Digital Donations: Increase Your Revenue with Mobile Payments
While snail-mail remains the most effective tool for reaching your donor base, a rapidly growing slice of the donor pie avoids transactions that can’t be made online. To showcase this, online charitable giving rises a steady 13-14% every single year, reflecting a growing preference among donors of all stripes for ease and mobility in online giving.
But there’s an additional trend changing the landscape of online giving: giving via mobile devices. As of 2015, 50.3% of e-commerce originates on a smartphone or tablet—that’s one-half of all digital transactions occurring through an app or website in the palm of somebody’s hand.
And that number will continue to increase as millennials take over more of the workforce, and by extension, generate a greater potential for charitable giving.
Let’s Talk About Convenience
Millennials are already known for their high expectations of online user experience and ease of use. Some have even suggested they lack the attention span for greater nonprofit participation.
But every industry has realized that millennials represent the future of commerce, and nonprofits are already employing sophisticated digital strategies to capture just a portion of the millennial demographic’s valuable attention—and their future contributions.
With so many organizations trying to woo them, despite their limited personal resources and capital, millennials have to choose carefully with which causes to actively engage. And with a chokehold on their time and energy, millennials will only take the time to give if the process is simple and easy.
With millennials taking the cake for the largest demographic of smartphone owners, the easiest way for them to participate in nonprofit activity is via a mobile device. 50% of ecommerce now comes from mobile devices, ensuring that the future of online fundraising lies in mobile payment and participation solutions—and the generation that will fund it.
Instantly Widen Your Supporter Net
The benefit of going mobile with your payment solution is global. Mobile payments are a low-cost alternative to traditional banking in areas outside of the U.S. A school auction could the giving power of relatives overseas without dealing with foreign banks or international mail.
Mobile payments can also drive up participation in live auction events. How many guests at your auction have to cancel their attendance at the last minute, get sick, or can’t find a babysitter? How many people would participate in your auction if they could—but can’t be there on that single night each year when you host your big annual event?
Mobile payments will not directly ensure greater fundraising, however it will increase the potential for participation in your cause and, if you play your cards right, that can translate to higher giving.
The Cost of Cash Payments
Moving to mobile isn’t just about increasing your fundraising revenue. It’s also a great way to save money on overhead—money in the form of time, and in the form of energy redirected toward fundraising, instead of counting cash.
Accepting and processing cash comes with a lot of minutia. You need more volunteers at a nonprofit event to manually accept and record cash payments, whereas mobile payments in Greater Giving are processed and recorded automatically. Add the cost of counting cash, storing it, keeping it secure, and eventually taking it to the bank to deposit, and what a headache you could avoid!
Mobile payments require less manpower, and guests wait less while you count cash, allowing you to focus your efforts on raising more funds.
