A Mobile 101 with tips on integrating mobile technology into your nonprofit or library

Target audience: Nonprofits, cause organizations, foundations, NGOs, social enterprises, librarians, mobile operators, educators, journalists, general public.

Guest post by Kevin Lo
TechSoup Global

With an expanding range of new devices available, the landscape of mobile computing can be confusing. Smartphones now offer us new, powerful ways to connect with and engage with our communities.

Here’s a look at the new breed of smartphones and what to consider when using them at your nonprofit or library.

Let’s start with the basics. Here are the three most popular smartphone operating systems based on new smartphones sold:

• Android: Developed by Google, the open source Android operating system can be found in devices made by a variety of manufacturers.
• iOS: Developed by Apple, it runs on iPhones, iPad tablets and iPod touch music devices.
• Blackberry OS: Developed by Research in Motion, it runs on the eponymous devices favored by many corporate IT departments.

Although many would argue that one brand, OS or device is better than another, choosing to deploy a device in your workforce should depend solely on your own needs and preferences. While the number of apps or programs that run on mobile devices is often used as a selling point, if an app is functional and well supported, it’s generally made for more than just one platform. Other differentiators include the presence of a keyboard, size and weight, and the user friendliness of the main interface. And a phone is only as good as its voice and data service offered, so reviewing the plans and service reliability in your area should also play a role in your decision.

In addition to smartphones, larger devices with touchscreens seven inches and larger are entering the market. Popularized by Apple’s iPad, tablets like the Samsung Tablet running Android or RIM’s Playbook are being heralded as the advent of a new computing trend. Although for now they are used mostly as content consumption devices (you wouldn’t want to compose your grant report on an iPad), you can certainly view and comment on it adequately on the go. Because of their increased screen size, many enterprises are embracing tablets as a legitimate productivity tool in addition to a laptop or mobile phone, sometimes merely as devices to connect to full-fledged virtual machines and servers. As more devices come out in the future we can expect to find more ways to use them.

If mobile devices are becoming more like computers that are truly mobile, we also need programs that can run on these devices. Developers are creating apps or mini-applications for phones that extend the basic functionality of your phone or tablet. Many apps are free, while others charge a small fee, all of which are designed to enhance your phone or tablet experience.

Mobile networks and speed

Photo by Miky Magawolaz (Creative Commons)

The ability to consume content or interact with others depends on the availability of reliable and high-speed cellular networks. Although most devices can utilize standard wireless networking in your office or at a public library, the allure of mobile computing is that you can connect from anywhere where there is mobile carrier reception. While the United States still lags behind Europe and Asia in terms of affordability and speed, you can adequately use a smartphone or tablet in areas where you have reception with your carrier. It’s certainly possible to not use any mobile network for a device (for example, some tablets are WiFi only), but having a device that can connect to a mobile network adds flexibility.

Your device, however, remains locked with your carrier; you cannot use an iPhone registered and configured with the ATT network with Verizon, nor can you use your T-Mobile Galaxy Tablet on Sprint’s network. Partly due to this lack of portability, network carriers offer the option to subsidize the initial cost of a device, but require you to commit to a data contract. Others offer lower monthly charges with no contract but you pay more upfront. These contracts also impose data limits and overages if your usage exceeds that of your plan. If you are considering purchasing mobile devices for your organization, be sure to consider your needs before entering into a contract, and carefully read the terms and conditions of your data plan.

In terms of networks, each carrier boasts their performance and coverage over another. Here are some common terms and acronyms used by U.S. carriers:

• 3G: “3rd generation” data network that supports broadband-like speeds of at least 2 megabits per second (Mbps) downlink depending on location and network load.

• 4G: “4th generation” data network that’s the technical successor to 3G, and should be capable of supporting 1 gigabit per second (Gbps). However, carriers who have improved their existing 3G networks and offer significantly improved network, such as “LTE”, “WiMax”, or “HSPA+” also call themselves as 4G even without reaching these speeds.

• LTE: Long Term Evolution is a type of 3G standard that offers up to 100 Mbps downlink.

• HSPA: High Speed Packet Access is another form of high speed mobile networks that offers up to 84 Mbps.

• WiMax: Another advanced 3G standard that offers up to 100Mbps downlink.

• Tethering: A feature that allows you to connect a laptop or netbook to your mobile phone and use it as a wireless modem. Most carriers will charge extra for this feature.

• Mobile hotspot: A feature where your wireless phone can act as a wireless access point, and allows you to connect other devices to the data network via wifi. Some carriers also offer dedicated mobile hotspot devices. Additional charges will normally apply for your data plan.

