September 9, 2009

Donor Apps For iPhone

By Mark Hrywna

iPhone users will soon be able to make donations to their favorite charity directly through their phone once a new application gains approval from Apple.

CharityFinder 2.0 will include more than 1,800 nonprofits, the ability to donate directly to a nonprofit, and a feature highlighting local events for each nonprofit that can be updated daily. The new version rolled out Sept. 1, according to spokesman Greg Egnatowski.

CharityFinder 1.0 was released in May by KGP, a Michigan-based company that creates applications for the benefit of nonprofit, academic and political causes.

CharityFinder has been contacting nonprofits for the past several months and nonprofits also can go to their Web site (www.charityfinder.me) and submit information. CharityFinder checks that the organization is a registered nonprofit in good standing.

There will be a processing fee of 4 to 5 percent, plus 30 cents per transaction, for each donation. Egnatowski said that’s a standard PayPal fee but CharityFinder, which receives less than 2 percent for processing, is working to lower that significantly.

This is the first application, out of almost 50,000, that focuses on nonprofits and allows donations. It’s free for users and nonprofits. “We hope to foster a new era of donations,” Egnatowski said, allowing for dollar donations or even smaller – any amount a donor is willing to give.

Version 1.0 only allowed users to view information about the nonprofit, and only included 11 organizations, mainly large ones that were easier to reach, Egnatowski said. They held back on version 2.0 until Apple released a new operating system for the iPhone, allowing for more nonprofits and features to be included, he added. “You’re never more than three clicks from a nonprofit and we wanted to keep that simplicity,” he said.

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This article is from NPT TechnoBuzz, a publication of The NonProfit Times.

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