The NonProfit Times Goes Mobile

Smartphones are all the rage these days. Whether it's an app for this or a mobile website for that, businesses and nonprofits are taking advantage of this new technology to expand their reach. With the launch of our new website, The NonProfit Times has officially joined the mobile world.

We've always wanted to give our readers the ability to easily browse the latest nonprofit news on their smartphones, and our new website does just that. While you could always access NPT on the go with our previous site, it was hard to read without zooming in. Now that it is mobile optimized, readers can easily check the latest happenings in the nonprofit sector no matter where they are.

A look at how NPT looks on your mobile phone

It's not just the news articles you can access via your mobile phone; you can also view our jobs page, the resource market place, and our online store.

How do you like the mobile optimized site? Let us know in the comments section below.

5 Reasons Your Nonprofit Needs To Go Mobile

Remember when the only thing a cell phone could do was make calls? That seems like a foreign idea these days, with smartphones dominating the mobile landscape. These devices can not only make phone calls, they can also send text messages, take pictures, and surf the Internet.

That last point is of particular importance for nonprofits, as users now have on-the-go access to their websites. Yet unless your site is designed for mobile, it won't be too appealing to the eye. If you haven't yet optimized your website for mobile use don't worry, it's not as hard as it sounds.

As Heather Mansfield explained in her book "Social Media for Social Good," updated technology has made it easier than ever to stream mobile websites. She listed five reasons that your nonprofit needs to get to work on creating a mobile site:

• To improve group text messaging campaigns: Linking web pages on which readers can “Learn More” or “Take Action” need to be designed so that they can be read quickly and efficiently on smartphones.
• Making smartphone apps more functional: Make sure that the navigation of the website is easily readable on a smartphone being that it’s a small screen. Polish everything to make it easy for the viewer.
• Empower QR code campaigns: If nonprofits are asking supporters to use smartphones to scan a QR code that links to a webpage, a QR code needs to be implemented to link to a mobile site.
• Improve location-based community campaigns: Giving the viewers a mobile site where they can see lists of places, checks-ins, and venues, offers them an opportunity to follow the campaign through the community.
• To optimize search engine browsing: Customize the key search terms for maximum optimization for search engines. The mobile browsers are hungry for new content, so jump on the bandwagon.

Privacy Issues For Mobile Payments?

The popularity of smartphone has led to the rise of better payment technology. More and more companies are allowing customers to pay for products from their cell phones. Nonprofits are also jumping on the bandwagon, with the Girl Scouts of America (GSA) recently making their famous cookies available through mobile payments.

Yet, as The New York Times reported yesterday, this ease of use may be coming at price of reduced privacy. The Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT), a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit that focuses on technology laws, recently published a blog post expressing its concerns about mobile payment technology.

One of the organization's issues with this technology is that it can expose payment data to more parties than if you paid with a credit card. For example, when you use Google Wallet your information is not only given to Google, but also to credit card issuers and payment processors. Third-party applications can also potentially get a hold of this data. All of this information comes in small bits but once it is all combined, companies have a very detailed file from which to work.

Another issue comes in the form of telemarketing. Users can still get these unwanted calls even if they are on the national do-not-call list if they use mobile payments. Why? If a mobile payment app collects a user's number, the merchant can make phone or text solicitations.

CDT urged companies to put stronger privacy protections into their mobile payment services if they want to gain the trust of consumers.

You can read the full story in The New York Times.

The Short Life of Mobile "Apps"

Note: This is a summary of an older story from NPTtv about the short life of Mobile Phone Apps.

Nonprofit executives who are dying to have an "app" created for their organizations should listen to the following statistic: Of all the mobile apps downloaded, only 2 percent are opened a second time.  This is according to B. Bonin Bough, Director of Digital and Social Media at Pepsico.  Mr. Bough cited this stat at a keynote session at the Direct Marketing Association's annual conference.  Now you may be wondering: why should we listen to this statistic?  Well, Mr. Bough knows a thing or two about social media and digtal content; he is working on Pepsi's "Refresh Everything" campaign, where customers can compete for funding for good works in their community, by posting videos/content about their project online.

Bough says that the key for customers returning to your app or social media campaign is content. 

"We can't digest long-form content," Bough says.  "We are being rewired as a society."  And he is right.  While America is a society that encourages participation, it is also one that will quickly discard what isn't interesting or exciting.  In a way, the internet has changed from the world of the "nerd" to that of the "Brady Bunch."  In other words, singular use has evolved to the world of personal networks.