Costs
Understanding the goals of the project
Different mobile advocacy scenarios have different budgetary needs.
You should ask yourself some basic questions about the budget, including:
- How long will this project last?
- How many people is this project targeting?
- Will this project be carried out mostly by internal or by external staff?
You should consider whether it would be possible to replicate or scale up the project, especially if the initial set-up costs are very high or the project is expected to become financially self-sustaining.
For example it might be much cheaper to implement an SMS project for your organisation after you have made the initial investment in setting up an SMS hub
Expenses that need to be taken into account are separated into set-up costs, technology costs and running and maintenance costs.
Set-up costs
There are several phases in setting up a mobile advocacy project. They might include:
- Planning (including budgeting)
- Market research or a feasibility study
- Project coordination (such as team management, external contracting)
- Preparing the technical platform (setting up computers, servers etc.)
- Content or message development (for the mobile messages, marketing, and a possible web-site if statistics or other information will be published during the project)
- Collecting phone numbers for a database.
All these are human resources costs since staff members will be required to spend time on these preparations. Alternatively you may decide to hire an external consultant, who can take responsibility for this work and help make decisions.
To be able to estimate these costs, it will be necessary to have a detailed project plan and a schedule, including: the estimated duration of each phase, information on who plays which role and what the responsibilities of each person are, and quotations from possible service providers.
Whatever you are trying to do and regardless of whether this preparation is handled by your staff or by an external consultant, software, hardware and technology services may be needed before or during the campaign, in order to handle:
- Content development (such as marketing materials or a web-site)
- Sending and receiving messages
- Campaign management (message content, timing, mobile phone numbers, etc.)
- Recording and sending content such as text, photos, audio or videos
- Processing, protecting or managing content that is being collected as part of the campaign
- Integrating information produced by the project with existing information systems such as a membership database
Technology costs
Below is a list of items relating to technology that you may need to include in your budget, depending on your campaign scenario and the level of external services used. Some examples of things to consider are:
- Development, localisation (alterations to a platform to make it relevant to local conditions such as language) or configuration of a technology platform (either out-sourced or implemented internally).
- Licensing or set-up fees for a commercial messaging application provided as a service.
- Computer(s) and software to develop content, manage the campaign application, process and store campaign information, plus software to protect computers and phones from viruses and other threats.
- GSM modem or mobile phone(s) to send and receive messages from the messaging application (additional cables or other equipment such as a blue-tooth dongle that will connect the equipment to a computer may also be needed).
- Phone(s) and other devices (such as digital cameras) to capture information and to test that the system works.
- Set-up fees or pre-paid SIM card fees, in order to access the services of one or of several mobile network operators.
- Short codes to be used in the campaign.
- Server(s) to run different system components or to back up information.
- Internet connectivity set-up fees (either traditional fixed-line service such as dial-up or ADSL, or mobile service such as GPRS or 3G).
- Surge protectors or a UPS back-up battery; these protect against power supply problems.
- Web-site hosting set-up fees.
In areas where new technology purchases would make you vulnerable to crime, you may need to adopt additional security measures.
After the technical platform has been set up and properly tested, staff training might be needed, which will mean paying staff wages for extra time and may require the contracting of an external trainer.
You should also budget for some administrative costs, especially if frequent travel and phone use are required when negotiating with service providers.
Running and maintenance costs
In order to prepare an accurate budget, it is essential to estimate the type and amount of information that will be sent via the mobile network and to understand clearly the pricing principles of the mobile network operator or the messaging application provider.
A common pricing model for application providers is to charge a unit fee on top of the monthly or annual subscription fees. This means that you pay for every piece of information sent, and sometimes also to receive information. For example, for each SMS message sent a small fee is charged, and if you send more text messages, the cost will increase. Generally, different types of data have different prices. Data categories are: SMS units, MMS units, ringtone units or general data units (the size of your messages, videos or voice recordings will determine how much it costs to send them, but some kinds of data cost more than others). The units are often measured in kilobytes or megabytes.
As seen with the set-up phase, human resources costs can become one of the biggest expenses in this phase of a mobile advocacy campaign.
