Keeping Up

Greetings friends! I hope everyone had a good weekend. It is finally feeling like spring around here which makes me very happy. So what's the latest? Well, I'm trying to work on keeping current with fundraising technology and it is a little challenging. The Virtual Aid Drive that we've been using for online donations for years is not mobile friendly. We have a mobile app being designed for us which is rather awesome- I'm super excited about that. I need  to have a mobile donation platform which can be easily used. PayPal is mobile friendly, so our app can link to that, but it is not visually impressive. The Virtual Aid Drive looks awesome- it is a shopping cart style design and it just makes you want to donate. I called them today to inquire about a mobile version and they said they are working on it, but don't have any idea when it will be ready. That was rather disappointing. Today, I was researching different fundraising platforms which are mobile friendly. I didn't see any that would work for us. There were some sites that don't have any set-up or monthly charges, but I didn't like how they looked. There was one site that looked really good, but it cost $50 per month plus set-up. I want a site that looks as smart at the VAD and is mobile friendly and affordable- it doesn't seem like it should be that difficult. This is the same problem that I had with trying to find a platform for text message donations/outreach. I ended up not going with any company because I couldn't find one that I liked and was a good price for it. I imagine that there must be a lot of non profits that are in the same position. We want to have all the latest in marketing and fundraising, but the cost is prohibitive. As mobile marketing becomes more popular, hopefully the competition will increase and the prices will lower. I wish that Constant Contact which we used for our email and shoe club event promotions would launch a mobile product that we could use for donations. There email sign-up form is mobile friendly which is good. I don't want to sit around and wait until the VAD becomes mobile friendly. Before we had our VAD on our website, the number of online donations we processed was small. After, we launched the shopping cart the online donations increased more than 100%- it was really something. It is important that we have a version that is mobile friendly. So many people are looking at things on their smart phones and if we're not competitive that way, we are missing the boat.

On that note- I'm off to go back and research some more... and eat my grapefruit! Until tomorrow friends...