Recently, the Progressive Communicators of Washington, DC (PCDC) held a panel discussion on Mobile Communications for Progressives at the World Wildlife Fund here in DC. The purpose was to bring together some of the leading thinkers and practitioners in the area of mobile campaigns and to find out what is working for nonprofits.

The speakers Included The Following:

Jeff Lee: Moderator and past President of Distributive Networks, the company that ran the Obama text messaging campaign in 2008.
Jed Alpert: Co-Founder and Chief Strategy Officer of Mobile Commons, a leading mobile SMS campaign provider.
Susan Murray: Sr. Officer for the Red Cross managing corporate partnerships. Susan was responsible for the record breaking Haiti SMS text campaign that brought in over $30 million via mobile phones.
Ron Vassallo: CEO of Kaptivate and Author of Are We There Yet? Non-Profit Adoption of Mobile Giving.
Rachel Labruyere:  Reform Immigration FOR America (RI4A) Campaign. Rachel LaBruyere is the Deputy Online Director for the Reform Immigration FOR America (RI4A) campaign where she manages one of the largest SMS lists in the nation at over 140,000 names and numbers.

David Miller: David Miller is the founder and CEO of Mobile Discovery, a leading mobile and social media technology company enabling new types of interactive marketing

One key take away from the event from my perspective was around the fact that SMS and mobile giving dominated the discussion. This is no surprise, as Susan Murray from the Red Cross was a panel member and non-profits are always looking for additional channels to raise money.

The people who work in online advocacy and fundraising are some of the most creative people I know. In 2009 their campaigns made me laugh or helped me channel my frustration over injustices into action. A couple of them moved me so much that I even teared up. Here’s my list of the best websites and online campaigns from 2009.  

Training and tips for do it yourself nonprofit marketers

To date, successfully fundraising on Twitter has been elusive for most nonprofits. TipJoy had promise and buzz, but quickly shut down. TwitPay.me filled the void, but has received very little attention. Micr0-donations via PayPal just don’t seem to appeal to donors. Twonate has a different spin on Twitter fundraising by essentially managing pledges to donate via Tweets, but of all Twitter fundraising tools I have seen come and go over the last year, Give a Tweet by far has the most potential.

Let’s start by admitting that the fundraising pyramid is a lie. Most major donors at most organizations do not rise up through the ranks of $15 donors, who become $100 donors, and then ultimately become $100,000 donors.

Most major donors come to organizations via other major donors. Most low dollar direct mail or Internet donors hang around for a year or two and then stop giving altogether.

Core behavioral economics principles offer a clue why.

Last week I wrote about a pair of surveys that looked at social media and nonprofits. One came to the conclusion that social media was a waste of time; the other talked about strategic implications on how to be successful.

User research finds significant deficiencies in non-profit organizations' website content, which often fails to provide the info people need to make donation decisions.