Using mobile devices in your organization

So what does all this mean from an IT manager or accidental techie’s point of view? For many nonprofits or libraries, using your personal devices for work purposes does not seem all that new. But because of the revolution in social technologies, social sector users benefit as well. For example, the move from on-premise services to the cloud reinforces the adoption of mobile technologies. In the past where you would have to set up VPN to allow external access to files on the network, you can opt to collaborate online using any device that can connect via the Internet.

As most nonprofits and libraries are probably are not resourced enough to be secured against all threats, mobile devices — and the confidential data they hold — opens another front that needs to be protected. Although checking email or downloading and opening and emailed file on your personal phone may seem innocuous enough, are you prepared to notify your clients and funders that you misplaced a personal phone or tablet on which you downloaded confidential information?

Accessing online data, which requires secure logins from any device, is only one measure against data leakage and loss. Built-in VPN and encryption for certain devices are a good start, but like every other IT policy, nothing beats a sensible and easy-to-understand approach to security. If you plan on getting mobile devices for your employees, be sure to have a proper use and replacement policy, and if they were to bring in their own devices, advise them of the potential risks to the organization. Compliance to specific laws notwithstanding, IT managers need to communicate clear guidelines of usage to employees using personal devices. Conversely, it is also possible that with their own devices the monetary loss to the organization might be less, and they are less likely to be misplaced.

What the future holds

We’ve only begun to scratch the surface in terms of possibilities for mobile computing. Netbooks, smaller notebook computers that were affordable but underpowered, brought a false dawn to this trend. But with manufacturers and developers bringing cheaper hardware and better apps, we can expect even more ways to use these technologies.

Related on Socialbrite

• How nonprofits can get started with mobile
• A beginner’s guide to mobile fundraising
• How to make your nonprofit site more mobile-friendly
• Why your nonprofit should have a mobile strategy
• More mobile articles on Socialbrite

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Interact with Instagram directly from the Web

Target audience: Nonprofits, cause organizations, foundations, NGOs, social enterprises, businesses, educators, journalists, general public.

Did you know that Instagram profiles on the Web are now live? Until now, all interactions on Instagram (purchased by Facebook earlier this year) took place entirely on smartphones. Here’s my profile pageif you’d like to see what they look like.

Sweet and simple, right? I like that profiles are only for the purpose of viewing, commenting on, and liking photos. But snapping, creating and sharing photos is still mobile-only as if to preserve the simplicity and pureness of the experience.

To see your profile, go to instagram.com/[username].

What can I do with Instagram Web profiles?

Whether you have your own account or an organization account for your nonprofit, you can share your own profile with anyone you want to see your Instagram photos. You can also follow other users, comment and like photos, and edit your profile directly from the Web.

All photos you’ve shared to Instagram are included in your Web profile.

What do you think about Instagram’s new offering?

Related

• Is Instagram useful for nonprofit marketing? (Socialbrite)

• 6 creative ways to use photos to increase engagement on your Facebook page (Socialbrite)

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Outtakes from Mobile World Congress & a community engagement event

Last week saw me start out at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona and finish up at an event focusing on the use of text messaging in the nonprofit sector in London.

It was a busy week but two new resources were the end result.

Pictures. If you didn’t make it to Mobile World Congress then here’s a Flickr set of 111 free-to-use photos to give you a flavour of the event. Mobile World Congress is the world’s largest mobile exhibition and conference and features CEOs and representatives from mobile operators, device manufacturers, technology providers, vendors and content owners from around the world.

Words. Last Friday, Credemus Associates ran an event in London attended by representatives from FrontlineSMS and Text to Change. “The World in the Palm of Your Hands: SMS & Mobile Communications” was the first in a new line of events which Credemus hopes will become a live platform for discussion and news on ICT to support community engagement for Local Authorities, Third Sector and Public Sector organisations. At Friday’s event, FrontlineSMS and Text to Change announced the release of a new resource on how to use SMS as an effective behaviour change campaigning tool:

Behaviour change campaigning is inherently interactive. In order to encourage positive behaviour change, it is important to not only push campaign messages out to people, but to listen to the responses. To run a campaign that has a real impact, you need to listen to ensure you’re being heard. This is one of the main reasons why SMS – as a widely accessible and inherently interactive communications channel – is an ideal tool for campaigning.

You can read the FrontlineSMS blog post announcing the resource here, or download it here (PDF, 700Kb).

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If you were thinking of designing or building a website, you’d be in luck. If you were thinking of writing a suite of financial management tools, you’d be in luck. If you were even thinking of creating the next big video game, you’d be in luck. Visit any good bookstore and the selection of self-help books and “how-to” guides leave you spoiled for choice.

Unlike the plethora of self-help guides on the more established topics, if you were looking to do something with mobile phones, you’d likely have mixed results. There are plenty of books available extolling the virtues of Java, Python, Ruby, Ruby on Rails, C++, Symbian, Android and just about any other development environment or platform out there. Combine that with the growing field of mobile UI (user interface) design and you’d think that pretty much everything was covered. But there is one thing missing, although you’d probably only notice if you’re one of a growing number of developers turning their attention to the developing world.

