The latest trend in processing donations is this idea that you can "text to donate." In some cases this is a good idea. However, for churches that utilize online giving, the value for donations by text is questionable at best.

For starters, donations that come in via text messages can take anywhere from 30 to 120 days to settle. The donor texts their donation, then the mobile phone service provider adds the dollar amount to their bill. At some point in the next 30 days, the mobile phone bill gets mailed to the donor. Around 15 - 30 days later, the donor pays their mobile phone bill. At some point after that, the phone company sends the donation (minus their fees) to the organization who solicited the donation. That's a long time for a donation to get to the recipient.

Other problems with texting to donate are with the donation caps. Mobile phone companies typically cap the donation at $10. This helps avoid abuse and fraud. Compare that to the average online donation of $200, you would be paying a lot of services fees and waiting a long time for those $10 donations.

The real major issue with donations by text is the amount of money the non profit actually gets to keep after all the fees. There are few backbone service providers that provide the glue to move money over these text donations. They have monthly fees anywhere from $50 to $200, additional transaction fees, and set up/registration fees. On top of that are the fees the mobile phone service providers charge. There is no flat rate across the board here as all mobile service providers impose their own fee structure. AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, and other mobile carriers all have their own schedule of fees. Normally you can expect that to be around 10%. An article recently published by Café Online stated that organizations are now retaining UP TO 90% of text donations, and that is suppose to be GOOD news. Loosing 10% off the top of each donation is not good news, that's awful news. Put those fees on top of the monthly fees and transaction fees imposed by the application providers and now you are looking at something hopefully in the 80 percentile range.

All in all, because it's new and buzz worthy, text to donate is going to turn heads, but in the end, it just doesn't add up.