Mobile Volunteer Portal Enables “Friends-Asking-Friends” Fundraising

November 18, 2011 :: Shirley Ross, Information Systems and Computing

Alumni volunteers have used the Mobile Volunteer Portal extensively this year to apply a “friends-asking-friends” approach to reunion fundraising. Recently Penn student members of Seniors for The Penn Fund, a student fundraising group that collects donations from members of the senior class before they graduate, used MVP for the first time to further their fundraising efforts. Students quickly embraced the technology. They brought their own laptops, logged onto Penn wifi, and used the application to “cherry pick” friends and student peers to contact for the Senior Drive. Then they either pulled out their cell phones or used Facebook and other social media to contact them to ask for donations.