The sun rises on fundraising tool RAZ Mobile

It’s like watching the lions eat the Christians,” says Dale Knoop, founder of the fundraising app RAZ Mobile. The 52-year-old entrepreneur and Sprint veteran is a relentlessly upbeat guy, and he sounds sunny even pronouncing this opinion. He can afford to — he’s only talking about Monday’s Chiefs game in Pittsburgh.

“I’ve got Heath Miller,” he says, naming the Steelers tight end on his fantasy-football team.

Miller won’t have a great night once Pittsburgh QB Ben Roethlisberger gets knocked out of the game. But the big-picture wisdom of Knoop’s roster choice is undeniable. And when the subject turns from football to technology, you’re even more likely to pay attention to what Knoop does. At Sprint, where he worked from 1996 to 2006, he was in the trenches for the ascent of smartphones. “The corporate thing gave me tremendous opportunity to learn about mobile data,” he says. And another 20-month tour of duty there, which ended this past March, reinforced his belief that anything worth doing is worth doing with a mobile app.

It also honed his touch with investors. After Knoop left the Overland Park telecom company last spring, he devoted his energy full time to RAZ. By early October, his new venture’s capitalization had vaulted over $1 million, with an $800,000 injection from an angel investor announced that month.

But that shouldn’t be a surprise, given that what RAZ does is as simple as a Roethlisberger-Miller completion: The app connects organizations looking for money with donors.

“We looked at the marketplace and saw that nonprofits were being left behind,” Knoop says. “They’re so scrutinized at how they spend their money that they can’t necessarily get into developing a platform like ours. We wanted to introduce a brand-new day in fundraising.”

Knoop’s timing is perfect. While nonprofits forced to slash budgets are re-examining the traditional direct-mail approach to fundraising, smartphone users, primed by the habits of online commerce and the SMS altruism that now trails every natural disaster, are increasingly ready to commit themselves to one-touch giving.

RAZ’s model, however, departs from the “text this number to give $10 to the Red Cross” model. It’s designed, Knoop explains, to lower a nonprofit’s costs, allow variable dollar amounts and, most of all, keep the donor-recipient channel open between transactions.

“Giving by text has its benefits,” Knoop says. “But the limitations are manifold.” One drawback, he adds, is that carriers usually pass on network charges. “Why is the carrier standing between me and the cause I care about?” he asks. And telecom companies have so far made their text-donation arrangements only with the largest charities. “Why are they picking the winners and losers?” he asks.

Even some of the biggest groups accepting donations after Hurricane Sandy aren’t set up for SMS giving, and numerous smaller outfits have limited means to make their appeal. That’s future RAZ territory, Knoop says. “Huge human tragedies, loss of property and loss of life, are ways for organizations to find donors. But between those major events, there’s still the opportunity to serve causes.”

He goes on: “An educated donor is a loyal donor, and a loyal donor gives repeatedly. Table stakes these days is engaging donors constantly rather than with direct mailings once or twice a year. It’s easy and more rewarding to use a steady product.”

RAZ, which doesn’t charge for texting, makes its money by charging the donor-seeking groups a fee of $29 to use the app’s platform and collecting 6 percent of donated funds. During the first quarter of 2013, Knoop plans to introduce a separate plan for recipients taking a higher volume of donations; the monthly fee would be $49, with RAZ’s share of donations at 3.9 percent.

With the 2012 election now history, Knoop expects next year to mark RAZ’s first foray into political fundraising. The company recently set up a partnership with Washington, D.C.-based Coalescent, which helps PACs manage events. “It’s run by a friend of ours,” he says. “It’s very capable and very well-connected. If you don’t speak the language out there, you’re a foreigner — and I don’t want to learn the language.

“There are specific things happening about the PAC and political space that I’m not able to divulge now,” Knoop adds. “But if everything goes to plan, we’ll announce soon. The PAC guys recognize that everything they do has gone mobile.”

Everything anyone does has gone mobile, Knoop says. If he were starting his education today, he adds, “I would focus solely on all things mobile and look at different pieces of what we do as humans on a daily basis and ask how to take it mobile.”

So now there’s an app that takes good works mobile. “I’m driven by the fact that I think I’m here to apply what I know and go help as many people as I can,” Knoop says. “I pray that RAZ helps millions and millions of people.” And why shouldn’t it? As Knoop points out, “You can’t meet anybody who doesn’t care about some cause.”