You might hear that nonprofits and churches are getting better around tech adoption, but for most of them, it was more like one step higher rather than heading to the top. We believe in mobile adoption not because we are tech-centric, but because the younger generations are left out in the many impact-related businesses. The message of the day: “Younger donors need to help educate their church and nonprofit leaders about technology and their lifestyles.
Mountain View, CA - 10/12/2019
MercyWallet App is a sophisticated universal giving app made in Silicon Valley. It provides location-based and QR-Giving to help mobile-based donors to donate to churches, nonprofits, and at a fundraising event. The app was made in response to the unwillingness from many organizations to go mobile yet. The App will either send donations directly to a recipient’s bank account or deliver checks to non-registered organizations at a little cost. Our users are mostly Gen-Z, millennials, and older generations that somehow decided to try our app once and got addicted to it.
Gen-Zs are very energetic and have submitted multiple requests to list their churches, schools, or other nonprofits in our apps. Apple’s iOS App Review Guideline demanded that we are not to send donations for organizations that are not verified by Benevity.org. So, part of our business operation is to lobby and help nonprofits and churches to claim their page on causes.benevity.org.
Some dioceses and churches are still suffering from the terror of being sued and paranoid about security to the point that they do not trust Apple, Google, or Benevity. It is somewhat understandable. But the irony is they have decided to accept various online-givings, insecure website presence, and different other outdated IT solutions. How do we know? Because we’ve helped so many of them to get their IT right.
Quotes of the year when talking to nonprofits and churches on behalf of mobile donors have been:
1. I cannot enter any information about our church online, I can’t signup on any websites, including Benevity. — a remote church priest with a website.
2. We understand that donors want it and the situation, but we cannot let you know anything, including any updates, or the right person who can make a decision about this. — IT lead at a major Catholic Archdiocese.
Of course, there are thousands of other organizations that follow the tech need of their donors. They claimed their pages ways a long time ago. A few Google directors and employees in Sunnyvale spoke about the difficulties in asking faith-based organizations to adopt mobile giving. Usually, religious organizations are only moving forward when a crisis or large-amount of money involved; this is a sad but true reality of many organizations.
Does it mean that mobile-giving is too early? No! Big nonprofit enterprises and many leaders that are open about technology are already there, but it takes time to see nation-wide mass adoptions.
New posts from various nonprofit tech websites reveal a lot of entrepreneurs and businesses are bringing fundraising technology to various nonprofits, which requires new donors of a nonprofit to sign-up and fill out numerous information. Since most of the new technologies are meant to be a general contribution, the nonprofits won’t stop asking donors to perform another action to accept different campaigns.
Mountain View, CA - 09/20/2019
Branding and Marketing always win people, sometimes with no value-added. If we look at some of the new fundraising tools out there, most of them looked like PayPal from 10 years ago. If we ask ourselves, what is different now compared to a decade ago? I think the spread of Crowd-Funding, Text-2-Give, Corporate Match-Fund, and Online-Giving are the only visible signs of progress. Most are centered around the non-profit, those who deliver much value to individual donors are not many.
I think we can all agree that GoFundMe brings one of the latest innovations in the donation spaces. Facebook is doing a tremendous job allowing fundraisers to jump in easily. The problem with these platforms: It depends on the donation opportunities provided by the nonprofits, and if the campaign is started by the nonprofits itself, it requires a lot of marketing budget.
It takes human-centered design and shift of paradigm in the nonprofit world how to befriend with donors and give them the freedom to help. It is about building a community from grassroots without the distraction of news or other kinds of information. Look at how Venmo helps creates community and how everyone can easily pay one another over a meal, the power of shared users and narrowing the function of a platform is necessary to build a low-cost fundraising effort.
Our nonprofit publishes the MercyWallet App to seamlessly help all donors to donate to any subgroups in non-profit organizations, even if they do not have online giving. We will send a non-registered nonprofit a check on your behalf. Signing is free for any non-profits who’d like to receive the donations directly to their bank account.
The app helps donors to talk to one another in the messaging board to make a vibrant and active community, seamlessly make any donations to any sharable causes via QR/Link, make a new restricted donation on user’s initiative, and pledge a Match-Fund for other donors. All, without any necessary actions from the non-profits. The app also lets non-profits send a mobile Notification to any existing donors with an extra charge.
Catholicer is a 501c3 helping Catholic Professionals build companies that evangelizes, Catholicer incubates a new form of Company called Faith Corporation. We agreed to partner with MercyWallet Inc, an incubated company, to run a donation aggregator app and to provide tax-related documents to donors of non-registered non-profits.
mercywallet@catholicer.com
Catholicer – MercyWallet App
After interviewing numerous fundraising agencies who gave a talk at the past NTC 2019, we found that the greatest changes are coming.
Mountain View, CA - 09/25/2019
MercyWallet is a universal donation app published and operated by Catholicer. MercyWallet is proven to be more than up to speed with the current needs, but even are disrupting the entire donation industry. Here goes what you need to pay attention to in terms of tech trend coming to non-profit spaces:
1. Digital Wallet
Everyone is looking for Apple Pay, Google Pay, and the easiest way to donate to increase conversion rate.
2. Data Science
There are a few agencies who start accumulating data from their clients. Most non-profits have tons of data sitting in their office for decades, unused. Machine learning is coming, but human-centered-design and data analysis are more important than ever. Without nonprofits owning digital data, AI can't enter the fundraising space easily.
3. Retention of Smaller Donors
More and more nonprofits are moving away from the philanthropic model, due to the industry shift that focuses more on sustainability. Everyone is looking for a new way to communicate with their donors in a brand new way and better strategy. To sum, a new way of digital marketing based on personalization.
4. Peer 2 Peer
Like in the old days of gofundme, many are volunteering to fundraise for a cause. Nonprofits need to adopt this model better, and even more, to leverage the power of community.
5. Event-Based Solution
More nonprofits are run and attended by the younger generation that seeks experience, there have been more companies out there who focuses on digitizing the donation process in various live events. Nonprofits who do not seek a new way of doing live fundraising might get stuck with older donors.
mercywallet@catholicer.com
Catholicer – MercyWallet App
