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Fundraising Tuesday: Does Texting Donors Work? Exploring the Effectiveness of SMS

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A guest post by Christina Marmor at Mogli

According to the latest nonprofit technology reports, 62% of nonprofits use SMS/text messaging for their organizing efforts while 22% utilize text-to-give for fundraising. These are impressive numbers, but popularity doesn’t always equate to results. If your nonprofit hasn’t yet tried text marketing or fundraising, the first question on your mind is likely does it work?

While the answer to this question can vary depending on your audience’s preferences and the SMS strategies your organization uses, the general consensus is yes.

In this article, we’ll explain why SMS works for nonprofits by diving deeper into the effectiveness of texting donors for marketing, stewardship, fundraising, and more.

Text messages have a 98% open rate.

One of the main reasons texts are effective for a variety of nonprofit needs is that they have impressive open rates—98%, compared to email’s average of 20%. This means that many more of your nonprofit’s supporters will read the messages you send via text message than those from other channels.

Plus, Mogli’s SMS marketing guide explains that beyond high open rates, other text marketing benefits include:

text messaging

  • High click-through rates. Once supporters open a text message from your nonprofit, they’re also more likely to click on the links. Texts have an average 19% click-through rate, meaning that these messages can drive action from your supporters more effectively than those sent via email and other channels.
  • They’re easy for staff to send. With an SMS marketing app, your nonprofit’s staff can easily send, receive, and track text messages to and from supporters. Since texts are naturally shorter and less formal than other communication methods, you can spend less of your valuable time writing the message’s content, too.
  • They’re easy for supporters to read. Text messages are only a few sentences long at most, so donors don’t have to spend much time or brainpower to read them. Taking this work off your supporters’ plates makes them more likely to read and engage with your messages.

Because text messages simplify communication for both you and your supporters, they’re highly effective for getting urgent messages across, checking in with donors, and spreading the word about important cause-related updates.

SMS provides easy two-way communication.

Texts aren’t just effective for sharing information—they also provide opportunities for two-way communication, helping you create positive personal interactions and ultimately build lasting relationships with donors. Because texts are highly personal and easy to respond to, supporters can easily text back quick questions or feedback. This allows your nonprofit to continue the conversation and learn more about supporters in the process.

For example, take a look at the following example of what a text exchange between an animal rescue nonprofit and a donor with questions about a fundraising campaign might look like:

  • Nonprofit: Imani, we’re launching a fundraiser to provide local animal shelters with brand-new leashes, litter boxes, and pet toys. Can we count on your support?
  • Donor: I can’t donate money right now, but I have extra cat toys that my cat doesn’t like. Can I donate those?
  • Nonprofit: Yes! We accept both monetary and in-kind donations, as long as they’re new or gently used. Find a drop-off location near you by following this link.
  • Donor: Perfect, thank you!
  • Nonprofit: No, thank you! We appreciate your generous support for our community’s furry friends in need 🙂 Let us know if you have any more questions about donating!

This exchange quickly answered Imani’s questions, established a positive rapport, and resulted in an in-kind donation to the organization.

You can increase texts’ relationship-building potential further by leveraging a text marketing tool that integrates with your donor database (such as a Salesforce SMS app if you use Salesforce for Nonprofits). This way, you’ll be able to automatically record data from your text interactions in individual donor profiles. Then, you can reference this data in later outreach to show donors that you listen to them and further improve your relationships.

Texts are versatile and fast.

Finally, the versatility and speed of SMS make it effective for a wide variety of nonprofit needs and goals. It goes beyond promoting your fundraising campaigns—you can also use texts for general marketing, donor stewardship, advocacy, and more.

For instance, one nonprofit might use SMS messages to do all of the following at different times:

  • Fundraise directly over text using text-to-donate campaigns.
  • Personally invite supporters to events and volunteering opportunities.
  • Share educational resources to spread awareness of their cause.
  • Thank donors with immediate, personal thank-you text messages.
  • Ask supporters directly for feedback on events, fundraisers, and more.
  • Send intuitive text surveys to learn more about supporters’ opinions.
  • Remind donors about event and volunteering registration deadlines.