In addition to these project and campaign management tasks, you may need to handle media enquiries and other types of communication, to monitor your project and evaluate its progress against the goals that you have set, and other tasks demanding attention and time from your staff.
You will also need to take into account the additional financial management your campaign will require, because you'll have to monitor payments to your external service providers and try to avoid paying high unit prices unnecessarily.
How much it costs to run and maintain the technology will depend on which technology platform you choose for the campaign. Commercial services such as Internet connection subscriptions or additional insurance fees will require ongoing payments, but these are fairly easy to estimate.
Unplanned contingency expenses should also be allowed for, such as computer part repairs, replacement of damaged SIM-cards, or insurance costs if equipment is stolen. If part of the technology platform is being developed specifically for the campaign you may end up having to pay to develop additional functions.
Costs of using commercial SMS services
It is always recommended that you compare the prices offered by different providers. Local providers tend to have cheaper rates than international companies. Costing should include the testing of the SMS-application, making sure that guidelines and manuals are provided, and checking the terms and conditions of the contract (note particularly any promises made by the service provider about the quality of services offered).
Remember that some service providers have special cheaper fees for NGOs. For example, BulkSMS provides SMS to South African non-profit organisations at the lower cost of $0.03 per message, regardless of the number of units purchased.
Many of the online bulk SMS providers only charge per unit for text messages sent via the tools that they themselves provide (for example, a web-tool or desktop application). However, sometimes, especially when you are using an application that allows you to both send and receive text messages, the pricing may seem confusing, especially if the total cost is a combination of set-up, subscription and unit fees. A more detailed article on pricing, which explains commonly used unit pricing options, may be found at:
Here are some examples of the cost per message in different countries: 
Note that these prices are based on sample pricing information in October 2007 and that this is not a comprehensive list. Local operator prices refer to the typical cost for one SMS sent from mobile phone to mobile phone within each country. Bulk prices per SMS unit are taken from the following web-sites: http://www.clickatell.com, http://www.bulksms.com, and http://www.its4sms.com.
The costs of success
In many campaigns the organisation in charge cannot predict or control exactly how many text messages they may end up sending and receiving. Therefore the full cost of the campaign may vary. It is important to think about what might happen if your campaign is very successful.
As the example below shows, unforseen success may increase your costs way above the limits of your budget unless you try and provide for these eventualities. You could decide to charge a fee for people to send you messages, although this might affect the success of the campaign; or you could use a technology platform that doesn't charge you unit fees to receive messages.
For instance, say an organisation is planning to ask their members to sign a petition by responding to an SMS message. The petition request would be sent to all 10,000 members whose mobile phone numbers are saved into the membership database. Based on previous campaigns, the campaign manager estimates that every fourth member will respond to an initial petition request followed up by a reminder a few days later.
Because the organisation is using a bulk SMS service, the service provider will charge a fee for each message sent or received (the price list indicates that each message sent to 10,000 numbers will cost $ 0.05 and each message received will cost $0.10). Therefore, in case the campaign turns out to be highly popular, either among the members, resulting in a 100% response rate, or even beyond the membership (people may forward the message to their friends or colleagues), the campaign manager should prepare additional budget estimates for these scenarios.
Number of people targeted: 10,000
Messages sent to each person: 2
Cost of sending each message: $ 0.05
Estimated response rate: 25% of the 10,000 people contacted
Messages received from each person: 1
Cost per message received: $ 0.10
Total Unit costs at estimated response rate: 10,000 * 2 * $ 0.05 + 25% * 10,000 * 1 * $ 0.10 = $ 1250.00
Response rate if every member responds: 100%
Total Unit costs if every member responds: 10,000 * 2 * $ 0.05 + 100% * 10,000 * 1 * $ 0.10 = $ 2000.00
Estimated maximum response rate: 5000% (500,000 people responding to the petition)
Total Unit costs if the petition becomes a national success: 10,000 * 2 * $ 0.05 + 500% * 10,000 * 1 * $ 0.10 = $ 50,000.00
Because the petition is organised to support an important cause which might get attention from beyond the membership base, you may run a financial risk resulting in unacceptable costs. If you cannot pay for enough units, some of the messages will not be received, which means your campaign will be less successful than it might have been.