I’m talking about a guide on “Building Mobile Applications for Social Good.” Although just a start, this article – written for The Testing Planet – in part aims to fill that gap. At conferences and seminars I often talk about our experiences developing FrontlineSMS, and the thinking and field work behind it, but until now much of this wasn’t particularly well captured in written form in a single place.

A PDF of the “Building Mobile Applications for Social Good” article is available at the kiwanja website (2 Mb). A PDF of the full edition of this month’s Testing Planet is available on their website.

The Testing Planet is a magazine produced by The Software Testing Club and its community members. The magazine is published in print, ebook, Kindle, PDF and web format. You can follow them on Twitter at @testingclub.

Further reading
Check out an earlier article, “Mobile Design. Sans Frontieres,” co-written with friend and colleague Joel Selanikio, and the array of articles on mobile apps development.

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Use check-ins & shout-outs to raise awareness among its 10 million members

Target audience: Nonprofits, cause organizations, foundations, NGOs, brands, start-ups, Web publishers, educators.

Guest post by Wilneida Negrón
LawHelp.org

Here are six ideas to get your organization started on Foursquare, the geolocation social network that announced Monday it has surpassed 10 million members.

Make your nonprofit a venue on Foursquare

1Make your organization a “venue” on Foursquare so that when people are in your area, a notification about your organization will show up. You can take advantage of this feature by adding advocacy action alerts that will show up when others view your organization to alert people to any advocacy needed or even to recruit volunteers, etc.

Also encourage your staff to start individual Foursquare accounts so that they can promote their activities. For example, if you have an outreach or community education component to your work, your outreach staff could check in at venues where they are holding a workshop, attending a task force or participating in any other community meetings or events.

Bring awareness to resources in your community

2Use the “tips” feature on Foursquare to bring awareness about resources available in your community. Have your staff create individual Foursquare accounts and have them leave tips about locations in the community that could be helpful to your client population. You can also encourage local community leaders to leave tips as well. Your staff can also include facts about your organization, hours of operation, nearest subway or bus stop.

Promote and enhance the donation experience

3Consider this idea to enhance the donor giving experience and support local businesses. Talk to local stores and businesses and see if they will make a tax-deductible donation to your organization if a number of people come to their store. For example, talk to your local coffee shop and see if they will make a donation to your organization if 50 people will check into their shop within a period of time.

You can promote this arrangement in your other social networks accounts such as Twitter, Facebook, etc. and let people know that if they check in at this store, the shop will make a donation to your organization. This is a win‐win situation for all: You can promote your organization and raise funds, local businesses also get promotion and business, and customers feel involved and glad they made a direct contribution.

Community education and public awareness

4Many organizations have been using Foursquare to educate the public and bring awareness to issues affecting the community. For example, the National Wildlife Foundation developed a campaign where every time someone checked into an outdoor space like a park or natural landmark, they would receive NWF sponsored tips of the wildlife they should look for, or views to not miss. The idea is to make visiting outdoor spaces interesting and informative and increase awareness, while at the same time increasing awareness of NWF.

Communicate with attendees at advocacy events

5If you organize advocacy events such as rallies, public meetings, etc. use the check‐in feature on Foursquare to have attendees check in to the event. You can then use this feature to communicate with attendees and send logistical and other information.

Generate goodwill: Support your allies

6The amazing day-to-day work that nonprofit organizations do often goes unnoticed. Use the “shout‐out” feature on Foursquare to congratulate and praise other organizations, community leaders, etc. every time you check into a venue. This little act can go a long way in generating goodwill and strengthening community ties.

What do you think? Do you have other suggestions for how organizations can use Foursquare?

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First, how do we lower the barriers to entry for NGOs looking to deploy mobile technology in their work? And second, how do we help share information about what mobile means in the developing world to the widest possible audience, i.e. one outside traditional development or technology circles?

A good example of the second theme is our recently launched Mobile Message series running on the National Geographic website. We’re also targeting non-mobile-for-development and non-ICT4D conferences and contributing chapters to books and giving interviews to magazines, which take the message to a new audience. The latest was a piece on mobile innovation for an in-flight magazine for travellers on flights to Africa.

One of our early initiatives was the creation of The Social Mobile Group way back in November 2006. It was the first Facebook group of its kind to focus on the social application of mobiles and mobile technology, and it remains the largest group dedicated to the subject on Facebook today.