And these uses are just the beginning! Text messages are highly flexible, and recipients are more likely to read texts within minutes while letting emails pile up in their inbox’s promotions folder. This means that for any message you want supporters to read and act on quickly, text messages are the answer.

Texting donors does work, especially when you personalize messages and send content that aligns with supporters’ unique interests. To get started with text marketing, look for a texting app or solution that meets your organization’s needs, then brainstorm ways to incorporate texts into your multichannel marketing strategy. When you add SMS to a comprehensive communication plan, you’ll be able to better connect with donors and holistically improve your relationships.

Christina Marmor head shotChristina Marmor – Vice President of Marketing at Mogli

Christina is a tenacious marketing leader who combines grace, grit, and creative joy to drive innovation, evolve mindsets, and accelerate transformation. She is obsessed with personalizing experiences to drive connection and engagement. Christina is a life-long figure skater. When not championing Mogli, you’ll most likely find her on a lacrosse field cheering on her son or at the ice rink supporting her daughter’s figure skating journey.

Fundraising Tuesday: 3 Segmentation Strategies For Donors With Your CRM

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Effective outreach helps your nonprofit raise awareness and funds for its cause. But if you want donors to respond to your messages, you’ll need to make your outreach relevant to each recipient.

That’s where constituent relationship management (CRM) solutions come in! CRMs store donor data, which can reveal shared characteristics among your supporters. By separating donors into categories based on these similarities, you can personalize communications.

In this guide, we’ve created a list of segmentation strategies your nonprofit can use. Explore these strategies to send the right messages to the right people.

  1. Segment donors by communication preferences.

Your donors aren’t all the same, and they don’t all want to give using the same channels. For example, some might respond to phone pledges while others prefer online donations. Use data to see how each segment prefers to communicate and then use a multichannel approach to engage them.

CharityEngine’s guide to nonprofit donations recommends using the following tools:

  • Email: If your audience is a little older, email is a reliable way to engage them. It’s fast, it’s easy, and it can stay in an inbox and remind donors to act.
  • Optimized donation forms: No matter which channel you use, everyone will end up on your donation form. It should make giving easy, offering many payment options and the ability to begin a monthly gift.
  • Mobile campaigns: Younger audiences respond favorably to SMS or text-to-give campaigns. If that’s the makeup of your audience, mobile is the way to go.

Appeal to as many communication preferences as possible by planning message templates. This way, you can adjust your messages for any channel. You’ll reach every donor, whether they prefer a text message or direct mail.

2. Group donors by involvement history.

Imagine you accept a job offer and arrive at the office for your first day of work. You’re probably expecting to go through training or new employee orientation. Wouldn’t you be surprised if you weren’t trained at all and were expected to just start working?

In the same way, your nonprofit’s communication should match a donor’s level of experience with your organization. For example, engage brand-new donors with feel-good stories about your mission. Or, identify your monthly givers and consider a campaign to get them to pledge $5 a month. Knowing how people are giving helps you understand what the next ask should be.

Properly managed donor data reveals donors’ histories of involvement. Your CRM can analyze giving history for you to make these patterns easier to find. Consider the following elements of their involvement:

  • Recency: Throughout a donor’s engagement with your nonprofit, the messages that will be most compelling change. For example, if someone donates regularly, show them how their donation is used. If you have a lapsed donor, your strategies will change.
  • Nature: How did donors come on board? Were they a plus-one at an event, or did they make a gift in a loved one’s memory? Understanding how they’re involved can help you send the right message.
  • Method: Knowing how donors give can help you tailor messages for your audience. For example, send a quick text to donors who usually give through a text-to-give campaign. 

