Mobile App Marketing for Charities

Creating more engagement with supporters

It’s no surprise that mobile usage is at all-time high. Before the coronavirus pandemic, on average, people spent 3 hours and 15 minutes per day on their phone, with the top 20% accumulating more than 4.5 hours.

With the average person now spending 4.2 hours per day on mobile apps, there’s an app for pretty much everything – from helping to find your car in the car park to discovering the name of a pretty flower you came across on your walk. The key to the success of apps is convenience.

Many businesses have a mobile application to support growth, communicate with their customers, and increase engagement. A growing number of charities do too.

For charities, there are many benefits of having an app. Firstly, it’s a great tool for fundraising and collecting donations. Donating through an app is appealing because it’s quick, usually involves small amounts of money, and you can easily share the activity with friends. It’s particularly popular with the younger generation. A great and often quoted example of a donation app is the ShareTheMeal app.

But charity apps have the opportunity to go beyond donations to create more meaningful interactions with supporters, encourage engagement and build trust. A good mobile app is an invaluable communication tool to create awareness and improve user engagement. It can educate and provide information. It’s a great channel to promote the latest initiatives and campaigns. It can assist fundraisers and attract volunteers.

An important way charities are using apps is to show how and where your donation is spent. You might even be able to adjust your donations easily. All this helps to increase transparency and build trust.

However, for all their benefits, mobile applications are expensive and difficult to develop and maintain. The financial burden of an app is often simply too high for charities, especially smaller ones.

This is where now-u offers a solution - an opportunity for charities to partner with us and promote their causes and initiatives via our ready to go app.

The now-u app informs, involves, and inspires people to help tackle today’s most pressing issues through effective everyday actions. It’s there to connect people with the charities and causes they care about. It’s a ready to go channel for charities, with a team of volunteer graphic designers, copywriters and marketing specialists who support the promotion of charitable campaigns, at no cost to partner charities.

The new version of the now-u app is set to be launched in early 2022 with a strong focus on long-term engagement with users and partners. As before, charity partners are invited to suggest app content and co-create campaigns to help bring their expertise to creating high impact charitable campaigns.

The six causes now-u focuses on are: health & wellbeing, equality & human rights, environment, economic opportunity, education & citizenship, and safe & inclusive communities. Multiple campaigns are run for each of these causes at all times to encourage collective action targeted at issues users care most about. The new campaign format for version 2 of the app incorporates achievable progress targets, whilst an improved onboarding experience makes it easier for all users to choose the causes they want to support and start getting involved.

In future, the app will also feature an ‘Impact’ page which highlights the stories of people affected by these issues and showcases the amazing work of volunteers and supporters.

In short, the now-u app offers charities an opportunity to tap into the benefits of mobile app marketing without the financial commitment.