Joshua Stern

In the current challenging funding environment, NGOs need creative solutions to maintain and expand their impact while optimizing costs.

Mobile rewards - including airtime transfers and data bundles - have emerged as a powerful and cost-effective tool for humanitarian organizations. When implemented thoughtfully, these digital incentives can drive program participation, enable data collection, and support field operations, all while providing tangible value to beneficiaries.

With Telerivet, organizations can implement mobile rewards programs at any scale, from small pilot projects to nationwide initiatives. The platform connects with over 550 mobile networks in 150+ countries, enabling automated airtime transfers, data bundles, and eGift vouchers that can be triggered by survey responses, program milestones, or staff activities. This infrastructure makes it possible to seamlessly integrate mobile rewards into existing programs while maintaining detailed tracking and reporting.

It's not just NGOs that are discovering the utility of mobile rewards.  Telerivet enables its business users to wield micro-incentives to improve field-force effectiveness and encourage market-share increasing consumer behavior. In this post, however, we will focus on how to build effective mobile incentive campaigns for NGOs and humanitarian efforts.

Mobile surveys are transforming how organizations understand and respond to community needs. By leveraging mobile messaging through channels like SMS, WhatsApp, and Viber, as well as voice calls, NGOs can now collect vital data from even the most remote locations, enabling faster response times and more effective program delivery.

The humanitarian landscape is facing unprecedented upheaval. USAID is under fire, with potential shutdown looming. Already, funds are frozen, programs canceled, and countless NGOs and the people they serve are left in limbo. Having spent years in both Silicon Valley and international development, I feel compelled to share my perspective.

The situation is already having cascading effects throughout the development world. All of us in development hear unsettling reports daily: Millions of dollars’ worth of food rotting in ports. Layoffs and the scattering of deep institutional knowledge. Entire programs being suspended. Rising community-level despair as funds, food, and medicine stop coming. If USAID's freeze continues long-term, the consequences will be profound. A potential black swan event.

Telerivet offers a complete connectivity solution for organizations to communicate in real time with customers, stakeholders, or staff anywhere in the world with an unmatched choice of providers. 

Many organizations have been forced to operate in walled gardens, paying a premium on usage due to geography or bundled features. Consolidations and shifts in the communications landscape have driven up prices in certain markets and under-served others.

In the past 5 years, thousands of organizations across more than 150 countries have relied on Telerivet to send and receive text messages. Today, we’re excited to announce the launch of Telerivet Voice, which organizations can use to automate voice calls with their customers, employees, and community.

The most widespread Ebola virus epidemic in history began in 2013 and continued for over two years, infecting tens of thousands of people and causing social and economic devastation on a frightening scale. The outbreak was largely focused in three West African countries, and it was only through the herculean efforts of thousands of community leaders, educators, doctors, nurses, and public health workers that a much wider outbreak was avoided.

Last year the Telerivet mobile messaging platform launched a new feature, airtime transfer, and in the last year we have seen some inspiring, innovative uses.

Telerivet is thrilled to announce our new strategic partnership with Nexmo.

Today, massive excitement is building around universal, open Internet connectivity. With the establishment of high-profile global projects like Facebook’s Internet.org, incalculable social and economic gains seem just at the horizon. For developers, too, that means the rapid multiplication of new opportunities for the deployment of the best tools for driving innovation and connectivity all over the planet. But the Internet isn’t the only technology driving innovation and connectivity, especially when it comes to mobile.