Mobile phones are the most pervasive communications tool in the world. This alone makes them an excellent communications medium for organizations to use to reach out supporters, but actually doing so isn’t as easy or affordable as it should be. We’re working to change that.
We mentored our own Will White in a Google Summer of Code project meant to create a framework to better integrate sms and Drupal. What started off as a rather basic project exploded into a robust toolset that will truly lower the barriers to using sms in outreach efforts and integrating it into Drupal websites.
We’ve run sms outreach campaigns in the past, including one by Planned Parenthood during the November 2006 election. In this campaign Planned Parenthood sent supporters text message updates on the status of South Dakota’s vote on the statewide blanket ban on abortions. News on the vote reached supporters before it hit the airwaves and gave them value-added content on a crucial vote.
We’ve also experimented with using ringtones as a social tool. After the appalling response to Hurricane Katrina, we created the “Brownie, you’re doing a heckuva job” ringtone to let people voice their displeasure with the administration’s response every time their phone rang.
One of our passions is testing out new ideas, and we especially like ones that involve mobile phones. We share all of our success with the MobileActive community and other progressive groups.
References / Past Projects
Posts about Development Seed can be found here on the MobileActive blog.
Planned Parenthood
See Development Seed's project portfolio here.
