An earthquake in Haiti, a flood in Pakistan and other major global disasters require an extensive and rapid response from organizaitons such as the Red Cross, who must in turn look to donors to help fund relief efforts.
With the need to receive reliabled donations quickly, what better way than a text message? Mobile penetration is high in rich, developed countries and donating by text is a painless and convenient way for a donor to part with a few dollars.
ZipGive is one company that makes that donation process possible. It allows non-profit organizations to sign up for a keyword and shortcode (for example, a donor could text “Haiti” to “12345”). Then ZipGive collects the money from mobile carriers and distributes it to the organizations.
A division of Zipstripe Corp., ZipGive helped raise $500,000 in text donations for Haiti relief efforts and works with 80 charitable and non-profit organizations. In this video, AJ Marek presents at Toronto’s nextmedia conference.
Video shot and edited by Danny Boudreau.
