Technology is increasingly relevant to Americans’ monetary contributions to the causes and
organizations they support. Previous research from the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project has found that one in five US adults (20%) have made a charitable contribution online, and that one in ten (9%) have made a charitable contribution using the text messaging feature on their mobile phone. Mobile giving played an especially prominent role during the aftermath of the January 2010 Haiti earthquake, as individual donors contributed an estimated $43 million to the assistance and reconstruction efforts using the text messaging feature on their cell phones.
This new mode of engagement offers opportunities to philanthropies and charitable groups for reaching new donors under new circumstances as messages spread virally through friend networks. At the same time, it poses new challenges, including the uncertainty in fund-raising groups about whether these new donors will remain engaged once they make their donation. In an effort to more fully understand the world of mobile giving, the Pew Internet Project, in partnership with the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University and the mGive Foundation, and supported by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, conducted the first in-depth study of mobile donors. This report on those who gave to the “Text for Haiti” campaign is based on telephone surveys with 863 individuals who contributed money to the Haiti earthquake efforts using the text messaging feature on their cell phones, and who consented to further communications at the telephone number they used to make their donation.
Technology is increasingly relevant to Americans’ monetary contributions to the causes and
organizations they support. Previous research from the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project has found that one in five US adults (20%) have made a charitable contribution online, and that one in ten (9%) have made a charitable contribution using the text messaging feature on their mobile phone. Mobile giving played an especially prominent role during the aftermath of the January 2010 Haiti earthquake, as individual donors contributed an estimated $43 million to the assistance and reconstruction efforts using the text messaging feature on their cell phones.
This new mode of engagement offers opportunities to philanthropies and charitable groups for reaching new donors under new circumstances as messages spread virally through friend networks. At the same time, it poses new challenges, including the uncertainty in fund-raising groups about whether these new donors will remain engaged once they make their donation. In an effort to more fully understand the world of mobile giving, the Pew Internet Project, in partnership with the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University and the mGive Foundation, and supported by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, conducted the first in-depth study of mobile donors. This report on those who gave to the “Text for Haiti” campaign is based on telephone surveys with 863 individuals who contributed money to the Haiti earthquake efforts using the text messaging feature on their cell phones, and who consented to further communications at the telephone number they used to make their donation.
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