TwitPay? But What About Twit2Donate? Maybe in 2012?

Last December, when I was fundraising for the Sharing Foundation via Twitter, my colleague Kevin Gamble didn't want to get out of his chair to find his wallet in order to make an online donation.   After using some Twitter donor solicitation techniques, he contributed.

The tool I really needed was a way for Kevin to simply twitter his $10 donation to the Sharing Foundation.  But, now he can - with a new tool called Twitpay.  According to Killer Startups, will enable anybody send payments using the popular micro-blogging platform via pay pal.  (Hat Tip PlanetNelson)

Killer Startups describes how it works:

This is implemented in the following manner. First of all, you have to fund a Twitpay via PayPal. The amount of this account can vary between 10 and 50 US$. Once the account has been created, you can make payments to any person simply be tweeting. That is, if you want to pay Mark Wolffe $2 all you have to do is enter a message like “@MW twitpay $2 for services rendered” and the corresponding amount will be debited from your Twitpay account.

On the other hand, to see if someone has paid you using Twitpay all you have to do is keep an eye open on the replies tab of your Twitter stream. The site also includes a balance page that will provide you that information.

My initial question is .. hmm how will they avoid fundraising scammers? I'm sure they thought about that?  How do potential donors do their due diligence in 140 characters?

Is Twit2Donate too far behind?  Maybe by 2012.  Peter Deitz has a post called "How Will Your Nonprofit Raise Money in 2012?  He acknowledges the bad economy and it's impact on fundraising, but makes the following point:

Current best practices will serve nonprofits just fine in 2009. Between email solicitation, direct mail, major donors, and grant-writing, the vast majority of nonprofits will weather the economic hard times. But a shifting communications environment and changing donor demographics could render those best practices ineffective at best, and obsolete at worst, as early as 2012.

I agree.  In fact, I made this same prediction in September when I was asked by a new quarterly publication called Civil Society IT that focuses IT for charities to answer this question:

"When will online fundraising using social media and social networks become more than just a niche source of income?"

Peter didn't include any demographic analysis in his article, but I usually refer to these Internet use and demographic statistics.

Source

I got challenged once in a workshop when I showed this graphic at a workshop from some long-time fundraising professionals.  The challenge was that younger people will start using email when they enter the workplace.  Yes, maybe, but they will still communicate through social networks mostly likely.  Habits are hard to break.  And, we're now starting to see the demographics of social networks mature with their users.

Source

Peter also talks about the shift in donor expectations.

In 2012, individuals will come to your organization with the expectation of being full partners in your work, not just dollar wells to be tapped when cash is needed. Donations will be a consequence of meaningful engagement, not a measurement of it.

He goes on to offer some advice about how to prepare your organization for this new world of fundraising which includes getting comfortable w/social media, participating in online contests, hire staff with social media skills, empower your interns, and get an Iphone (a nod to growing impact of mobile phones and fundraising.)

I think these are great tips, but we're probably in still in some transition phase in terms of organizational culture being able to absorb this amount of change in 3-4 years.   I think there needs to be some integenerational understanding within the organization and change management processes to fully and successfully adopt free agent fundraising strategies.

What will it take for change in your organization's fundraising practices? 

Comments

[Christine Egger]

Great post, Beth. I especially appreciate the addition to demographics analysis to Peter's predictions (which I heartily agree with, although I'd put it out to 2015 or so). The distinct differences between the under 44/over 44 demographics, by the way, provide a much needed explanation for why my husband (45) is firmly in the email-only camp whereas I (42) am rapidly becoming much more accustomed to Facebook and Twitter style communications. :)

I'm not sure that email will remain the communication-of-choice in the office environment... can imagine a hybrid between Twitter and email... picturing a carrier pidgeon avatar here... that allows you to direct message (to many) via Twitter and ALSO allows you to attach documents, rather than just embed a link.

Your write-up on ways to operationalize "microsharing" provides a great intro in where that evolution is heading: http://tr.im/192c. Will be fun, as always, to see where it all goes...

[Beth Kanter]

Here's a response from twitpay
http://twitter.com/twitpay/status/1017775118

about their nonprofit fundraising approach

[Jeremy Raines]

Hi Beth, I'm one of the founders of Twitpay, and I think the charity use case is very exciting. The only hurdle at this point is being able to cash out your Twitpay account in real money (as opposed to Amazon credit or a donation to one of our 9 founder-chosen charities). This is just a legal issue that micropayment services face and should be sorted out fairly soon (definitely before 2012!), and we look forward to not just facilitating Twitter-based fundraising but also promoting the concept in general and specific campaigns that utilize Twitpay.

Cheers,

Jeremy

[Beth Kanter]

I'm thinking that using twitter to direct donations to a secure and respected donation third party like Networked For Good might be in the future. Right now it is like monopoly money!

[John Treadway]

Beth and Jeremy -

I'd love to see if we can make this happen sooner than later. Givvy already has a database of the U.S. charities and a connection to Network for Good for donations. We're releasing our search API shortly and would be interested in seeing if we can come up with some way to make the twit2donate model work now.

Hit me up at jtreadway ... givvy.com.

John

[Will Hull - United Cerebral Palsy eCommunications/eDevelopment Specialist]

Thanks for the information Beth. I totally agree and infact as part of an exercise in my latest graduate level class, I was asked to submit a proposal for research. I chose "A willingness to donate using the Facebook Causes application." I can share it with you if you like. I don't have results as it was just a proposal and part of an exercise in research methods and statistical application techniques.

Long story short, my design was to take 400 nonprofits who have self-identified as a "health" nonprofit of the over 24,000 "health" nonprofits and take the percentage of people who have donated from each one of those against the total number of cause members and compare that against the mean (average) of those that donated before the causes application existed (which would be zero, since it didn't exist before May 2007) and my statistical analysis would be if the change in the mean were statistically significant or not.

This would measure the willingness to donate amongst cause members of health nonprofits on Facebook. Of course, as always there would be limitations on the research, but it is a start in the direction of thinking about how we could measure and quantify results from social networking starting with, in my mind, one of the most developed in fundraising methods and visited social networks available.

Let me know, I could get you a copy, but remember it is just a graduate paper and not actual research.

Thanks,
Will