Innovation in Eastern and Central Europe

Posted by Michael Johnston on June 3rd, 2005 at 12:11am

Last week I had the pleasure of sharing with nonprofit fundraisers from Austria, Slovakia, Romania, and Hungary. For all of these countries, SMS - text messaging via cellular phones is a quickly emerging fundraising option. North American fundraisers should be watching carefully. In Austria, MSF raised 5% of total tsunami dollars through text messaging. Donors, through traditional media and participating mobile carriers, were given the chance to donate small single gifts — approximately 20 dollars as a single gift.

It’s not that single donation that was intriguing — North Americans started giving in small numbers over their cell phones during the tsunami disaster period — but it was MSF Austria’s successful conversion of these mobile phone donors to committed monthly donors. 50%! Yes, 50% of their single gift mobile phone donors converted to monthly committed giving via their bank accounts when contacted after making their single gifts.

Everyone think about that for a bit and see whether we shouldn’t all be testing text message fundraising and a monthly committed follow up.

In the post-communist countries, text messaging is catching on fast for fundraising. WWF Hungary is launching a text-message campaign to raise money for its first ever Danube-focused fundraising campaign. The Danube runs through Budapest is a vital part of both the country’s ecosystem and history. I’ll keep you posted on how their campaign has done. I also heard about a successful text-message fundraising campaign in Slovakia. Similarly, when I get results I’ll pass them on.

My final note’s one for North American fundraisers. Text messaging services are very low cost to start up. It’s time to hear about success stories from other countries. I’d love to hear about it.

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