In a recent blog post I covered some of the challenges of building “mobile community“, and asked Maddie Grant, a strategist at SocialFish, to help define it:

What makes a community open is when there’s “a lot more outside the login than inside,” so most of a community’s content must be at least viewable and shareable without logging in. To be active, most of a community’s content must be member (user) generated, not owner-generated, and must have some degree of conversation which includes comments, discussions and reviews

The Social Mobile Group always attempted to do this, and one of its first moves was to appoint Group Officers, handing control and ownership of the group to community members. This has worked well. All of the content and discussion comes from the community, everything is open, and thanks to the efforts of members alone it has organically grown to a membership of just under 3,000 today.

If you’d like to join, visit the Group’s Facebook page. If you’d like to get involved – or help us spread the mobile message – invite your friends, or leave a message on our wall. Our Group Officers would love to hear from you.

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Where are the best sites for people to stimulate debate around mobile technology?

The other week I wrote a post on the difficulties of running a “mobile for development” – or m4d – project. I tried to make it challenging, and was hoping to stir up some discussion around the merits of mobile-initiated development projects versus development-initiated mobile projects.

Unless you’re one of the bigger technology blogs – Mashable, TechCrunch, Scobleizer and so on – it’s hit-and-miss whether or not a post will get the traction you’re looking for. Apart from a couple of dozen tweets and a dozen or so comments, the post didn’t generate as much debate as I’d have liked. But it did get me thinking – if these kinds of discussion weren’t taking place here, then where were they taking place?

I’m regularly asked at conferences for hints on the best sites for people to post questions and stimulate debate around mobile technology, and I always struggle to give an answer. It seems crazy that, for a discipline that began to fully emerge probably about seven or eight years ago, there still isn’t a genuinely active, engaging, open online community for people to join and interact with each other.

In order to get a sense of which communities exist, I recently sent out a message to a number of ICT4D and mobile email lists I subscribe to, and posted the odd message on Twitter. Very few people could suggest anything. A few people mentioned email lists that dealt specifically with sectoral issues, such as health, but not specifically with mobile (although mobile was a regular thread in many discussions). Only MobileActive suggested MobileActive, which was a surprise considering its positioning as a global mobile community with over 16,000 “active” members.

What makes a community open and active?

Finding nothing was only part of it – many people clearly had different ideas of what made up community, too (I’d put this down to a challenge of definition). When I pushed out my call for sites, I specifically asked for those which were “open, active, collaborative and engaging”, things that I thought would be prerequisites for anything worth being a member of.

According to Maddie Grant, a strategist at SocialFish, a consulting firm that helps associations build community on the social web:

“What makes a community open is when there’s “a lot more outside the login than inside,” so most of a community’s content must be at least viewable and shareable without logging in. To be active, most of a community’s content must be member (user) generated, not owner-generated, and must have some degree of conversation which includes comments, discussions and reviews.”

Going by these criteria, I don’t believe we yet have a truly active, engaging, open mobile community. This seems a little strange when you consider the attention the technology has been getting over the past few years.

On the flip side, though, it might not be so strange after all. As Jonathan Donner put it to me in a recent email, “Why should m4d have its own groups and community sites? Can’t we – or should we – just mainstream ourselves into ICT4D?”.

This discussion clearly has a long way to go. I just wonder where that discussion will take place.

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Handheld human rights from JD Lasica on Vimeo.

Co-director of Digital Democracy spells out how new platform can skirt government censorship

One of the organizations I’ve been admiring from afar over the past year is Digital Democracy, which works with local partners to put information into the hands of people who need it most – those neglected, disenfranchised or abused by their rulers. The group employs education, communication and participation to empower citizens to build and shape their own communities.

In this interview conducted last year, co-director Emily Jacobi (@emjacobi on Twitter) discusses Handheld Human Rights, a platform, project and website that makes human rights data accessible and actionable. Designed in concert with Burmese human rights organizations, Handheld Human Rights enables people there to communicate securely within their networks and to map crisis hotspots so that the international community can see the human rights violations taking place inside Myanmar.

The tool enables human rights workers to collect eyewitness accounts of killings, forced labor, rape as a tool of war and other brutalities and relay them to the outside world by skirting media censorship from Myanmar’s autocratic military junta. And it is slowly being adopted in other troubled places, like Thailand.

Watch, embed or download the video on Vimeo
Watch or embed on YouTube

It’s a wonderful example of how activists can use media and data to drive home a powerful message. Contact Digital Democracy directly if you’d like to use Handheld Human Rights.

Emily, who heads up Digital Democracy’s education efforts, traveled to Haiti in April to look into how technology can be leveraged to protect women and girls from gender-based violence. The organization also recently launched Ethiopia Vote Report with a local partner in Ethiopia.

Quite a string of accomplishments for a modest-sized organization.

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Anyone taking more than a passing glance at the kiwanja.net website shouldn’t need long to figure out my four key areas of interest. I’ve always maintained that if your ideal job doesn’t exist, then you have to create it, and being able to combine my passions for technology, anthropology, conservation and development is for me – through kiwanja.net – that dream job.

