The latest book on the next generation of e-philanthropy, People to People Fundraising, officially launched on Wednesday 19th February 2008 in New York, along with a complementary website, www.p2pfundraising.org, that aims to promote the book and and mobile mobilization throughout the world.

Unfortunately, I was unable to attend the launch but instead decided to provide a brief snippet on my blog.

In my contributing chapter, “Your Organization in the Donor’s Pocket”, the text opens with an Aladdin’s Lamp dream story of mobile mobilization inspiration. As the book is primarily about advances in the internet and web2.0, such as facebook and myspace, my chapter particularly stands out as the only one which deals with cell phone technology.

One dark night, I dreamed that two fundraising friends and I had found a magical golden lamp, complete with a genie and one wish each. One of my colleagues, who works with large donors, wished for a list of the world’s richest philanthropists. His wish was granted and the list appeared in his hands. My other colleague, an expert proposal writer, wished for the gift of knowing what projects his donor foundations were seeking beforehand. His wish was also granted and a very successful 12 months followed. Then came my turn, I wished for an interactive marketing medium that is portable, personal, instantaneous, massive and easy to use. I awoke from my dream with the sound of a cell phone ringing in my ears.

With mobile phones rapidly changing the way we communicate, I am determined to exploit this medium, and specifically, SMS messaging and and other new media mobile technology for NGO communication purposes.

And given that over 9 billion text messages were sent worldwide every hour in 2007 alone, this could revolutionize the way the social sector operates.

While the social sector is generally somewhat fearful about using this type of technology, during major catastrophes, SMS services, and other new media, are often the preferred methods used to send and accept international donations.

But how can we persuade people to donate using their mobile phones on a daily basis?

I believe that telephone companies need to develop affordable, ethically defensible payment services for donations, whereby fundraising can be based on registered “mobile activists” and then this method can be integrated with older techniques.

What about using the lists of mobile activists to conduct proactive telephone fundraising?

And what is the future for mobile phone technology being incorporated into the social sector:
Could we soon be conducting face to face fundraising with our mobiles?
Could we send social sector commercials via MMS?
Could a social sector broadcast its work on a TV channel that is received by mobile phones?

All of this, and so much more, will soon be possible.

If you can’t resist reading further, the book is available for purchase online from Amazon.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 26th, 2008 at 8:46 am and is filed under Home, Management Innovation, Mobile Mobilization. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.