Donation Point Tap Device a Fundraising ‘Success’
5 July 2017 at 4:12 pm
Asking people to donate could prove to be “the game changer” when using new donation point tap technology, according to the first Australian charity to use the device in a major fundraising drive.
The Salvation Army used the Donation Point Tap in its Red Shield Appeal which concluded on 30 June.
Salvation Army community fundraising director Andrew Hill told Pro Bono News he was really happy with the results and overall $55,000 was raised on the devices.
“It was a great pilot, it caused a lot of enthusiasm for our volunteers and supporters,” Hill said.
The award-winning Donation Point Tap, developed by Melbourne-based payment technology company Quest, is a new channel for charities to raise funds indirectly without increasing staff or administration costs.
Financially backed by Bendigo Bank and Community Sector Banking the technology allows individuals to make a donations simply by tapping their card on the system, which displays the charity’s branding and the pre-set donation amount as determined by the charity.
The funds are then transferred to the charity’s bank account at the end of each day.
Prior to the Red Shield Appeal in May, Hill said the predetermined amount, that could be adjusted by local leaders, would be $20.
“In a majority of sites we changed that to $10 which seemed to be the sweet spot,” Hill said.
The Salvation Army utilised 400 of the 550 donation tap point devices and set predetermined amounts between $2 and $99 with the average donation across 5,600 taps being $9.70.
“It definitely upped the ante. It gave people every avenue to give, so if they didn’t have cash we said that’s okay you can tap,” he said.
Hill said there were no major technological glitches along the way but in retrospect volunteers needed more training on how to better engage the public to give.
“It was a really rapid rollout, we probably could have trained our volunteers a little bit more about how to engage the public with these devices,” he said.
“The pivotal thing we learnt about the technology is you have to ask, so we saw a device that was ‘set and forget’ and it virtually did nothing, whereas where the devices had an engaging volunteer asking them to ‘tap for the salvos’ it did really well.
“That is the number one takeaway for us: an engaging volunteer asking people to donate on the device was the game changer.”
Hill said he believed donors and volunteers confidence in the device would grow over time and this would subsequently see an increase in donations.
“For a first pilot we were really happy. We are certainly going to use it again,” he said.
