Text-to-give is a powerful way to raise funds for your nonprofit.

Text-to-Give — Nonprofit Catalog

Text-to-give is a powerful tool for nonprofits to expand their reach and drive revenue. As supporters spend more time on their phones than ever, your organization can meet them where they already are by offering a text-to-give donation option. 

What is text-to-give?

Nonprofits can leverage text-to-give to offer supporters a simple and convenient donation option. Text-to-give allows donors to quickly make donations from their mobile devices. This fundraising method makes donating to your nonprofit intuitive and accessible, expanding your organization’s reach and providing additional support for your mission.

Text-to-Give has a variety of benefits for your nonprofit and its donors.

There are many benefits of text-to-give:

  • It’s convenient for donors. Supporters can easily give from anywhere at any time, as long as they have their phone in hand. 
  • It expands your organization’s reach. Studies show that 97% of Americans have a cell phone, so your organization can readily reach new audiences by targeting mobile users. 
  • It can be paired with any fundraising event to maximize donations. Alongside your peer-to-peer fundraiser, auction, or other event, you can add in a text-to-give component to incorporate even more opportunities to give.

Text fundraising can help your nonprofit take its fundraising strategy to the next level, allowing you to raise more money and deepen your community impact. With the right text-to-give software, your nonprofit can access all of these benefits and streamline the entire set-up and execution process, giving your staff more time to advance its mission. 

How does text-to-give work? 

With the right technology solutions, text-to-give is easy for nonprofit professionals to set up and manage. Once implemented, your nonprofit and its supporters will find this donation method intuitive and simple to use. 

Text-to-Give is easy to set up and execute with the right text messaging provider.

Here’s how text-to-donate works:

  1. Partner with a text-to-give provider with fundraising experience and create a keyword. Supporters opt-in to receive texts from your organization by texting the keyword to your designated shortcode or long-code. 
  2. Send out donation appeals with a mobile-friendly link to your donation page. A mobile donation page should have limited fields and be optimized for phone viewing, making it easier for supporters to donate via their mobile devices. 
  3. Receive donations from your supporters. By sending emotionally compelling donation requests, your donors will feel inclined to tap on your donation link and contribute to your impactful work. Test out different message content and frequencies to maximize the impact of your text-to-give campaign. 

Text-to-give has the potential to skyrocket your fundraising potential, all while saving your nonprofit time and energy so you can focus on pushing your mission forward. 

Text-to-give best practices

While text-to-donate is a fairly simple process, it will require ongoing efforts from your nonprofit to come up with moving messages that will not only be read, but acted on. Explore these best practices to develop a winning text messaging campaign. 

Choose a catchy text-to-give keyword.

Supporters text a keyword to sign up for your messaging. The keyword should be relevant to your campaign and memorable. Keep it simple, as overly complicated keywords are more difficult to type and can cause prospective donors to get frustrated. Examples of good keywords include:

  • JOIN
  • GIVE
  • DONATE
  • WALK 

If you’re running multiple campaigns, choose different keywords for each campaign.

Build your contacts list.

Promote your text-to-give campaign on your website, email, and social media to build your contact list. You’ll also want to include a prompt on your website’s donation page for donors to fill in their phone number and opt into your text messaging campaign. If your nonprofit has received supporters’ phone numbers in the past, you can add them to your text-to-donate campaign.

Always allow your supporters the ability to opt out of your campaign at any time. This can be done by enabling your supporters to text “STOP” or a related word or phrase to leave your texting campaign. Not only is this legally required, but it helps build trust with your supporters.

Send inspiring text messages.

Use storytelling elements to highlight the issue at hand and why donors should take action and give. One of the most impactful ways to inspire your supporters to donate is by telling an unfinished story. For example, if you’re a healthcare organization, you might tell the story of a 10-year-old patient who needs lifesaving treatment and explain that donor support is needed urgently to fund this child’s care. This allows the donor to be the hero of the story, further incentivizing them to step in and help. 

Include a clear call to action so donors know what their next step should be in the donation process. Link directly to your mobile donation page so donors can take action quickly.

Collect and analyze data. 

Pay attention to metrics like open rate, click-through rate, and conversion rate with the help of your text messaging provider. This will help you enhance your text messaging strategy, from optimizing the frequency of your text messages to improving your segmentation efforts so messages are more likely to resonate with donors, thereby increasing donations.

With the help of a leading software provider, your organization will be in great shape to create a robust text-to-give campaign. Do your research to find a provider that will help you elevate your nonprofit’s mission and drive fundraising success. 

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