In a 2008 Super Bowl ad, NFL golden boy Tom Brady asked nearly 100 million viewers to text “FIT” to donate $5 to the United Way. About 25,000 humans responded, raising $10,000.

Now imagine whether President-elect Barack Obama had been able to ask the 100,000 folks who showed up at his rally in St. Louis in October to give $5 or $10 with a simple text. It’s another technology political campaigns are eager to tap into as a new way to raise money.

Mobile giving is currently limited to nonpartisan, charitable organizations, such as the United Way, and politicians must clear a few technical and regulatory obstacles. But that could happen before the next presidential election.

“There’s some things we’ll have to work out for campaign finance, but I think in four years we’ll have done that,” said Jed Alpert, CEO of Mobile Commons, one of the five mobile application service providers that help organizations implement mobile giving.

Text messaging played a huge role in the 2008 election, largely due to the Obama campaign’s aggressive use of mobile marketing. His success in reaching voters — particularly young Americans — is being praised and studied by politicos across the country. Soon it will be emulated.

“The Obama campaign will have the same effect on the future of mobile campaigning and giving that the declaration that the world was round had on the shipping industry,” said Andrew Rasiej, co-founder of TechPresident, a bipartisan group blog that tracks online campaigning.

While the Obama model may revolutionize campaign tactics, it has not shifted one basic fundamental: money still rules. But, Obama proved that money can come in smaller amounts from a greater number of donors. In fact, Obama counted on more than 3 million contributors to amass his nearly $650 million in total donations, about half contributing less than $200.

That…

[Source] dhiram