Text messages (SMS) can be a valuable addition to any organization’s fundraising strategy. Whether you use SMS to send donation requests or just improve donor relationships, well-thought-out text messages can serve as a powerful fundraising tool for reaching donors in new, compelling ways.
However, adding a new fundraising channel into the mix can feel daunting. After all, you don’t know how your donors will react, what the best strategies are, or how to integrate it seamlessly with your other channels.
That’s where our guide comes in. To help you get started with text fundraising, we’ll explore the basics of SMS and various ways you can incorporate text messages into your border fundraising strategy. Let’s dive in!
Do texts work for fundraising?
2023’s M+R Benchmarks reported that of the nonprofits that use SMS, 62% use it for fundraising purposes. This is for good reason! According to Mogli’s SMS marketing guide, text messages have an average 98% open rate and 19% click-through rate—much higher than any other nonprofit communication channel (for comparison, the average email click-through rate is only 2.6%).
Because recipients open and engage with text messages at higher rates than email or direct mail, SMS makes it easy to spread the word about your fundraising campaigns and encourage donors to give. Texts can work well for multiple aspects of your fundraising strategy, including:
- Donation appeals. If you use an app or platform that includes a text-to-donate feature, you can easily create quick, personalized text fundraising appeals that allow donors to access your donation page with just a tap on their phones.
- Donor recognition. Thank donors immediately after they give with a short text, then follow it up with an emailed donation receipt, a thank-you eCard, or a handwritten thank-you note based on the size of their contribution.
- Fundraising event promotion. As part of your cross-channel marketing efforts, you can send text invitations, announcements, and reminders to register for fundraising events.
- Relationship-building. Because of its high open rates and how easy it is for recipients to respond, SMS is the perfect medium for quick two-way conversations that help you build donor relationships. This is especially true for younger donors who may feel more comfortable interacting with your organization over text.
As you can see, text messages work best for fundraising when you supplement them with other initiatives like fundraising events and multichannel marketing campaigns to build out a robust, comprehensive strategy.
How do you add texts to your existing fundraising strategy?
Now that you understand their benefits, let’s explore how to incorporate text messages into the fundraising strategy you already have. Keeping your past fundraising campaigns’ performance and challenges in mind, take the following steps:
- Evaluate your current fundraising channels and gaps. Examine the channels and strategies you used for your most recent fundraising campaigns. Which ones worked well? Do you need to spend more time on donor engagement or event marketing?
- Identify ways you could use texts in your campaigns. Based on the gaps you identified, determine how text messages could fill them. For example, if your biggest challenge has historically been fundraising event attendance, you can focus your text messages on event promotion and reminders.
- Choose a text marketing app. Next, research a few options and choose an SMS marketing app to invest in. This solution will allow you to send both bulk and one-to-one text messages. It’ll also help you track messages, engagement, and campaign progress.
- Outline a few common messages to send. For instance, you might create several basic fundraising appeals and thank-you texts that you can tailor for different donor segments later.
Align your team on your updated strategy. Finally, communicate your nonprofit’s plans and goals for text fundraising with all relevant team members.
To make the fundraising and relationship-building processes easier, consider also factoring text automation into your strategy. Automating thank-you messages, campaign reminders, or even text surveys can save team time while engaging donors more quickly and effectively.
Example fundraising text messages
The opportunities for adding texts to your fundraising strategy are endless. Take a look at just a few examples of the type of text messages you might send for different occasions and goals:
Recurring gift reminders
If you want to prioritize recurring giving, you might send text messages designed to promote your monthly giving program or increase your existing monthly donors’ engagement levels. These might include promotional messages, thank-you texts, and reminders to update payment information.
Take a look at the following example messages to see these tactics in action:
- Luisa, thank you for your $15 donation! Are you interested in increasing your impact on our furry friends by making this a monthly gift? Learn more here.
- Daniel, we just received your monthly donation of $25. Thank you for your continued support for local wildlife! 🦝
- Hey Daniel, we noticed that the card you have on file for monthly gifts to Nature Sanctuary is expired. Please update your information by next month to keep giving.
You can simplify these reminders by leveraging an SMS app that integrates with your nonprofit’s CRM, such as a Salesforce SMS solution if you use Salesforce for Nonprofits. This will allow you to easily pull data about monthly donors into your text messages and automate alerts about expired payment information.
GivingTuesday alerts
Since GivingTuesday campaigns are so fast-paced, texts are the perfect way to get potential donors’ attention quickly. Along with social media and email promotion, you might send multiple texts throughout the day to remind supporters about the campaign’s deadline and let them know how to participate. Consider sending texts like this one:
Jeremy, it’s #GivingTuesday, the most important day of the year for the Viola Society! 🎻 Can we count on your support to hit our $20,000 goal? Give $20 or $200 here.
Matching gift campaigns
According to re:Charity, promoting matching gifts across all of your marketing channels helps you earn more fundraising revenue from both donors and their employers. You can easily incorporate texts into your matching gift campaign strategy to get donors’ attention and encourage them to submit a matching gift request.
For example, you might send these personalized text messages throughout your matching gift campaign:
- Serena, thanks again for your generous $200 donation 🙏 Did you know your employer might match it? Check your matching gift eligibility here.
- Hi Serena, we just received a matching gift from your employer—thanks so much for your $400 total contribution!
- Wondering what kind of impact your matching gift made? Click to read Rachel’s story about how the scholarship you funded changed her life.
These texts play a role in every aspect of the matching gift fundraising process: requesting a match, thanking the donor, and updating them on the additional impact they made thanks to their employer match.
Incorporating texts into your fundraising strategy can improve everything from message response rates to your overall relationships with donors. Monitor your text messages’ performance throughout this process by tracking metrics like click-through rates, conversion rates, and more. These insights will help you learn more about your donors’ preferences and shift your strategy as needed.
Support Center