By Marla E. Nobles
More than two decades after the affinity card spiced up the largely homogenous credit card industry, nonprofits are doing the same with the mobile industry and offering supporters a personalized wireless service. And in today's customized world, it's also an opportunity to reach a younger demographic.

Among the first to sign up for the new concept are the National Wildlife Federation (NWF) and the National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA). Each announced it would become a cell phone provider. The groups will offer supporters a customized wireless experience. It will include cell phones branded with the organization's logo, customized news and information pushed directly to the phone, unique ringtones, and access to an online social networking site that links them with other supporters.

The service will be powered by Sonopia Corporation, which launched publicly on April 2. Its founder, Juha Christensen, is a former executive at Microsoft's mobile division and co-founder of Symbian, a major provider of operating systems in the mobile industry.

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Greg Griffith, director of cause-related marketing at the Reston, Va.-based NWF, said the hope is to raise $100,000 from sale of the wireless plans in the first year. And according to Griffith, that's possible if just one-half of one percent of the charity's 5 million members sign up for NWF Mobile.

"We anticipate that if people are more engaged with us they will be more likely to be more loyal members and either extend their membership with us or donate more," said Griffith. He said he anticipates interest beyond just NWF members, to the general public. "Wildlife is a pretty ubiquitous interest, so we felt like people would be saying, 'I wouldn't mind having those features on my phone, and it's the same price and it supports a good cause.'"

For NPCA, it's the marketing aspect that the charity is focusing on during the first couple years. "Our first main goal is to promote NPCA's mission and taking care of national parks, getting full funding for national parks," said Rebecca Johnson of NPCA. She said that the fundraising aspect of the venture "is sort of on the backburner" for now. "We do hope to raise money from this in the future, yes. We're really using this as a marketing vehicle to get our message out, and to attract people to what we do and what the state of national parks are."

Johnson, a partner in overseeing NPCA Mobile, said the organization was at first skeptical about the new venture. "Sonopia was a start-up company, so we were a little bit worried that we would invest a lot of time in this marketing partnership and it would go under very quickly." Myriad questions and much reassurance later, NPCA signed a five-year contract with Sonopia.

According to Christensen, Sonopia assumes the financial risk, and pays the participating charities a commission of anywhere from 3 to 8 percent, depending on the number of subscribers. "There's no up-front costs associated with this," said Christensen. Sonopia handles all of the backend, added Christensen, including billing, sending out the phones, repairing the phones if needed, taking customer service calls, and credit control. The company also provides the branded handsets and interface featuring the participating organization's logo, along with the software that enables subscribers to create a community of social networking, including blogging and photo sharing.

Griffith said he sees it as an instantaneous way of communicating with NWF's 3,000 volunteers, notifying them via text message about upcoming and time-sensitive events. "Sometimes people don't check their email for a week," said Griffith. "On your phone, you're pretty much going to see it all the time." Griffith said NWF also plans to provide an electronic field guide via the service, a counterpart to the text version, to help members identify flora and fauna out in the field.

Both charities envision more text-message-to-donate campaigns. And according to Christensen, unlike some previous text-messaging campaigns that cap each donation at $5 and cost the donor standard text-messaging fees, Sonopia sets no limit on the amount a donor can send at one time. "We don't set increments," added Christensen, who noted the standard fee for a text-message donation is less than half the cost of postage.

"I think the cell phone is the next big thing," added Griffith. "I see teenagers out there who don't carry watches anymore because they have a clock on their cell phone. Everything is on their cell phone. So if we're going to get new and younger members, we need to do this."

Similarly aware of the potential for reaching a younger audience, said Johnson, "Our membership skews older, and we really thought this was a great way to connect younger people to our mission, and to national parks in general."

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Marla Nobles is a staff writer at The NonProfit Times.

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