Today, our blog host Mightycause.com officially announced its mobile platform a combination of an iPhone for social fundraisers, and a forthcoming smartphone friendly web site initiative (see Fast Company story). What does that have to do with online fundraising? you may ask.
Simple: It has everything to do with the reality of America’s use of the mobile Internet. Just yesterday, Pew Internet released a report showing that 28% of all Americans use their phones for mobile or social location-based services. And NTEN published a blog post/report authored by the Mobile Giving Foundation Canada and Mobile Giving Foundation, highlighting how text giving is on the rise.
But let’s break it down a little further. 35% of all Americans have a smartphone AND 87% of these owners access the internet on their handheld, 2/3 of which do so on any given day.
Tablets are adding to the equation with 1/3 of all Americans would be willing to purchase or make a transaction on a tablet. That’s much higher than they would on a smartphone. Consider that 20% of all U.S. citizens will have a tablet by 2014, and more than 4% already do.
The future is now. Just look at the increasingly strong numbers of people who are using smartphones, and now tablets. It was obvious at this past Spring’s SxSW interactive festival, where it became clear if you weren’t mobile, your brand was losing relevancy.
This is the part where most people say, “Well, that may be true, analytics shows relatively no one is accessing my site via mobile.” One of the most interesting finds in Chuck Martin’s book on mobile media, The Third Screen, was that mobile attracts mobile. Meaning, if your site is mobile, in comes the traffic. Case study after case study showed that when the user experience was optimized for the medium, it increased traffic.
If so many Americans are on mobile phones, it would be crazy not to offer them the opportunity to manage fundraising efforts on the road with an iPhone app. That’s just empowering smart grassroots management. Similarly, creating an auto direct for a mobile browser is spare someone from the over cumbersome desktop browser version of the site.
In a time where all nonprofits need more donations to enact their missions, why not hasten that process by facilitating better interaction between donor, fundraiser and cause? That’s the future of now: Fundraising on the go.
What do you think of mobile friendly fundraising?