excerpted from Mickey Alam Khan’s post today

Average individual donations are falling to below the $10-level, especially when large nonprofits such as the American Red Cross suck up all the household charity budgets during hurricanes and large-scale calamities.

So it is critical for smaller nonprofits, and even the bigger charities such as the Red Cross or The Salvation Army, to raise donations by text to rapidly respond to emergencies.

The Red Cross, for example, has successfully worked with the wireless carriers to encourage $5 donations for its disaster relief fund. The organization raised more than $200,000 in its most recent September through December appeal.

Subscribers of participating wireless carriers can donate $5 up to five times per month by texting the keyword GIVE to 2HELP (24357).

Charges for these donations will appear on the subscriber’s mobile phone bill each month. They can also be debited from prepaid account balances for those mobile consumers without a contract.

Standard text messaging rates may apply to those texted donations.

Other charities can follow the Red Cross’ example. Publicize the short code on the direct mail, email and Web sites. Encourage donors to sign up with the mobile program. Strike a similar billing relationship as the Red Cross did with the carriers and also work with an SMS aggregator.

Building a mobile database not only will save smaller charities in these hard-pressed times, but will also result in repeat donations.

Mobile also cuts creative, printing and postage costs out of a charity’s operations. Thus, a larger percentage of the donations can go to the actual cause for which the funds are raised.