Activism Apps: How Going Mobile Can Help Your Cause

Mobile apps have quickly become an essential tool for non-profits, community organizers, charities, and activists alike.

Running a nonprofit or charity organization comes with its own unique challenges, requiring a lot of thankless (and unpaid) hours. Turning to mobile apps can help you spend less time managing logistics and more time focusing on the important things. Here’s how an app helps you do more good, more quickly.

Organizing

Nonprofits and charities can only do some much without help from the broader community and public officials. Starting a hashtag to raise awareness is easy — building a coalition that wields collective power takes a lot of diligent, difficult, and often tedious work. The very nature of mobile apps makes them indispensable when addressing the challenges that come with organizing for a cause, making it easy to establish a network that keeps your team members who are on the ground from falling out of the loop.

Harnessing the simple power of push notifications and live messaging features when designing your app makes it easy to keep members of your organization informed and up to date, in real time. Time is just as valuable as money when managing a nonprofit, and streamlining your organizational infrastructure will save both.

Fundraising

It’s expected that by the end of 2016, more than two billion people will use smartphones. That’s a pretty big pool of users that your app could reach, people who can choose to donate whenever and wherever is most convenient. Not only does this save you resources that can instead be dedicated to canvassing or other forms of outreach, but it also eliminates the uncomfortable pressure we experience during in-person solicitations.

Be sure to build in features that allow users to do more than just donate money. Provide the option for your audience to sign up for volunteer hours, and open channels of communication so that you can take full advantages of whatever ideas or expertise they might have.

There are already mobile fundraising apps that exist, and partnering with them is a good way to not only raise additional money, but also to collaborate and develop new engagement strategies. Every penny counts for charitable organizations, and turning to mobile apps will help raise more and save more.

Information/Awareness

Mobile apps are a great tool to help raise awareness and keep users updated with relevant information. Tapping into built-in social media functions will generate organic interest in your cause while also providing you a space to project your progress and daily work. Your mobile app similarly allows you to broadcast podcasts, videos, and other relevant content to current and future users. This also broadens your communication channels, helping you access hard-to-reach audiences.

RSS, or Rich Site Summary, helps you deliver your regularly changing content to users in an un-intrusive way and eliminates the stress of constant updates. Moreover, apps work for you 24 hours a day, seven days a week, improving efficiency and freeing up valuable time.

Many easy-to-use DIY app making platforms like AppMakr include necessary features like RSS, and are affordable solutions that don’t require coding experience or a big budget. With a solution that’s affordable and time-efficient, you can stay focused on the important work of your organization and cut costs without compromising your bottom line.

(Image credits: niekverlaan/Pixabay, JESHOOTS/Pixabay, AmberAvalona/Pixabay, geralt/Pixabay)

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Ciorstaidh MacGlone

Ciorstaidh MacGlone's interest in tech probably stems from her love of science fiction. She is an Edinburgh-based writer, interested in sharing new advances with a diverse audience.

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