Last Monday, Amazon announced that Echo with Alexa will now allow you to donate to one of 48 charities with voice commands.  They also said this list will continue to grow.  (Of course it will; Amazon has thousands of charities signed up with their payment info through Amazon Smile.)

Some important things to know:

• You own the donor. A few months ago, I talked about Facebook’s donation program.  I complained they pass along very little information, looking to own the donor experience.  At the time, this seemed like a really bad thing.  Now it seems more like if you found out Kim Jong Un refuses to tip more than 10% — true, bad, and minor.  Amazon passes you the donor’s name, address, and email.  As a result, you own the constituent and can do your own cultivation thereafter.
• That said, they don’t pass through credit card information. This is understandable from a donor piece-of-mind perspective.  It does mean that this is going to be for one-time, not recurring, giving for now.
• You will be responsible for acknowledgments. Which you want to be, right?  Because you put time and effort into making sure you thank the donor and shows him/her the impact of their gift, right?  Well, even if you would have preferred Amazon take care of that for you, they don’t.
• This isn’t entirely new. Over a million people have already used Amazon Pay to donate to charity.  This is adding the voice-activated front-end to an existing process.
• Donors are protected. Donors will be asked for a four-digit number to activate the donation.  Thus you won’t be getting donations when a news anchor says “Alexa, donate $50 to the American Cancer Society” like happened with automatic dollhouse-ordering last year.

All in all, I’m amazed they could do all of this while simultaneously either bankrupting or saving the U.S. Postal Service.

The big question:  “How do I get in on this?”  I couldn’t find a process on Amazon for how to request that your charity be included.  If anyone does find it, please put it in the comments; otherwise, it may be on a don’t-call-us-we’ll-call-you basis; or, it may be that each charity will have to build it’s own “skill” to add to Alexa. (see comment in this article.)

This is a significant move.  Pew data show almost half of U.S. adults use voice-controlled digital assistants.  One in six Americas now own a smart speaker, according to NPR and Edison Research, more than double a year ago.  Of those, 78% are Echoes or Echo Dots.  And while usage skews younger, 37% of people 50+ use a voice-controlled digital assistant.

When would a charity use this? My initial reactions (and I’d love the Agitator family to weigh in):

• Anywhere where you would have had a text-to-give campaign on TV or radio. This will not replace Adele giving out your text-to-give number on stage.  What an Alexa-based campaign lacks in reach (more people have text capabilities than Alexa) it makes up for (in my opinion) by having a greater range of donation options — $5 to $5000 – and allowing you to have a continuing dialog with that donor.
• New opportunities on TV, radio, and streaming. This will not replace DRTV.  DRTV is focused on sustaining giving to pay for the high costs of creating and placing advertising.  However, if your spokesperson is giving an interview, “just say Alexa, give $X to [Name of my Charity] to help out” may replace “just go to www.myorganization.org/whatimtalkingabout.”  You could also see Spotify ads featuring this type of call-to-action, as Spotify will increasingly be streamed through smart speakers.
• Facilitating rage donations. We’ve asked/trained our donors to go online and give to us when someone or something boils our blood.  If you can now make that donation with your voice while the story is still airing, you’ve taken significant friction out of that process.  (Note: watch for Alexa to give presidential campaign donations in 2020…)

Most importantly, this is a medium by which you will acquire donors or get occasional over-the-transom gifts from existing donors.  It will not (in the near term) be a cultivation medium or communication channel (although Alexa content is certainly coming).

Thus, before you even begin, you must develop the onboarding and donor journey for people coming in.

The biggest value in this new medium is likely going to be that it brings in donors for you.  It’s now going to be on you to retain them.  That starts with your first post-Alexa interaction.  That makes listening quickly and for things like identity, commitment, and preferences that will help you define their donor journey.

Nick