Saying that, it doesn’t go without its challenges. Putting aside the difficulties faced by the global conservation and development communities, most of my thinking today centres around the sometimes uncomfortable tension between appropriate technology and the mobile phone, and the potential role of applied anthropology in helping us understand what on earth is going on out there. We can’t always rely on Indiana Jones, Hollywood’s answer to anthropology, to get us all the answers.

Last month in the May/June edition of World Watch Magazine, John Mulrow wrote one of the best articles to date on mobile phones and appropriate technology, and this month an anthropology-focused article came to my attention via a Tweet from John Postill, a Media Anthropologist from Sheffield Hallam University in the UK. The role of anthropologists in mobile happens to be the second thing that challenges me, not because I don’t think they have a role – I’ve long argued they do – but because of the difficulties in finding both solid anthropological studies and meaningful numbers of anthropologists working in the field.

Although I majored in anthropology at Sussex University, I’m never quite sure what “doing anthropology” really looks like, and what you need to do to “become” an anthropologist. I don’t think just having studied it at university is enough. I’ve had numerous discussions with anthropologists at a number of universities on how my anthropology training may or may not influence my work, and was recently interviewed for a forthcoming book on the role of anthropologists in the ICT4D field. I’m really looking forward to reading more when that comes out, and I’ll no doubt blog about it, too.

So it was with great interest – and relief – that I came across a post on the wonderful “Mobile Livelihoods” blog last week that took a long, hard look at what anthropologists are doing in the mobile/phone field, and what they’re researching/writing about. I’m regularly contacted by students asking for help, and this makes everyone’s life so much easier. Kudos to Francisco and John for putting the hours in. You can read their post – which contains a list of 96 journal articles and details of how they categorised them – here.

Three articles of particular interest are available here (all in PDF format). Thanks to Francisco for kindly selecting them and sending them over:

• Horst, H., & Miller, D. (2005). From Kinship to Link-Up: Cell phones and Social Networking in Jamaica. Current Anthropology, 6(5), 755-778
• Tenhunen, S. (2008). Mobile Technology in the Village : ICTs, culture, and social logistics in India. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute(14), 515-534
• Barendregt, B. (2008). Sex, Cannibals, and the Language of Cool: Indonesian tales of the phone and modernity. The Information Society, 24(3), 160-170

One thing that surprised me was the number of papers they found written by ‘professional’ anthropologists, which totalled just six (three of those are above). I guess that’s another challenge within the wider challenge – defining what a professional anthropologist is in the context of the mobile/technology field. Maybe we’ll tackle that another time …

Some useful/interesting anthropology resources:

Discover Anthropology [Website]
worldwise development [Website]
Mobile Livelihoods [Blog]
Anthropologist About Town [Blog]
media/anthropology [Blog]
EASA Media Anthropology Network [Website, Mailing list]
The Cellphone: An Anthropology of Communication [Book]
Anthropology’s Technology-driven Renaissance [Article]

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Mobile advocacy basics, from keyword response to mobile data collection

Guest post by Melissa Loudon
MobileActive

S MS is everywhere, in an amazing diversity of applications. From enabling ‘instant protest’ in the Philippines, Spain and Albania, to election monitoring in Ghana, Lebanon, and Sierra Leone to HIV/AIDS education and support in Mexico and South Africa, we’ve seen that 160 characters can make a difference. This how-to covers the basics of setting up an SMS campaign system, looking at different approaches to suit your goals, budget and technical expertise.

What do you want the system to do?

Before you start, it’s important to have a clear vision of how you want to use the system, and who the target audience might be. You should also do a level-headed audit of the resources available, including funding as well as staff time and technical expertise. If this doesn’t look promising, take heart! Sometimes the most effective systems are the simplest, and you don’t need a big budget for many types of SMS campaigns.

3 types of SMS campaign systems

In a MobileActive Primer on Desktop SMS Campaign Tools, Ben Rigby and Katrin Verclas identify three ways to use SMS campaign systems: Text blasting (bulk messaging), keyword response and smart texting. We’ll summarize the three approaches here.

Text blasting/bulk messaging

A single message is sent to a group of users (much like a group email). Example: On Tuesday, February 5th, at 10:00am, send out the following text to all of the phone numbers in my contacts list “Don’t forget to vote today! Call us at [phone number] to get your polling place information.”

Systems that offer bulk messaging functionality usually have an address book where you can store names and phone numbers and create groups of recipients.

One very important consideration for bulk messaging systems is how this list of phone numbers to text to is created and maintained. In most countries, it’s illegal to send unsolicited text messages. Even where this isn’t made explicit, a phone is very personal, and most people take a dim view of unauthorised use of their phone number.

