Looming over everything you do, technology is making nonprofit fundraising more relevant and immediate than ever imagined.

By Margaret Battistelli Gardner

“The [cell phone service providers] are still taking such a large percentage of any contribution, so you can’t really tell your donor, ‘Well, you know, only 50 percent of what you’re giving is actually getting to where it’s supposed to go,’” she says.

One fledgling program is a collaboration between PayPal Mobile and Amnesty International that allows donors to contribute to the organization via text messaging and have the payments taken directly out of their PayPal or bank accounts and is, according to Verclas, “quite fun.”