News 14 Carolina Featuring MobileCause as Mobile Giving provider with Beth Eisenberg, Sr Account Executive

News 14 Carolina broadcast spot featuring MobileCause as premier mobile giving provider and interview with Beth Eisenberg, Senior Account Executive. Watch the full news spot and read the corresponding article.

http://coastal.news14.com/content/tech_talk/621414/tech-talk--handheld-donations-take-on-new-meaning

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News 14 Carolina Featuring MobileCause as Mobile Giving provider with Beth Eisenberg, Senior Account Executive Interview

NEW YORK -- A call to action we're seeing everywhere and by and large seem to be fulfilling. The Red Cross alone says via those quick and simple $10 a pop text donations, it has already raised more than $25 million for the relief effort in Haiti. If it's possible to pull even one positive from the disaster, it may very well be that the nation and world has found a new way to give and give immediately.

"Look at the magnitude of this disaster, they saw it on TV, so many people text message, they talk and they text. What quicker way to get aid to these poor people than to send a quick text, $10, wham, there it goes to the Red Cross International Fund," said Ellen Webner of AT&T.

Sending a text donation is obviously simple to do literally anytime from anywhere, even on a street corner in the middle of a rainstorm. The technology has been around for at least four to five years, so why has it taken so long to really catch on? The last big effort was after Hurricane Katrina and the Red Cross says after that, it raised about $400,000 via texts. Again, for Haiti alone, already $20 million has been collected.

Some say it's the publicity texting has got, not only in mass media, but virally through social networks like YouTube and Facebook. MobileCause, just one of the many companies that facilitates text messaging donations, also says it's really just a matter of allowing generation TEXT to get involved in a way that's most comfortable to them.

"The way that the generation on this planet is headed in terms of communication they just met at a perfect time. People don't leave voice messages anymore they'd rather just send a text," said Beth Eisenberg of MobileCause.

Developers of the technology say text donations don't necessarily hold a large spot in the future of fundraising just because of the sheer dollars it can bring in, but rather in its ability to quickly and easily get people involved.

"A mobile donation is a donation that typically wouldn't have happened before. It plants the seed for future donations," Eisenberg said. "Do we think a non-profit can sustain with $5 gifts every month? We think it's a channel, a way to keep people connected to an organization."

The one drawback sometimes mentioned with text donations is the potential three month lag between the money first registering on your bill and its delivery to the recipient. In the case of the Haiti donations though, most of the wireless carriers have agreed to front all or most of the donations in order to make it a more immediate transfer.