Mobile Groove

How can the charitable sector can leverage mobile to connect with the public and collect donations on a massive scale? We talk with Andrew Darling, Associate Director of Market Development at OpenMarket, a company providing payment and messaging services to mobile retail and commerce clients worldwide. OpenMarket is also a driving force in efforts to help charities put together the approaches and platforms that will allow them to take donations and connect with the people who give to relief efforts and causes around the world.

The benefits and the business models around mobile are the topic of Empowering the Charitable Sector with Interactive Technology II (September 15, London). The all-day knowledge seminar organized by AIME (the Association for Interactive media & Entertainment) is already standing room only (!), an unexpectedly high attendance that tells us the topic strikes a chord with charities, advertising & marketing agencies, service providers, broadcasters, industry bodies and mobile operators–all the players that need to come together and work together to maximize the potential for all kinds of charities to use mobile.

The heartbreaking images from Japan are difficult to view even if you don’t have friends or family in the region. We experienced a similar anguish when we saw the destruction following the earthquake in Haiti. It prompted us to use our mobile phones to donate more than $43 million for relief efforts and marked a milestone in mobile giving.

For many, it was the first donation to a cause — ever. In fact, the American Red Cross reports that more than 90 percent of the donors for Haiti were new to the organization, showing how mobile can extend the reach of giving.

This week has seen both large tech firms (Bing) and small startup companies come under fire after their initiatives to solicit donations for Japan’s earthquake and tsunami victims in exchange for social support of their brands were viewed more as opportunistic PR than genuine efforts to help victims. How should marketers use social media for social good?

We welcome Ken Herron, social marketing authority and CMO at social applications and solutions company SocialGrow Inc., who will author a regular new social marketing advice column, #DearKen, to provide our readers with answers to their questions about social marketing technologies, tools, and best practices. To submit a question, tweet it with the hashtag “#DearKen”. All tweets will be acknowledged, and considered as being submitted for publication.

A year ago this month the world witnessed a massive earthquake shook Haiti, and the citizens of the world, to their core. The extent of the damage following the disaster on January 12, 2010, quickly reached cataclysmic proportions. An estimated three million people were affected by the quake. The Haitian government also reported 230 thousand people died, 300 thousand were injured and 1 million were made homeless.

The earthquake also triggered a global response and a mobile awakening, moving mobile giving — using our mobile phones to make donations to causes such as earthquake relief — to the top of our minds and to the fore of the mobile industry agenda.