DENVER, June 26, 2014 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The mGive Foundation (TMF) released its annual Text Donation Study today, which showed record-high levels of satisfaction among respondents with text giving. Overall, 98 percent of respondents said their experience in making a text donation was "excellent," or "good," the highest rating since TMF began the survey in 2011. For the first time respondents also chose text giving as their most preferred choice for making a donation, edging out online donations as a favorite method for charitable giving.
"The 2014 Text Donation Study proves the power and popularity of text giving among donors," said Jenifer Snyder, executive director of TMF. "Donors expressed the highest levels of satisfaction for text donating we've ever recorded and for the first time selected text donations as their most preferred method of making contributions to their favorite charities."
In analysis of survey results, TMF discovered a "Giving Preference Gap" among text donors. The gap shows that while text donors are both extremely satisfied with text donations, plan to continue to give in that way, and would select making a text donation as their most preferred method of giving, only 30 percent report text giving as a "usual" method of donating.
"Text donors want to give more through their mobile phones," said Snyder. "But the 'Giving Preference Gap' shows that this method of solicitation is under-used by the nonprofits they support. Results show ample opportunity for nonprofits to ask more of donors through mobile."
For the first time, the survey included questions on how text donors used their mobile phones to access social media. Seventy-four percent like to watch videos on YouTube through their mobile phones; followed by updating their Facebook statuses at 68 percent. Twitter is not nearly as popular with text donors, with 29 percent saying they use their mobile phones for Tweeting. Forty-five percent reported using their mobile phones to make a donation through their charity's website.
"Clearly, nonprofits need to see mobile as an extension of their social media outreach and seek opportunities to integrate their mobile and social media strategies," said Snyder. "In reality, mobile is social media. Our survey shows that the two are really inseparable."
The full survey report can be downloaded here.
The mGive Foundation (http://www.mGive.org) is a 501(c)(3) established to make it easy for nonprofits to quickly execute effective text donation campaigns – and for mobile operators to support them. The mGive Foundation has partnered with more than 60 of the nation's leading mobile carriers (covering 99 percent of U.S. mobile customers) to enable qualified nonprofits to increase overall donations and reach new audiences using affordable, reliable and regulation-compliant mobile donation campaigns. The mGive Foundation has supported more than 10,000 text donation campaigns for more than 500 nonprofit partners and processes around 85 percent of all text donations made today. We have worked with our charity partners to raise almost $70 million through text message donations.