Open Fundraising launches mobile regular giving service
Howard Lake | 19 July 2012 | News
Mobile fundraising specialists Open Fundraising have launched Mobilise, a platform that lets mobile phone users set up regular gifts to charity.
Developed together with charity telephone specialists Listen, the service is already being used by Unicef, WWF and St John Ambulance.
Using Mobilise, donors can set up a regular gift with one text and to choose whether to skip individual payments. They can share their support with their contacts via social media channels.
Charities can then communicate with those donors via text, MMS and mobile Internet.
The system can also let charities set up different welcome journeys and ongoing communications programme, depending on when or how a donor was recruited. Charities can see sign-ups in real-time, meaning they can optimise recruitment as they wish.
Mobilise can be enhanced by another module, Analyse, which offers data analysis and visualisation.
Open acknowledge that initially the system will be most useful to larger charities that run complex, multi-channel recruitment programmes. However, they add that in the coming months they will be developing a simplified ‘self-service’ version for smaller organisations.
Building Mobilise
The Mobilise system has been built and is hosted by Open Market Ltd, one of the world’s largest mobile services providers.
The whole system has been made possible by a regulatory exemption granted to Open Fundraising by the UK regulator PhonePay Plus. Open have been working with them for over eighteen months to test and refine regular mobile payments.
Open believe that, in the short term, the system will be most useful to larger charities that run complex, multi-channel recruitment programmes. But over
the coming months they will be developing a simplified ‘self-service’ version for smaller organisations.
“Refreshing alternative to Direct Debit”
Tim Longfoot, Managing Director of Open Fundraising, said: “We predict that SMS will become the primary communication channel and that single and regular mobile payments will become the first choice for the 21st century donor.”
Tobin Aldrich, Director of Fundraising at WWF UK, added:
“With Mobilise we have a platform that puts regular payments and communications into the same channel. It offers a refreshing alternative to direct debit – giving donors control of their regular gifts”.
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About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.