Is Mobile Fundraising the Next Frontier for Charities?

Premium SMS is the easiest way to raise money over the phone by billing charges to the customer’s bill, but it clearly has shortcomings for nonprofits. The initial idea by the carriers was to sell entertainment, not causes. Maintaining a short code is expensive — $500 per month for a basic short code and about $1,000 for a vanity short code, if you want to maintain your own code. To make this process easier, however, many mobile vendors maintain short codes and up-charge their nonprofit customers a small portion for the use of a shared code.