A fascinating piece of research from Pew Research on real-time giving from mobile devices. The rise of the smartphone has now given us, the donor, the ability to send small donations “impulse giving” in response to moving images or events we see on news or social media.
Technology is increasingly relevant to Americans’ monetary contributions to the causes and organizations they support. Previous research from the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project has found that one in five US adults (20%) have made a charitable contribution online, and that one in ten (9%) have made a charitable contribution using the text messaging feature on their mobile phone. Mobile giving played an especially prominent role during the aftermath of the January 2010 Haiti earthquake, as individual donors contributed an estimated $43 million to the assistance and reconstruction efforts using the text messaging feature on their cell phones.
http://www.pewinternet.org/2012/01/12/real-time-charitable-giving/