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disaster relief

 
MobileActive08

A Global Summit about
Mobile Technology for Social Impact
October 13-15, 2008
Johannesburg, South Africa

 
 
Wireless Technology for Social Change
Read the new report on trends in mobile use by NGOs:
Wireless Technology for Social Change.

The report was commissioned by the UN Foundation/Vodafone Group Foundation Partnership and written by Katrin Verclas and Sheila Kinkade.
 

Mobile Giving Foundation

file under:
disaster relief, Foundations, Fundraising, and Philanthropy, sms, text-to-give
operates in:
United States

contact:
http://mobilegiving.org/

From MobileGiving.org:

The Mobile Giving Foundation brings the power and reach of mobile phones to nonprofit organizations as a new fundraising and donor interaction mechanism. Through the Mobile Giving Foundation, non profits can leverage the ubiquity of mobile without the complexity, expand and cultivate a new base of givers and create permissive donor interaction.

Read about a project of the Mobile Giving Foundation on the MobileActive blog.

References / Past Projects

From MobileGiving.org:

Our goal is to enable the use of wireless resources and technology to support good causes by solving the organizational and operational barriers that currently prevent the mobile channel from being effectively used for fund raising and donor interaction by charitable organizations. Merging philanthropy with the power of the mobile medium serves the broader objective of expanding the pool of contributors to include those who might only be able to afford to make a small gift through a $5 or $10 charge collected through their carrier bill. In addition, we have found through past experience with emergency relief for Katrina and tsunami victims that the interactive dynamic of the medium with other marketing channels truly makes an impulse gift possible ? you can respond to a call to action immediately whether it is delivered at point of sale, on television, via print, etc.



Twitter for Organizations #1: Guest Blogger Nate Ritter

January 15, 2008 | KatrinVerclas
file under:
causes, disaster relief, emergency, mobileactive, nonprofit, sms marketing, twitter

In a series of posts about Twitter for organizations, guest blogger Nate Ritter gives an overview of the benefits and pitfalls using Twitter. And because he is a geek, he's got an aggregator at the ready... (Modified and posted with permission from Nate's blog.)

My experiences in the San Diego fires in Southern California in late 2007 gave me an interesting outlook on how Twitter, as a tool, could be applied in different circumstances. For those of you not in the know: Twitter is a "free social networking and micro-blogging service that allows users to send "updates" (or "tweets"; text-based posts, up to 140 characters long) to the Twitter website, via short message service, instant messaging, or a third-party application such as Twitterrific" according to the Wikipedia. Just a few months after (and some even during) the 2007 firestorm some organizations are scratching the surface of what’s possible with this service.

Twitter is a tool. It’s a good one in some cases and and for some organizations, and useless for others. Don’t make Twitter the hammer and start looking at everything like a nail. Twitter does some things very well, but it doesn’t fit every organization’s goals. Here are some considerations that will help determine if Twitter could be useful for your organization. If one of these criteria benefits your community without too many hurdles for adoption, then Twitter might be the right tool for you.

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An SMS Plea for Help

July 4, 2006 | Bonnie Bogle
file under:
disaster relief, sms, sms activism
The UN World Food Programme recently received a different kind of text message – a direct plea for help from a refugee in northern Kenya. The message said, “My name is Mohammed Sokor, writing to you from Dagahaley refugee camp in Dadaab. Dear sir, there is an alarming issue here. People are given too few kilogrammes of food. You must help.”

In an article from the UN Refugee Agency about the SMS, reporter Greg Barrow asks what the impact would be if in addition to giving refugees food, the World Food Programme also gave them a few mobile phones and the numbers of all star donors like Bono and Bill Gates. Mohammed’s text message has been making the rounds in the international press so I don’t doubt that similar messages could draw further attention to problems in refugee camps. But I think a greater impact could be made if an organization, like the One Campaign for example, sought out SMS messages like Mohammed’s from people in refugee camps in need of urgent help and sent them to their network. I bet many people who receive such a personal message will want to help, and if they can help by making a small donation from their mobile phone or sending the sms message on to their political representatives, it could spur action to help alleviate problems such as Mohammed’s.

You can read the entire UNHCR article here.

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