GLOBAL CHALLENGES

uGive Charity App Yields One-Stop Donating

R. Colin Johnson | Date: 04-19-10 | Comments

More than 400 charities can now instantly update their pledge drives and other fund raisers on "uGive," a free carousel app for the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch.

Today, many charities collect wireless donations by using text-to-give, which bills to a mobile user�s telephone number. They also write their own iPhone apps that bill through the iTunes store. Texting to the donation number is quicker, with the carrier just adding the charge to a user's monthly telephone bill. Unfortunately, text-to-give depends on getting the donation number to users�usually by texting an alert to former donors about the fund raiser.

On the other hand, if a charity writes its own free app for the iTunes store, then it can plead its case before a half billion iTunes users without having to know each user's telephone number. Unfortunately, any donations then have to be billed through the iTunes store, which takes a cut. Plus pledge drives and fund raisers have to be scheduled in advance, since an app takes weeks to be approved by the iTunes store.

Mobilecause�s uGive app in action on the Apple iPhone. �Donate� buttons on the app permit users to send a text-to-donate message that bills donations to the mobile number rather than the iTunes store.

Los Angeles-based Mobilecause offers the best of both worlds by allowing its member charities to list their fund raisers under its carousel uGive app. So far, about 40 of Mobilecause's 400 member charities have begun broadcasting about fund raisers for their charities with uGive, but the rest are expected to follow suit. In addition, �donate� buttons on the app permit users to send a text-to-donate message that bills donations to the mobile number rather than the iTunes store.

�uGive allows charities to update their fund raising activities at any time�without having to get anyone's approval,� says Mobilecause President Daniel Scalisi. �uGive is also the first iPhone app to introduce mobile billing, so that the charity receives 100 percent of the donation.�

Mobilecause member charities use a suite of five mobile donor tools that enable Web services to launch and manage their mobile donation business, including both micro- and macro-billing, mobile messaging and text polling over SMS (short message service), Twitter, and SMTP (Simple Mail-Transfer Protocol). Its newest app, uGive, integrates the new carousel capability; helps to recruit donors with textual, pictorial and video descriptions; plus give users a one-click method of following their favorite charities on Facebook and Twitter.

�Back in 2009, we acquired a company named IUGO which was building stand-alone iPhone apps for non-profits,� Scalisi relates. �But as soon as we acquired them, we started thinking about an alternative to dedicated apps that was more cost-effective and which didn't take weeks to deploy. That's when we came up with the idea for a carousel app�so charities could deploy new fund-raising drives in minutes.�

Next, Mobilecause is crafting apps for the other operating systems�Android, BlackBerry and Palm�so that their member charities can start fund raisers that deploy to all smartphone platforms at the same time.