mobile donations on the map in America, but until recently, mobile donations had only been available for a handful of non-profits and executed through carrier billing solutions, which places low limits on the amounts that can be donated and can sometimes delay the receipt of funds," said Carol Realini, Founder and Executive Chairman of Obopay, in a statement announcing the firm's relationship with a Virginia chapter of charitable organization The United Way in March of this year. "The Obopay text-to-donate offering addresses these issues and meaningfully expands the market and speed for making and accepting mobile donations."
Charity Over the Top
Wireless customers wanting to donate to participating charities send a message to a prearranged shortcode, just as they would when contributing through their wireless provider. However, where the postpaid donor would receive a confirmation in return, and would actually make the payment at a later date, the Obopay solution would respond to the shortcode with a mobile site where the donor could arrange payment details through what Obopay calls "a simple process."
That makes a huge difference. Rather than a text-to-donate solution, the Obopay arrangement seems to be more of a simplified online payment process with an SMS front-end. Such a solution certainly taps into the text-to-donate zeitgeist, but lacks the end-to-end user-friendliness of carrier-based text donations.
Furthermore, while Obopay generally "donates" their solution to interested non-profits, as it did with the United Way, the firm charges a fee to the donor to use the solution. Needless to say, while this increases the amount of money that reaches the intended charity, it further complicates the donation process and possibly sours the donor experience as a result.
What, then, is to be done about text donations? It seems the only way to keep the process as effortless as subscribers have come to expect is to integrate it into the postpaid billing infrastructure. This probably limits the effectiveness of over-the-top text-donation solutions like the one Obopay offers.
Furthermore, the caps on donations are not a major drawback, as text-donations are best suited for those who would not otherwise donate and are designed for high volume and rapid response. Those who want to give more can use one of the myriad other channels for giving.
If that's so, the sticking point is really the lag time in donations moving from the carrier to the recipient organization. Carriers can either ignore complaints and pass funds along only as they become available or be prepared to manage some PR lash back each time a non-profit faces a net-90 fulfillment timeline.
