Many businesses utilise kiosks to increase awareness of their brand or to create leads for their sales departments to work with; thereby increasing revenue without necessarily increasing the wage bill. If kiosks are being utilized so successfully for commercial entities; can kiosks be used to increase awareness and donations for non-profit organisations such as charities or places of worship?
There’s no reason why it shouldn’t work, in fact, it’s a great idea but what’s the best way to approach this?
Firstly, the expense of buying or renting a kiosk should be explored so make sure you get in touch so we can give you an accurate quote. It’s fair to say that although the unit may require an initial investment, kiosks can be very affordable and have proven to be a cost-effective solution for many businesses in the medium to long term so if there are funds available for events or fundraisers it could be well spent on a kiosk.
A kiosk will also aid the work of volunteers or staff, freeing up time for them to concentrate on other essential task. Depending on the type of unit you opt for, it may even reduce the need to attract physical staff or excessive volunteers.
Now that we’ve covered affordability and workload; what can the kiosk do for a non-profit organisation exactly?
Ideally, the kiosk should be used to attract the attention of passers-by and increase awareness of the cause but it can do much more thanks to the rapid improvements in software and hardware. Kiosks are now capable of taking secure payments meaning the task of collecting donations for your cause can be given to the machine itself – you can even use this function to boost donations slightly based on your average figures.
For example; if the average donation for your cause is around £23 per person – you could introduce fast donation presets starting at £25 to encourage the person donating to add a little extra to the cause.
If you consider a non-profit fundraising event such as a fun run; there’s a lot of admin that needs to be handled before things can get started such as printing and distributing bibs or acceptance of donations in order to run. Kiosks can reduce congestion at these events by introducing a self-service element and can even be used to accept crowd donations once the initial organisation task is over – multi purpose!
Finally, we come on to places of worship where many rely on donations of the attending worshippers to continue their religious work. The concept of passing the plate has started to fail somewhat as less people carry cash these days in favour of cards – not a problem with a card friendly donation kiosk.
It may sound as though the kiosk would pressurise the attending public into donating but it doesn’t need to be restricted to a single purpose – it can be used to co-ordinate local events such as youth clubs and fundraisers or provide information to the general public about upcoming events or wayfinding.
So a kiosk could definitely help your non-profit organisation by increasing awareness, making donations quicker and easier and even reducing the potential melee encountered at large scale fundraising events – new technology does good.