This means you’ll need a way for recipients to opt in, and to opt out later if they decide they no long want to receive messages from the campaign. If you decide to send your messages using a service provider, they may have tools to help you manage opt-outs, and some stand-alone software has default opt-out rules too. Don’t neglect this, it’s important! In addition to specific codes that may apply in your country, take a look at the Mobile Marketing Association’s global code of conduct.

Of course, it’s also important to think about how you’ll get people to opt in in the first place. At MobileActive08, Hernan Nadal from Greenpeace Argentina described how they built up a mobile database:

• From an existing database of Greenpeace friends and supporters (where people had given a mobile number), including some specifically involved as ‘Greenpeace Cyberactivists’

• By placing an insert requesting updated mobile numbers in the supporters magazine
• Including a mobile number field on sign-up sheets at offline activities
• Placing a mobile number request form on the website

The point here is that this is non-trivial, even if you have an existing database of supporters. Mobile numbers change, especially in countries where a ‘pay-as-you-go’ model is in use. People change their numbers often, and may have several phones and/or several SIM cards that they switch around to take advantage of special call rates on different networks. Even the best list will need to be updated regularly to remain useful, and high bounce-back rates are common.

Keyword response

An automated reply is sent to all incoming messages containing a specified keyword. Example: When someone texts the word “VOLUNTEER” to my mobile phone number, respond with “Thanks for texting! You’ve joined our volunteer list. We’ll contact you within the next six hours to coordinate.” While this can be a good way to initiate involvement, you need to be sure to have someone follow up on every message, even at peak times when your organisation is swamped.

Smart texting

Smart texting is an advanced form of keyword response in which an incoming text message triggers a complex interaction. This may include calling external programmes to process the message, or requesting further information from the user. It can also be used to run an SMS information service, in which the incoming SMS contains a query (‘WEATHER cape town’, ‘CROP PRICES cofimvaba’) and the response is retrieved from a database or the web. Example: A basic citizen reporting system could work as follows: Someone texts the word “REPORT” and a description of the incident to a widely publicised mobile number. This could be something like ‘REPORT robbery in progress corner shop Cala road’. The system could respond with “Thanks for reporting! Do you have a photo to add? Send an MMS to this number”. If the next message from this person is an MMS then the message details and the picture can be saved together. The report could also be forwarded to a reporter in the field, who might want to follow up the incident.

Other kinds of SMS campaigns

There are many other ways to use SMS in social change work. Mobile data collection using fixed-format SMS is a kind of smart texting, with the incoming text triggering a response to extract and store the data contained in the message. Premium-rated SMS, which some providers will offer commission-free to non-profits, can be used to raise funds, enabling many small contributions to be effectively aggregated. Also remember that some of the most effective SMS campaigns have been peer-to-peer – people forwarding on a single message, with no involvement from a central campaign management system. In a peer-to-peer campaign, content is key. SMS jokes can work really well as peer-to-peer messages, as can calls to protest or other content that creates a sense of urgency about a cause or event.

SMS basics

Did you know that SMS was a happy mobile technology accident? Originally conceived as a way for operators to notify subscribers of network problems, messages are sent via a control channel that would otherwise be unused most of the time. Even though SMS is now a important and very profitable service in its own right, this legacy has some important consequences for its use as a communication channel. Consider the following:

• To make sure that important control channel messages are not disrupted, SMSs may made to wait until usage is low.

• SMS is a best-effort service. This means that, although the system will attempt to deliver your message, there is no guarantee, and messages sometimes do get lost. Messages passing between operators, particularly internationally, are most prone to disappearing. Delivery reports, which can tell you whether the message has been received at the recipient’s handset, are sometimes available.
• SMSs are sent in plain text, and may also be stored in plain text in the operator’s records. This makes SMS unsuitable for any kind of sensitive communications. For details and alternative tools, see Mobile Surveillance: a Primer.
• SMS profit margins can be very, very high – up to 80-90% according to multinational network operator Huawei.This is great for mobile network operators, and they may give quite large discounts for bulk purchase of outgoing message credits as a result.
• At the same time, systems targeting poorer groups should understand the implications of asking the end-user to pay for an SMS into the system. In Africa at least, we know that monthly mobile expenditure as a percentage of income is significantly higher for these groups.

In addition to person-to-person SMS, there are various value-added SMS services that might be useful for some kinds of SMS campaigns. Here’s how they work:

Premium-rated SMS allows you to receive SMSes for which the sender is charged at higher than usual rates. You’ll need to work with a service provider to set this up, and the profit from the service is usually shared between you, the service provider and the mobile network operator. Premium-rated SMS has been successfully used in fundraising campaigns, where it’s a quick and easy way to allow people to make relatively small donations. Google and MTN have also implemented premium-rated information services for smallholder farmers in Uganda, arguing that a premium-rate message allows revenue to be earned and contributes to the sustainability of the service. Whether this holds for your campaign depends on both the audience (ability to pay) and the type of information you are providing – for example, a health information service targeting poorer groups would be unlikely to choose premium-rated SMS.

