Cell phones are inherently engaging -- people carry them everywhere and check them frequently, in all kinds of situations. Here's what some community funders and local nonprofits are learning through leveraging mobile technology to engage their communities.

Last week in Portland, Ore., I gave a presentation on this topic (see slides) at Community Engagement: Digital Strategies for Local Funders. This two-day workshop was offered by the Knight Digital Media Center in partnership with Grantmakers of Oregon and Southwest Washington, Oregon Public Broadcasting, the Oregon Community Foundation, the Russell Family Foundation, and the Turnbull Center at the University of Oregon School of Journalism and Communication.

Mobile engagement in Buffalo, N.Y.

One of the projects I profiled in this talk was Grow716, a mobile-friendly citizen journalism/civic awareness website supported by the Community Foundation of Buffalo, N.Y. It comprises a number of projects and campaigns, and relies heavily on participation through text and photo messaging.

One of their particularly successful campaign from last summer, Catch of the Day, aimed to educate people (mostly immigrants) about the safety of eating the fish they catch in local rivers about. They conducted this campaign in partnership with the local chapter of Riverkeeper, an environmental advocacy group.

Together they created a short local fish safety guide, which was available online and in print in six languages. Then they used a mobile and text messaging platform to set up an interactive texting service, promoted by flyers posted at popular local fishing spots. They also held a kickoff event as part of a larger celebration of local parks to build awareness.

Anglers were encouraged to text "COD" to 877877, which asked where people were fishing and also returned links to mobile-friendly websites with information about local fish consumption advisories and healthier ways to eat local fish. They also could text in photos of their catches, which were posted to the GROW 716 website and social media accounts. The photos proved most engaging, since anglers love to show off their catches.

Riverkeeper used the location data shared by anglers to send volunteers to local fishing spots, where they talked to anglers about the program and assisted them with participation.

The result? Throughout summer 2013, this program demonstrably reached over 1000 people who fished local waterways. In addition, the campaign was covered by the Wall Street Journal-- which helps to demonstrate to current and potential donors the power of mobile engagement.

Other Grow716 texting campaigns have engaged citizens in documenting idling trucks (a major source of local air pollution), plastic bag pollution, bike safety and more. With support from the Knight Foundation, the Community Foundation of Greater Buffalo purchased a subscription to Mobile Commonsto support all Grow716 texting campaigns as well as mobile engagement efforts for local nonprofits.

Mobile storytelling in Los Angeles

When the L.A. County Bicycle Coalition planned events for its Active Streets LA campaign to encourage bicycling and bike safety in several lower-income neighborhoods, it turned to the free mobile storytelling platform. Vojo was originally developed to support the successful project Mobile Voices, which helped immigrant domestic and day laborers in South Los Angeles share their stories -- and it since has been spun off as a platform that any group or project can use.

On a community bike ride in July, 24 local residents used Vojo on their cell phones to post 236 photos and stories about unsafe intersections and other bike-related problems and opportunities in their neighborhood.

Bryan Moller, policy and outreach coordinator for LACBC, said that the stories collected in their Vojo groupare being shared with the Los Angeles Bureau of Street Services. In a future event (a public charette), an engineer from that city agency will review those postings with community members and discuss the feasibility of addressing problems raised through this project.

"Vojo is the starting point we used to get people thinking about bike-related problems on their streets," said Moller. "Pictures highlights the needs, it's very powerful. It's also very simple -- both to set up, and to train all sorts of people how to use it on their phone."

Making mobile a grantee priority in Silicon Valley

The Silicon Valley Community Foundation originally began using the text alert and interactive features of Mobile Commons to engage local residents around immigration reform and citizenship. They'd broadcast alerts about upcoming events, such as workshops. They used the analytics included in Mobile Commons to identify which kinds of content and promotion worked best.

Since immigrants and people in low-income communities tend to change their mobile phone numbers frequently, SVCF built a mobile-friendly web portal where people could register once they subscribed to get text alerts. Then, when they got a new phone number, they could log in to update their phone number and thus continue to receive text alerts.

SVCF also built a mobile website which includes a tool that legal service providers use to sign up their clients to receive text alerts about where their visa application is in government process.

Once SVCF realized the engagement power of text alerts for their own programming, they decided to also encourage their grantees to make use of Mobile Commons through SVCF.

Manuel Santamaria, vice president for strategic initiatives and grantmaking at SVCF, explained: "We specified mobile engagement as an outcome in our agreement with grantees. We made it clear that they needed to offer mobile alerts or services, and they needed to be signing up folks. We helped them do this by using Mobile Commons on behalf of grantee organizations and offering training. This encouraged more participation; grantees felt more 'bought in' to mobile once SVCF explained why we felt it was important enough to invest in."

What makes mobile engagement work

In addition to these three organizations, I spoke to many other local funders and nonprofits about their mobile engagement efforts. Here are some commonalities among their successful projects:

1. Campaign focus. While ongoing mobile engagement efforts or features, such as text alerts, can be helpful, introducing mobile as part of a time-limited campaign can achieve greater community awareness and adoption. Once people start receiving text messages related to a specific campaign, they can be invited to participate in other ways through their cell phones.
    
2. Events and on-site support. Live events that attract community members represent an excellent opportunity to spread awareness of mobile services or campaigns. You can encourage people to sign up on the spot, or use their phones to take a poll or quiz, and build engagement from there. Or you can send representatives where people gather in the community to promote your mobile offerings.
    
3. Partners. National organizations, local nonprofits, local governments, news outlets (especially public broadcasting) libraries, colleges and universities, and businesses can all be valuable allies in mobile community engagement. Especially helpful are local partners who have a good track record for attracting community members to local events.
    
4. Interactivity and sharing. Allow community members to text in their photos, call in their audio, or speak up on social media (a popular mobile activity) to participate in your program or campaign. Amplify their voices.

   Multiple channel support. Mobile rarely stands alone. Most mobile engagement efforts should combine, at a minimum, texting/photo messaging, mobile web, and mobile-friendly e-mail. But in addition, print and online informational materials can help, as can conventional marketing and advertising.

5. Resources and support for grantees. Many local nonprofits could make good use of mobile, but they lack the knowledge or resources to get started. Local funders can provide access to tools like Mobile Commons, or to less costly interactive text services like Red Oxygen or platforms like Twilio

My tools handout for this talk lists several tools and services that can be useful for mobile community engagement.