Your donors believe in you. That’s why they contribute to your projects. Their enthusiasm can help you find more donors, raise more funds, and get more people in your communities excited about your work. When you make it fun for them to help, it’s even better.

Every project or activity can be engaging, and fun, when you turn it into a game or contest. Text messaging helps you create that fun environment for fund-raising. You can attract and engage with donors to get them involved in your fundraising goal. Running competitions for prizes and recognition is a fun and productive way to get donors involved.

For example, you can award prizes for donors who capture different levels of investment, create campaigns within their local networks, contribute new fundraising ideas and more. You can also offer some type of annual recognition for donors who reach the highest levels of referral fund-raising, as well as recognition on a project by project basis. The options are only as limited as your imagination!

Here are some examples on how you can use text messaging to engage donors in your fund-raising opportunities.

Gamify Your Fundraising with SMS Messages

SMS messages make it easy to gamify fund-raising. You can announce the program, send promotional texts to keep the game top of mind, feature donors and their fund-raising ideas, offer special prizes and share each donor’s personal status with them.

Here’s how it works.

First, you need to decide on your offer/game strategy. Let’s say you’re funding a project to build a new women’s center for healthcare, counseling, and support with childcare/family services.

Please note: In the conversations below, green represents an automated conversation, yellow represents a 1:1 conversation.

Following is an example message flow to announce the project, attract and engage your donors and reward them for their support.

The above messages are automatically sent as a conversation to all selected donors on your list. If you want to expand your list, it’s simple to send the same message campaign at any point in time.

When donors reply to join the project, the following messages are automatically triggered.

 

After a week, those donors who haven’t sent in a contest form get the following message. You can automatically send as many reminders as you want, at whatever time schedule you prefer.

 

When a donor’s contest form is received, the following message flow is automatically sent.

 

Help Your Donors Successfully Attract Funds

You can also run a set of introductory events, either online or in person, to help donors raise funds, and to help them better understand the projects.

First, you’d announce the event to your donors.

 

When someone replies asking for help, Amy or one of her team members is immediately alerted by SMS-Magic so that they can start a 1:1 conversation.

 

Amy just sent a scheduling message. When Rachel schedules a call, she’ll be sent a confirmation message, as well as a reminder for the call.

The Bottom Line

SMS messages give you the chance to have important conversations with your donors, for fundraising and more.

Getting your donors involved in supporting your fund-raising efforts is a great way to deepen your relationship with them, even as you raise more funds. That’s just one option to use text messaging to increase the efficiency and volume of your fund-raising initiatives.

Anytime you need to promote and register donors for an event, or manage meetings, conversational messaging is your answer. Here are just a few examples:

• Live events. Promote your live fundraising events with donors and your community through messaging. Compel people to register with calls to action that offer them some kind of perk, then confirm their registration and remind them of the event, automatically. You can also send additional promotions to pique their interest and educate them about upcoming projects through messaging, after someone registers.
• Webinars and online events. You can promote your event, register your donors, confirm their registration and remind them of the upcoming event through an automated conversation flow.
• Meetings. Is your CEO or other executive visiting a city to meet with donors? You can reach out to offer them a personal meeting, confirm it and then remind them. Or you can schedule the meetings individually and then use messaging to confirm and remind them.

Following is an example of how non-profits use text messaging to promote and register donors for an event, then increase event attendance by piquing their interest.

How to Use SMS Messages to Amplify Non-Profit Events

Use SMS messages to invite donors to special events or programs or for volunteering opportunities at those events.

Texting makes it so easy to keep your donors in the loop concerning key news and updates, fun announcements and progress reports and other areas that are of personal interest to them.

Please note: In the conversations below, green represents an automated conversation, yellow represents a 1:1 conversation.

For example, use messaging to invite your donors to a special fund-raising function, then remind them of the date and time and keep them interested with compelling updates and promotions.

Here’s how:

When someone registers, the following message flow is automatically started.

A new message is automatically sent every week until the week of the event. These SMS messages can promote special aspects of your event, share key information and ask questions to deepen personal information.

Here are some examples:

When a donor replies with a special request, Judy is immediately alerted and can step into a 1:1 conversation.

By meeting Pat’s personal needs ahead of the event, you further deepen your relationship. After all, donors give to organizations they like.

The Bottom Line

Text messaging saves time and amplifies your events. This means you have more time to work directly with your donors. It also gets more of your donors to the events, which means you have even more opportunity to learn about them, matching their interests to your funding opportunities to increase your fundraising success.

Your organization can use the same automated messaging flows to schedule meetings, then remind donors about them. This makes managing a schedule less time consuming, so you can again spend more time with your donors. And you’ll need to with all that increased attendance.

Your donors already use text messaging every day. Which means it’s a natural way to begin a conversation about your latest fund-raising drive, your plans for new projects and other news about your organization that matters to them.

One of the best ways to increase your success when it comes to fundraising is by using text messaging to engage your donors with personalized conversations. Here’s how.

How to Get Personal with SMS Marketing

We all like it when others show that they care about our priorities, perceptions and personal interests. It’s human nature.

When you use text messaging to have a conversation, you can learn about your individual donors; what matters to them, why they might support your organization and personal events, like anniversaries and birthdays. You can then personalize your news updates and requests to match their personal areas of interest.

For example, you might text the following:

 

Please note: In the conversations below, green represents an automated conversation, yellow represents a 1:1 conversation.

Thanks to the initial automated messages, you now know that Jane is interested in building schools. She’s also interested in how you fund them. You also know she has a personal interest in South Africa.

Jon was alerted by SMS-Magic the minute her personal message was received, so he was able to respond with a 1:1 conversation. He can now continue that conversation to learn more about her interests and deepen the relationship.

Use SMS Marketing to Continue to Develop a Relationship

Now that you know what interests them at a high level, you can tune your requests and the information you send to match each donor’s interests.

Messaging is such a natural conversation that it makes it easy to continue to ask donors questions to learn even more about them, giving you the key insights to build a relationship.

Just remember, you won’t build a relationship by only asking them for donations. It’s just as important to give back to them with programs or opportunities that match their interests. You want to be a partner for life, not that pesky organization that always asks for money.