SMS-to-email and email-to-SMS are available at no additional cost on many mobile networks. In particular, email-to-SMS can be useful for sending small numbers of free SMSes, using operator’s SMS gateways. The downside of this is that you’ll need to know the operator your recipients are using. Most operators also restrict the number of free SMSes that can be sent each day.

Machine-to-Machine SMS and telemetry describes systems that are able to communicate by automatically sending or receiving SMSs. Vehicle tracking is a common application of this technology. This automated SMS fishing system, developed by a Kenyan student, is an interesting Machine-to-Machine SMS example!

Cell broadcast is a service that gives mobile operators the ability to send an SMS-like message to all subscribers in a particular location. The government of Bangladesh recently announced that it was implementing a cell broadcast system for use in disasters and emergencies. While it would clearly be useful in a disaster setting, cell broadcast requires the co-operation of all operators in an area, and occupies tricky ground with regard to opt-in.

Please-call-me messages, available in some countries as a free service, can be used to send another mobile user a message asking them to call you back. The receiving user gets the message as an SMS with the text ‘Please call me’ and the sender’s number. The please call me service is supported by advertising, which uses the remaining characters in the message. Because so many please call me messages are sent every day (in South Africa, 3 million unique users will send or receive one on any day, according to Vodacom), this a great advertising opportunity and very lucrative for operators.

Like many services original designed for mobile marketing, please-call-mes also be used in social change communication. The Praekelt Foundation in South Africa has used please-call-me messages to promote an HIV/AIDS helpline, increasing call volumes by 136% and observing that, people would keep the message advertising the helpline number on their phones for reference.

Choose your implementation strategy

Once you have an idea of what you’d like your SMS system to do, you can think about how you’ll set it up. Will you need to employ a commercial provider from the start, or do you have access to someone with technical expertise for a server or desktop setup? Also consider about how much money you have for initial development and ongoing operations, and what kind of SMS volumes the system will need to handle. Understanding you needs and the resources available will help you determine the most appropriate option.

Commercial service providers

There are literally hundreds of commercial providers offering bulk SMS services. Some cover a specific country, while others, such as mBlox or Clickatell, offer an international service with local numbers (in the case of incoming SMS) in many countries. Message cost varies, and a monthly subscription cost may apply for certain services.

Commercial providers are good if you need a simple setup, and don’t want to set up or manage the system yourself. Various helpful services, such as free web-based or desktop management tools and a technical helpline, are often provided at no cost to clients. Their major clients are usually corporate SMS marketing campaigns, so it helps if your planned system is something that would be familiar in this domain – for example, notifying clients of special offers (text blasting/bulk messaging) or collecting competition entries via premium-rated messaging.

The cost of setting up an SMS system with a commercial service provider is an important factor to consider, but it’s wrong to assume that this is always the most expensive strategy. Sharing setup and running costs among multiple clients gives rise to economies of scale not accessible to individual groups, who need to buy and maintain their own IT infrastruture, often with significant assistance from technical experts. Commercial providers may also offer good discounts for bulk purchases of SMS credits.

Of course, the decision on whether to use a commercial provider may be made for you by the content you’re sending (and whether it’s acceptable for a third party to have access to it), or by limitations to the services on offer. Simple systems are most likely to find a provider that meets their needs. For more complex systems – particularly for smart texting or keyword response systems that need to do some processing on incoming messages – you may want to use a commercial provider to receive the messages but pass them to your own system for processing (and then pass the response back through the provider’s outgoing message gateway if you get a good bulk discount on credits!). Alternatively, read on for the DIY approach!

Resources

• If you’re in India, you’re in luck! Google SMS Channels is free – no cost for setup, sending or receiving messages – and works like an SMS mailing list. Your supporters can subscribe, and you can use a web interface or a mobile phone to send messages to all channel subscribers
• A Google search for your country name and ‘bulk SMS’ or ‘SMS gateway’ is always a good place to start
• Clickatell have good international coverage, as does mblox.
• In some countries, there are providers that cater specifically to non-profits. Examples include the Praekelt Foundation in South Africa, and mCommons in the US.

Desktop clients

A desktop SMS system usually combines a software package – the SMS equivalent of an email client – with an inexpensive mobile phone or GSM modem that is used to send and receive SMSes. Both hardware and software components have varying capabilities. Microsoft SMS Sender and Nokia PC Suite (on Windows) and Gnokii (on Linux too) provide basic computer-based SMS capablities intended for personal use. Higher up the functionality scale, FrontlineSMS is an established free desktop SMS package that features an address book, group management, keyword response and mobile data collection.