Plus, this information can be used as social proof when stewarding prospective donors. It’s human nature to want to join a crowd! Entice others to commit to your organization by publicizing giving trends or offering donor profiles.

3. Use gift size to segment donors.

While every donation is important, gift sizes can indicate a level of commitment. For example, someone who occasionally makes sizable gifts may be a candidate for a major gift. Or, someone who gives small gifts could make a reliable monthly donor.

Tracking gift size with your CRM reveals donors’ responses to your fundraising efforts. This way, you’ll know what future fundraising asks are appropriate. To do this, segment donors according to the following gift sizes:

  • Annual gifts: It can be easy to dismiss year-end donors until that season rolls around. Build better relationships with them by sending communications as early as September! Issue a challenge and track progress to generate excitement.
  • Mid-level gifts: Mid-level donors are already committed to your cause. But they might be one impact story or case study away from making a more sizable gift. Share the impact of their donations and what more your nonprofit needs.
  • Major gifts: Selecting nonprofit fundraising software involves looking for the right features. You’ll want a CRM that manages major and planned gifts. This way, you can identify major donors and thank them for their generosity. Gratitude helps you cultivate stronger relationships with these donors.

According to Double the Donation, you can also upgrade donors to higher giving levels. Use your CRM to learn how donors’ relationships evolve with your nonprofit. Then, create a plan to guide other donors through this journey.

Use these segmentation strategies to target donors for more relevant fundraising appeals. Also,  they’ll help you properly steward donors! Your CRM can show you how to thank donors personally and specifically. This way, you can send the right messages, gifts, invites, and more to deepen each donor’s commitment.

 

Philip Schmitz – CEO & Founder

Philip Schmitz is the CEO and founder of cloud-services leader BIS Global, creators of the CharityEngine fundraising & communications technology platform. Founded in 1999, Phil has managed the vision and strategy for BIS’s suite of integrated business applications & hosting tools used by more than 400 businesses & non-profits.

Fundraising Tuesday: Plan a Capital Campaign–9 Steps

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A guest post by Amy Eisenstein and Andrea Kihlstedt of Capital Campaign Pro

You may believe that a capital campaign begins when you start asking people for gifts. Or perhaps you think it starts once you have a glossy campaign brochure that you can use to ask for gifts.

But capital campaigns begin long before that. Work on your campaign actually begins in the pre-fundraising period, a period we think of as Pre-Campaign Planning.

The Pre-Campaign Planning process begins when your board decides that your organization should launch a capital campaign and ends when you have a solid enough campaign plan to test with your largest donors. That testing process—whether a traditional feasibility study or one of the newer variations—will help you determine whether the campaign plan you developed is viable.

If it is, you will proceed with the campaign itself, identifying prospects, building relationships, laying out fundraising calendars and more. If it’s not, you’ll reconfigure your plans.

So what goes into a preliminary campaign plan, the one you will test with your donors?

Step 1: Assess Your Readiness

Take some time to evaluate your organization’s readiness for a campaign:

Take Capital Campaign Toolkit’s free readiness assessment here.

This will give you a sense of the areas you need to ramp up now in the early stages of your planning. Ask the appropriate people to fill out copies, and see how their answers compare. The assessment will help you think through what needs to be done and will serve as the basis for constructive conversations about what is to come.

Step 2: Establish a Core Committee

The Core Committee is the small group of 4-6 people who move the campaign planning forward. That group will grow and change throughout the campaign, but the original people usually play an important behind-the-scenes role in determining the shape and direction of the campaign.

During the early planning, the Core Committee should include the executive director, board chair, development director and a couple of other board members or involved major donors.

Step 3: Determine the Working Goal

The working goal for your campaign is an early assessment of how much money you would like to raise through your campaign with the understanding that goal may change over the course of the campaign.

Start by making a list of your campaign objectives, the things you will spend the money you raise on. Estimate the cost of each of them and add up your list. Then add about 10% more for your campaign expenses. No need to dig into budgeting and fine details just yet—your goal can and likely will shift as your campaign comes into focus.

