It’s definitely easy for someone to just type in five letters to support disaster relief, and this effort has raised millions of dollars for relief efforts, which is good.

But, there’s a bit of a gotcha with fundraising like this.

Often, the actual payout isn’t made to the parties involved, in this case the Red Cross, until several months after the fact. Why the delay? The user has to pay their phone bill. Once that happens, the carrier sends along the cash.

This makes sense if you are signing up for dumb (and sometimes scammy) mobile services like ringtones and horoscopes that add charges to your bill. This is bad if you’re the Red Cross and $10 million that is needed now is sitting in Verizon or AT&T’s coffers.

To be fair, Verizon said they are going to pay out the Red Cross money instead of just waiting as it would with other parties. Good for them. I haven’t been able to find if other carriers will be doing the same. I hope they are.

The buzz over these text donations got me thinking. Would something like this work for higher ed? Would donors to my college be more apt to donate if all they had to do was text “GATORS” to our short code?

I think some would, mostly because it’s super easy. They text a word to a short code, confirm their gift of $25 or some other predetermined value, and they’re done. That’s certainly easier than typing in credit card numbers in a form or finding their checkbook to mail a check. Checks? Quelle horreur!

While it’d be convenient for donors, I think this would completely freak out the people in charge of fundraising.

Why? There’s no paper trail. I don’t know what sort of information the Red Cross is getting from the carriers, but I doubt its much more than a donation amount. For college fundraisers, they want much more. They tend to want names, valid addresses, valid emails, source codes, mailing codes, student id numbers, etc. I don’t blame them, it makes the CRM process much easier in the long run. They want to know what solicitations I’ve responded to, how much I’ve given, if my texting gift is a supplement to my other gifts and so on. It’s all about the data.

Even if a mobile number was passed along as part of a gift, what are the chances that phone number is on record at the institution? I certainly haven’t given my cell number to my alma mater, have you?

I have a few questions. Would you use a system like this to give money? If you’re a fundraising professional, am I off-base in thinking that you wouldn’t like this, or are you more glad to just see some money coming in?

Here’s another one of my favorite one-take videos done by students. Watch it in HD over at Vimeo.

I’d love to do this here, in fact, we’ve been planning something similar even before the Montreal video hit it huge the last week or so.

Here’s the big question that’s been we’ve been thinking about quite a bit. What are the legal issues relating to a college or university creating its own lip-dup video and using it as a promotional tool?

I think it’s one thing if students create videos like this. What’s the worst that could happen? A take-down notice? Big deal.

If the college does it with no regard for the legalities, our videos may be taken down but we may also be targets of litigation.

So what are our options?

Don’t do a lipdub video.
Easy.

License the performance rights to the song or the original recording
This is a strange and confusing legal realm. There are different sorts of rights you can purchase, including the song, a certain performance of a song, and so on.

One the agencies that sells these performance rights is BMI. They have an entire section of their site for colleges and universities (here in the US.) As I read it, and keep in mind IANAL, if we purchase an annual license from BMI, that covers things like public performances. From their website:

Q: What Types of Musical Performances Does The License Cover?

The BMI Music Performance Agreement for Colleges and Unversities covers, but is not limited to, live or recorded performances by or at the college or university’s:

* Internet or Intranet sites or services including webcasts of campus radio station broadcasts
* Regular campus radio broadcasts
* Cable TV Systems
* Sporting events
* Student unions
* Fraternities/sororities
* Musical attractions (promoted solely by the college)
* Classrooms
* Fairs
* Festivals
* Fitness centers
* Athletic facilities
* Socials
* College bands
* College theater groups
* College orchestras
* Music-on-hold
* Special events such as orientation and graduation

This license does not include:

* Performances of music via any form of televised transmission, whether over-the-air broadcast, cable, satellite or otherwise;
* Dramatic rights (as defined in paragraph 2 of the agreement);
* Performances of music by a coin-operated phonorecord player (jukebox);
* Musical attractions on campus promoted by outside promoters;
* Musical attractions occurring outside of the premises, except as part of community outreach and educations activities;
* Performances by commercial radio stations

Does that mean something like a lip-dub video hosted on a college’s website would be okay to do? Have you ever waded into this area at your college or university?

Things at my college have been busy – we’re moving servers, bringing a new project management software package online and my spring and summer travel schedule has begun in earnest. Despite all the craziness, I’m taking time this weekend to participate in the March for Babies.

I’ll be Twittering from the walk, of course, so expect some fun updates on Sunday. Would you take a moment and donate a dollar or two or three to support me in my walk this weekend? Here’s a bit about why this is important to me.

This weekend is the March for Babies, an event held around the country to raise funds to support the March of Dimes and the research this great organization does.

I know first hand that the research and technology developed by the March of Dimes saves lives – they saved the life of my son.

In 2002, my son was born 9 weeks premature. He spent 5 weeks in the hospital’s neonatal intensive care unit where he received world class treatment, which I know helped him survive his early birth and other medical issues.

Before he was even born, he received a surfactant treatment to help his tiny lungs develop – technology that was developed thanks to funds from the March of Dimes.

As you can tell, this is a cause that is very important to me. For the last few years, I’ve been participating in their annual March for Babies event to help raise funds to ensure that future babies will be helped.

In 2007, I raised the most of any individual walker in Crawford County, PA and in 2008, my family was excited to be named the Ambassador Family for the walk. It was a great honor and we were very excited to be part of the event. Our team, the LolCatz, was also the top non-corporate team last year. How great was it to get a newsletter from the March of Dimes awarding honors to the LolCatz?

So, I’m asking for your help this year. I know as much as anyone that times are tight for everyone, and that many causes are asking for your help right now. I hope you’ll support me – if even a small amount of people who read this website every day gave $2 or $3, we’d raise a ton of money to help fund new and promising research.

So, please, I’m asking for your support. You can give securely and safely by clicking on the banner above or by clicking this link.

Thank you so much, and thank you to those of you who have given generously or who are participating in the walk this weekend.

Prematurity = stunned.