Hardware limitations are an important consideration for desktop SMS systems. As a rule, sending SMSs via a mobile phone is less robust than using a GSM modem, but even with a good modem, message volumes are more limited than they would be if you were using a commercial service provider. SMSCaster estimates that their software (non-free but recommended by MobileActive’s reviewer) can send between 600 and 3600 messages per hour. The FrontlineSMS developers are more conservative, estimating a maximum of 600 messages per hour and also warning against using a phone or GSM modem to receive large numbers of messages, as this might cause the network operator to suspend services on your SIM card. Some desktop SMS software packages, including FrontlineSMS, allow you to use send SMSes by pushing them through a commercial provider’s SMS system. While this approach is more scalable, it has the additional requirement of an Internet connection.

Desktop clients are a great way test out the potential of your SMS system without incurring significant costs. They don’t require an Internet connection, and if you have a supported phone, you won’t need to buy additional hardware either. The trick is ensuring that you trade up, either to a commercial system or to a custom-configured SMS server, when your functionality, reliability and scalability requirements increase.

Resources

• FrontlineSMS is probably the best-known desktop SMS client. MobileActive has a detailed review. A newer release includes mobile data collection functionality, and a relate project in called FrontlineSMS Medic is developing health-specific add-ons to FrontlineSMS.
• Various tools (some non-free) taken for a test drive in a previous article. It’s still worth a look despite being older.
• RapidAndroid is even simpler than a desktop client. An application for devices (smartphones, netbooks coming soon) that run Google’s Android platform, RapidAndroid turns your phone into a self-contained SMS system with no additional hardware required.

Setting up an SMS server

For a scalable, customized system and the opportunity to explore non-standard functionality, the effort of setting up your own SMS server is probably well worth the reward. This is also the best approach if you intend to undertake integration with other systems. For example, you could set up an SMS information service to query an existing database, or solicit comments from supporters using a dedicated SMS number. FishSMS, a consumer service that provides information about fisheries sustainablilty in response to an SMS containing the fish species name, is a good example, as are Indymedia’s live SMS tickers.

Both these systems would need to use an SMS gateway to send and receive SMSes, which you could set up yourself using a GSM modem and a software component such as Kannel. Alternatively, it may be more cost-effective to buy credits from a commercial provider and use their gateway. Behind the SMS gateway, a customised back-end would receive incoming messages and prepare a response – a return SMS in the case of FishSMS, or a post to a web server displaying the ticker in the Indymedia example. There is also a data storage requirement in both cases, either as a source for message data or a as store for incoming SMSs.

As you may have guessed, an SMS server is a skittish animal! Even if you use one or more of the existing server-side components (and we recommend you do), the person setting up the server will still need skills in basic server administration, web applications and databases, and be confident that they can secure the server and data. If you aren’t able to source these skills in-house, you could consider using a contractor or a commercial software company. Either way, remember that after the initial development, you’ll probably still need occasional help with operations. A great SMS server is useless if no-one remembers how it works!

Resources

• Kannel is an SMS gateway that runs on linux. It’s stable, well-documented and fun to use if you don’t mind getting your hands dirty with the configuration. Tip: save a lot of frustration by getting hold of a phone or GSM modem that is known to work with Kannel.
• Gammu is similar, targeting Nokia phones. Gammu is actually several different projects, in different languages and with different licenses, all aiming to be an SMS library for Nokia phones.
• RapidSMS was originally a UNICEF project making use of various free software components (including Kannel) to deliver a scalable, reliable SMS server. MobileActive has a review of this version, although it’s been extensively rewritten over the past year and is now a fully-fledged SMS application framework, including SMS data collection, supply change management and various other specialist modules – there’s even integration with Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, for human-powered SMS data processing. The RapidSMS case studies page has some good examples of how this tool is being used, including collecting data on child malnutrition in Malawi, managing a food relief supply chain in Ethiopia and collecting emergency response monitoring data in Somalia.
• PlaySMS and WebSMS are quite basic web applications that use Kannel as an SMS gateway, and provide standard address book, grouping a bulk messaging functions. Both are free, and have active forums, incidentally a useful source of information for Kannel troubleshooting!
• SlingshotSMS is a slim little cross-platform SMS server written in Python. It uses PyGSM to send and receive messages from a GSM modem.
• Drupal SMS framework is a module for the Drupal content management system that allows Drupal sites to make use of SMS. It can use various different SMS gateways, including DIY options (Kannel, Gnokii) and commercial providers (Clickatell).

This article originally appeared at MobileActive.org.

Related

• Mobile Campaign Primer (calder strategies)

• Low-cost and Low Barrier Ways to a Mobile Campaign (MobileActive)

• Mobiles in Advocacy Redux – Tips and Advice (MobileActive)

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