Existing solutions to the challenge of rising mobile usage (for example, responsive web design) focus on only a part of the problem: optimizing the content on a digital property to be comfortably accessible for mobile users. This approach ignores the need to optimize action paths, as well -- making it easy for mobile users to act on the content they see, as opposed to just consuming it.

Quick Donate closed this gap for fundraising actions. The tool allowed supporters to save their payment information, like a credit card, after completing an initial transaction. The next time they wanted to donate, they could do it with a single click on a special, “tokenized” link in an email or website viewed on a mobile device, or by responding to an SMS message with the dollar amount they wanted to give.

Opted-in users could skip the cumbersome process of hunting around for a credit card and typing in personal and payment information on their smartphone keyboard.

Quick Donate was wholly new technology, but it integrated directly with the campaign’s CRM, email, and fundraising platforms (also created by this entrant). Donations were processed immediately, like any other transaction. And Quick Donate users could be targeted with specific email and SMS messaging through the existing communications tools.

At this stage, the product is fully developed. It was funded by Obama for America and internally by the agency and the agency retains ownership of the product.

During the 2012 campaign, more than 1.5 million users opted in to Obama for America's Quick Donate program and donated more than $115 million. Tests performed by the campaign indicated that contributions amounting to $75 million of that $115 million were additional, incremental donations made because of the technology. Conversion rates via Quick Donate were four times higher than on traditional online forms. Donors enrolled in the program gave three times as much money as those solicited in other ways.

Best of all, the technology scales from the smallest campaign or nonprofit to the largest of operations.