For The State Journal

Some organizations in West Virginia are dabbling in high-tech fundraising.

As easy as and faster than pledging to send money later, mobile giving lets philanthropists text a code to a number and pay the resulting charge (their donation) on their cell phone bill.

Mobile giving has been around for a couple of years but it gained the most awareness in January when the Red Cross asked people to text “HAITI” to a number to make a $10 donation to earthquake relief. Text message donations to several relief organizations raised tens of millions of dollars for the island nation.

The Children’s Miracle Network at West Virginia University Children’s Hospital tried a mobile fund drive at a Mountaineers football game in 2008, said CMN Director Lora Edgell.

“It was a learning experience,” Edgell said. “I’m not saying we’ll never do it again.

“In the fall of 2008, it was very new and people didn’t understand it,” she added. “We raised some money, but it wasn’t as successful as we’d hoped. At a football game, it’s very hard to capture people’s attention.”

Edgell said the message to text and give was flashed on the scoreboard screen a couple of times. If people were looking away, they missed it.

“I think if we ever do it again, we will do more of a marketing plan and advertise it,” she said.

Exposure is what the WVU Chapter of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes has gained most from its yearlong text message campaign, campus director Amy Wagner said.

Through the campaign, donors as asked to text “FCA” to 20222. Once the text is sent, a one-time $5 charge is added to donors’ cell phone bills. That $5 goes to the ministries of the WVU chapter of the FCA.

The group’s contract with the company that coordinated all the donations from customers of different mobile carriers is about to expire. Wagner said FCA will review the project and see if they want to continue it.

“In terms of success from a financial perspective, it has not been as successful as we’d like to see,” Wagner said, adding she did not know how much money had been raised.

“From an awareness perspective, just to let our state know what we’re about and what we’re trying to accomplish, I think it has been tremendously successful to raise awareness. It’s been moderately successful at generating gifts to our organization.”

She said FCA is supported entirely by contributions. FCA is the largest Christian campus ministry in the world, according to FCA.org. Its goal is to tell people about Jesus Christ on the common ground of athletics.

“When it started, the campaign was centered around awareness and not around giving,” said Wagner, who was hired in June

She said she thinks one of the benefits of a mobile fundraising campaign are how easy it makes giving. “In this climate, in this economy, you want to make it as convenient as possible,” she said.

Wagner added that she thinks text fund drives would most benefit causes that bring an emotional reaction.

“It is an emotional appeal,” she said. “I think those who do it best have that emotional appeal because you are helping with a ministry or a disaster or a cure for a disease. For anyone who would choose to use the text campaign, it’s really an emotional type of giving if, as a funding mechanism, you need to be able to allow people to know what you do and connect in an emotional or spiritual way.”