Step 4: Create a Gift Range Chart

Using the working goal from Step 3 as a base number, create a gift range chart that shows how many gifts you will need at various giving levels to reach your campaign goal.

Your top gift should be at least 20% of your working goal, but if you have a small donor base, it might be higher. Work down, increasing the number of gifts and decreasing the gift amounts. Use standard giving levels like $500,000, $250,000, $100,000 etc. Make sure that the number of individual gifts increases for each giving level.

Your chart should have approximately 8 levels of giving, and the amount raised from all of those  gifts should add up to the campaign goal, like in this example:

Gift range chart for capital campaign

Step 5: Identify 30 Qualified Prospects for the Top 10 Gifts

For your campaign to succeed, you’ve got to be able to identify approximately 10 people who have the ability and inclination to make significant gifts, a belief in your mission, and a real and direct contact with your organization.

Your campaign plan should include a list of enough qualified prospects so that you can reasonably anticipate that one third of them may actually make the largest gifts. We recommend gathering 30 qualified prospects for the top 10 gifts in your gift range chart.

Step 6: Create a Depth Chart

A depth chart is simply a way of sorting the list of prospects according to their giving capacity. A chart like this should use the giving levels you devised in Step 4 for the gift range chart to sort individual prospects into different potential giving levels:

gift depth chart

The process of creating this chart will help you evaluate the possibility of reaching the working goal you have developed. If you find that you can’t identify enough qualified prospects for your top giving levels, you may have to reconsider your working goal and gift chart.

Step 7: Engage Your Top Prospects

Once you have identified your largest and most likely lead donors, you’ll create a plan to engage each of them. You can do this in many ways. You might:

  • Meet with them individually to discuss your early plans.
  • Invite them to participate in small focus groups.
  • Ask them to serve on an ad-hoc planning committee.

The main idea is that these people, the likely largest donors to your campaign, should be personally involved in planning prior to being asked to make a gift. There’s no need for email promotion strategies and other marketing plans yet. Engaging these prospects during the pre-campaign and quiet phases is all about one-on-one conversations.

Step 8: Draft a Case for Supporting Your Campaign

Your early campaign plan must include a draft of your case for support. This should be a simple word document that describes why people might make generous gifts to your campaign. How will the people you serve benefit from your campaign? A powerful case for support must inspire people to give, and you will likely have to go through many drafts to arrive at one that is clear and compelling.

Step 9: Prepare Your Board

Though your board members have probably been involved in developing the strategic plan that has led you to a campaign, chances are good that very few of them know what’s involved in a capital campaign. But they will be on the line for the campaign’s success and so should understand what will be expected of them.

In this early planning process, you should begin to educate them about what a capital campaign is and what roles they will be expected to play, whether that’s sourcing and cultivating prospects, soliciting gifts, running your public phase social media strategies, planning events or more.

Now It’s Time to Test Your Plan

Follow these nine steps and you will have a preliminary campaign plan that you can test with your largest donors and most influential community members. Do this with a feasibility study.

By discussing your plans with your prospective donors and community influencers you will learn what they think about what you propose. If you use a traditional feasibility study model, you’ll hire a consulting firm to interview your key prospects and community leaders. The Capital Campaign Toolkit has pioneered a very successful new approach, Guided Feasibility Studies, in which expert advisors help you structure the feasibility study process, but you meet with your donors personally.

Whichever model you choose, this step in the campaign process is extremely important since it will set you on the road to success based on real data gathered from your donors.

Amy Eisenstein, Capital Campaign ToolkitAndrea Kihlstedt, Capital Campaign Pro

Amy Eisenstein, ACFRE, and Andrea Kihlstedt are co-founders of the Capital Campaign Toolkit, a virtual support system for nonprofit leaders running successful campaigns. The Toolkit provides all the tools, templates, and guidance you need — without breaking the bank.

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