Seeking your advice on donate-by-SMS services

October 21, 2012 7:49 AM

What are your experiences with using a service to receive donations via SMS/text message at your charity?

I'm looking into all the variety of services that allow a charity or 501(c)(3) to receive donations via SMS or text message. What services have you tried at your charity? What were your experiences? What were your donors' responses and experiences? Is there a service you would particularly recommend?

I'm particularly interested in services with low or non-existent monthly fees, that have a small transaction cost per donation, cause minimal hassle for the donor, and that work seamlessly with PayPal, Amazon, or Google Checkout.

We'd prefer not to use services that require the user download a special app to their mobile phone. Instead, we'd prefer that it simply be a straight text-message transaction: user sends a special code or word to a specific mobile shortcode, gets a confirmation text back, confirms the transaction, then the donation is billed to the donor by their cell phone service provider.

posted by Mo Nickels to Work & Money (1 answer total)

Oh, and we're very interested in services that don't require that the charity/501(c)(3) have more than $500,000 a year in donations!
posted by Mo Nickels at 7:52 AM on October 21, 2012