One year after an earthquake devastated Haiti, the Mobile Giving Foundation has a message for the public: you can still donate money to Haiti via your cellphone.  That might surprise people who associate cellphone-based donations with recent disasters. But MGF, an Issaquah, Wash.-based organization that offers nonprofits the technical infrastructure to collect mobile donations, says more than a dozen charities are still operating text message campaigns related to Haiti.  Among the group are the Clinton/Bush Haiti Relief Fund, Mercy Corps, World Vision, Wyclef Jean’s Yele Haiti Foundation and Sean Penn’s JP/Haitian Relief Organization, each of which are accepting $10 donations through text messages using keywords like “Quake” and “Haiti”. [For details on how exactly to donate, go here.]  “Need still exists in Haiti,” said Jim Manis, MGF’s chairman and chief executive, in an interview. “There are still complications from the earthquake, as well as from cholera and political and organizational challenges.”  The catastrophic aftermath of the Haiti quake powered a breakthrough in mobile giving. Last year, around six million people in the U.S. and Canada made donations to 36 different organizations through MGF, ultimately raising $43 million for Haiti relief. (Not all Haiti-related charities used MGF as their mobile donations “clearinghouse”, but most did.)  Nearly all (90%) of those donors were new to philanthropy in general as well as to mobile giving. A number were relatively young, but liked the fact that they could tap a familiar technology – text messaging – to get quickly involved in a cause. Older givers appreciated the privacy afforded by mobile giving, says Manis. Since mobile donations are basically anonymous, they remove the risk of “junk mail in your mailbox,” he explains.  The hope now is that these first-time givers will contribute again and to other causes over time. To encourage them to do so, MGF advises charities to be explicit about how and where they are applying these mobile funds. One method is to send text messages back to donors with that information or a link to a website that hosts that data. (Charities can ping donors as long as they have agreed to receive such communication. This opt-in process is generally done by text message after the donor has made a donation.)  The Yele Foundation, for instance, attracted fierce criticism last year regarding its operations and expenditures. Manis says the organization has since cleaned up. “They totally rebuilt that foundation and published a detailed report about the money raised and how they spent it,” he says.  MGF also wants charities to support mobile giving year-round, even when there is not an immediate disaster to address. The idea, says Manis, is to view mobile as a new channel for donations that could grow to be as important as the Internet or email. A number of organizations seem to have realized this already. Manis says MGF is currently handling more than 800 campaigns for hundreds of charities.  “Emergency response donations are typically impulsive,” says Manis. “Charities now have the opportunity to be thoughtful about where to direct money.”
The head of the Mobile Giving Foundation discusses how the Haiti quake changed mobile philanthropy and why it’s important to keep donating.