I would like to see a study of ABC’s Hunger at Home series that netted very little in the way of text donations even though it was pushed for several days.

While it’s a great way to make short term money from people who you will probably never see again, I’m not sure how one “plans” to raise money from texting or how lucrative it can be. I’m still sticking with traditional ways of raising money, with online being the icing on the direct mail cake.

I’m working with lots of UK charities on their SMS and text to donate activity. The benefits to the potential donor are clear, they can give on impulse in seconds, no forms to fill in, no personal information to give away. They can take action in an instant.

An area that we plan to do lots more testing in, is repeat giving. Can we ask people whose name we don’t know, to give again by texting them appeals. If it works (early results say it will) we will have to change our entire way of thinking about how we segment and target donors for repeat donations. We will have databases full of anonymous donors – which will be very exciting and maybe a little scary for old school direct marketing fundraisers.

I blogged more thoughts here http://degregoriopaul.blogspot.com/2011/10/mobile-for-individual-giving.html

Seems to me that the degree of spontaneity has less to do with channel and/or mode of giving than it does gift amount. If a donor is prompted to give $5 he or she is much more likely to do so — regardless of channel — without research.