3 Things to Know Before Fundraising with SMS
Mobile messaging is a growing channel for nonprofits—particularly for fundraisers. But before you even send your first text, it’s important to think through every part of your strategy: how will you know people are interested in being engaged via SMS? How can an SMS program become part of your overall fundraising strategy? EveryAction’s General Manager for Digital, Mike Liddell, shared three things fundraisers should know before kicking off their own program.
Q: What should fundraisers know before starting an SMS program?
A: I think the number one thing to think about if your organization is interested in SMS is the way you will launch your program. One easy way to get started without making a big investment or do anything risky is just asking people to opt in to an SMS program.
Even if you don’t have an existing SMS program, you can determine if it is something your audience is interested in by starting to offer a text-message opt-in option on your forms. If your audience responds positively, you can go ahead and start sending SMS messages and getting a program going that way.
SMS is a little different from email in that there can be a per-message cost, but if you start building your list now you can gauge the interest before you jump in and start paying for messages.
Ultimately, you should know that SMS is a huge, growing channel—especially for fundraisers! M+R’s 2021 Benchmarks reported that audience sizes for SMS grew by 26 percent over the previous year, and the clickthrough rate for mobile fundraising messages was three times higher than the clickthrough rate for email fundraising messages. Those kinds of results help explain why we’re seeing a lot of organizations start to use SMS—and as we move into fall fundraising, we know nonprofits can use it as part of a really smart, effective fundraising strategy.
