By Debra Brown, COO, MobilizeUs.com

It’s not surprising that after the widely publicized success of the 2010 Red Cross "Text-to-Give" campaign for Haitian earthquake relief, social change organizations wanted to hop on the text-to-donate bandwagon.

But as many quickly learned, the biggest barrier for grassroots groups emulating the Red Cross style text-to-give campaign is cost.

One industry leader charges a one-time setup fee of $500. Then, there's a monthly fee ranging from $199 to $799, depending on the package features you want. With each donation, there is a $0.35 transaction fee, along with the service taking 3.5 percent of the amount donated.

The real kicker, however, is that with this kind of text-to-donate campaign, an organization can only give donors the option of giving $5 or $10 at a time. And although people can make multiple donations, they can’t give more than a total of $25 per campaign.

One day, after I had explained the costs and the number of donations required to make a traditional text-to-donate campaign lucrative to a very frustrated development director of a grassroots organization, she said, "This is outrageous! Why doesn’t someone do something about it?" That’s when it occurred to me that we could figure out a way to change the situation.

There are a couple of different ways to create a grassroots text-to-donate program that allows you to reach the same goal as a traditional text-to-donate campaign: making it possible for someone to make a donation to your organization by initiating a text message. In fact, you can create a text-to-donate campaign for a fraction of the cost as a traditional campaign, and you stand to gain much more than the initial donation. A couple of examples:

The easiest way to create a basic grassroots text-to-donate campaign is to set up a regular text messaging campaign, but publicize it as a text-to-donate program and customize the response text message accordingly. Like a traditional text-to-donate campaign, your organization selects a keyword and someone texts that keyword to a predetermined shortcode. Instead of receiving a message directly from the carrier confirming the donation amount and requesting authorization to add the amount to the donor’s cell phone bill, however, the donor receives a customized text message from your organization thanking them for their pledge and providing a link to an online donation portal. From there, it is the responsibility of the donor to complete the donation transaction, either from their smart phone or by pasting the donation URL into a website browser at a later time.

In another approach, the donor texts a keyword, but instead of receiving either a message from the carrier or a link to your donation portal, the donor receives a text message thanking them for their commitment to make a donation and informing them they will receive a call to complete the payment. You can create a script that provides much more information about your organization and is much more intimate than the text message a donor would receive from a traditional text-to-donate campaign. In this scenario, when you call to collect on the pledge the donor committed to making – which can be any amount, not just the $5 or $10 limit imposed with a traditional text-to-donate campaign – you can also start building a relationship with the donor.

Because a grassroots text-to-donate campaign can be implemented using virtually any text messaging company’s basic service, the cost and risk are much lower than a traditional text-to donate campaign. You should quite easily be able to find a service provider that will charge you a minimal cost ($25-$100) for setting up a campaign – if they charge anything at all – and you should be able to obtain usage-based packages or monthly service plans that can provide everything you need to launch a successful text-to-donate campaign for less than $50 per month.

Similarly, where the traditional text-to-donate campaign requires a minimum one-year contract, many text messaging service providers have month-to-month services. If you give a campaign a go and for whatever reason it is not working the way you hoped it would, you can discontinue the program with minimal financial outlay.

At the end of the day, the success of both traditional and grassroots text-to-donate campaigns depends on the organization’s ability to leverage mobile technology as part of a comprehensive fundraising strategy. A text-to-donate campaign should be less about soliciting the donation and more about building relationships with donors and advancing your mission. With a traditional campaign, you may receive more one-time donations of small amounts, but you are unlikely to have the chance to build a relationship with the donors as you can with the kind of grassroots campaigns described here.

Organizations should take advantage of the opportunity to use text messaging in many ways: to promote their legislative agenda, to send emergency calls to action, and to remind donors of other ways they can get involved, such as attending meetings, volunteering for phone banks, and so on. All of these are opportunities to build a relationship based on more than just asking for money.

Sending people text messages is a very personal method of communication; used correctly, it can help people feel more connected to your organization and more invested in your work. Those feelings will lead to greater financial support.

Debra Brown is the Co-Founder and COO of MobilizeUs, a social enterprise that provides organizations with affordable and effective text messaging and text-to-donate services. Contact her at Debra.Brown@MobilizeUs.com or 1-877-498-1698.