¶ Introducing SMS for Nonprofits
If you've been wondering whether your nonprofit should dip its toes into text messaging , this episode is your sign . I am joined by Jasonea Shockey , the Director of Digital Marketing at Boys Town , an incredible organization that has been changing the lives of children and families for over 100 years through care , education and support services .
Jasonea has been leading the charge in bringing SMS into the spotlight at Boys Town in 2023 . And she really walks us through how they launched their text messaging program from the ground up , From talking about the initial internal approvals of getting it done to integrating SMS alongside their email , their social program .
We get into what types of messaging actually works , what frequency they've done , how they're using mobile to really deepen donor relationships . And she shares some really big wins on SMS , MMS , the lessons that they've learned and really why SMS is not just a trend but a really smart , human-centered way to stay connected with your supporters .
So if you've been asking yourself , is it really worth it for our organization , this episode is packed with some really ready-to-try ideas , so let's get into it .
That's the other cool thing about texting is it has given our donors just a different way to connect with us and for us to connect with them , like , it's so easy to send a text message and I think that it makes donors feel good when , like , we take the time to respond to them and we want to respond to them right , because we appreciate that they're reaching
out to us .
Okay . So I want to jump right into what really sparked the decision to launch text messaging SMS at Boys Town , and I can imagine some listeners might be thinking about . There's a lot of people that we might need to convince at our organization for this to be possible . Was it like that internally ?
Did you have to get by and keep talking about like as the decision was being made ? What was the mindset like in the organization ? What was the reason for like ? Okay , we need to start to do this now .
So I would say I started thinking about texting back in 2023 . I went to the Bridge Conference , which I love , lots of other nonprofit professionals and went to a couple of presentations where they were spotlighting their texting programs and they were seeing a lot of success from a fundraising standpoint and then also from a donor engagement standpoint .
At the time I was managing our email marketing , which I still am , but email marketing was really successful for us . It continues to be a good
¶ Building the Case for Text Messaging
platform . But they were going through a lot of privacy changes , as we all know . It's harder and harder to get into the inbox , and so we wanted to kind of expand our channels and different ways to meet donors , really where they were at . I'm really fortunate because Boys Town , I feel like , is great at adopting new technologies .
I feel like , is great at adopting new technologies and especially if we can come with case studies of other nonprofits who are already doing it having success with it , that really helped my business case and so I went to Bridge , came back , kind of started talking about it .
Then I went to another conference shortly after that and I talked one-on-one with some more nonprofit professionals , primarily with March of Dimes . They had a great case study and so after that I came back and it was a pretty easy sell , it was pretty affordable and so this was leading into giving season in 2023 .
I really wanted to launch before Giving Tuesday because I wanted to kind of hit the ground running . We could not hit Giving Tuesday , but we did hit December , which was awesome , and it's just been awesome ever since .
Amazing . Okay , so you talk about the integration of text messaging . You're also working on email . What's the difference ? Do you see in a simple style , like an open rate , like an open rate of your text versus an open rate of your emails ? Is that like a big difference ?
Yeah , so open rate on text ours ranges from like 45 to 65% , which you know we kind of look at open rates loosely now because it's not quite as reliable as a source . Our open rates on our texts are like 98 to 99% , yeah , and so huge difference .
Like we know , everybody's on their phones and we just have had a really engaged audience through our text message program .
Love that For organizations that might be small teams , medium-sized teams to create a text messaging plan , do you think you need like a solo person working on it or somebody who's also managing other things can also work on building out like a beginner's stage of a text messaging plan .
I think you can absolutely do it with your current team . We did not add any team members . We repurpose a lot of our email content with our text program , so it makes it super efficient . We add extra emojis . People seem to like emojis on text . Her tone is a little bit more friendly , so it's different , but it's pretty seamless from email to text .
So I absolutely think anybody small big organizations can work this into their program .
Okay , and I don't want to bury the lead . I want to give you the opportunity because this is I love
¶ Launch Strategy and Implementation
seeing things working in action . So , when you did your launch , which I want to talk all about , how can somebody right now join your texting to be able to see what it looks like to receive a text from a nonprofit if they don't already do that ?
Thank you for allowing me to share this with your audience . So , yes , if they want to join VoiceHound's text program , they can text the word join to 51550 . That is also on our homepage of our website .
So if they forget , they can go to boyshuntorg and sign up that way and they'll get an immediate welcome text from us and then they can kind of secret shop , right , like that's . The most awesome thing about nonprofits is , I feel like you can learn so much from what other organizations are doing . You don't have to start from scratch , which is great .
Yes , I am also testing this out . We were talking before . I also created a Tatango account , so , selfish Play . You can text Dana Mine's a phone number , which is different of a code versus number 770-230-8422 . I'll put both of ours in the show notes , and so I had fun like playing with my little welcome message , and I'm just getting started .
What was the launch period like in 2023 ?
There was a healthy level of anxiety . I would say , keeping it real , yes , yes , especially during the giving season . Right , like I did not want to mess anything up in the giving season . It's such a crucial time for nonprofits . The cool thing about nonprofits is you do have a little bit of wiggle room with your new audience for your texting program .
So anybody who has donated online and provided a phone number you can opt into your email program , and so we took a list of people who had donated online in the past two years with a phone number and we added them . Tatango is a little bit of a shameless plug for Tatango , but they are a fantastic vendor .
We did shop around quite a bit before we decided on them . They came highly recommended in the industry and their customer support is amazing , so that helped a ton with our onboarding .
I can speak to that . I had questions when I was first getting started . Immediately the messaging like instantaneous from a real person .
We onboarded in December and , I would say again , it was pretty easy . They helped us figure out . We launched initially with MMS , which , for those people that don't know the difference , an MMS has a picture and a message and then SMS is text only . And so we launched with MMS in December .
Our audience , our average age , is like early to mid eighties , and so I was really nervous that we were going to have a hard time building confidence with the audience and that they would trust that this was a , you know , a viable channel for them to engage with us . I was nervous , but I was pleasantly surprised . Our donors have been awesome .
They've engaged with us on text , they've responded with our appeals and it's just been . It's been really great .
Amazing . Okay , so you uploaded a list , which , again , I think that's a really big point . Everybody asks about legalities around that and you are correct .
Nonprofits I sat through a webinar with them talking about how nonprofits you have a little bit of this leg up of for-profit companies where , if they have given you a phone number based upon what you just outlined , and of course , in every single message there is the stop to opt out that they have as an option For new people .
Since that initial launch you said it's on your website have you ran a prominent campaign to ask people that you didn't already have their phone numbers to join ?
since so
¶ Message Types and Donor Response
we have not . That is kind of our next phase and , I think , an area , a work in progress for us . Most of our list acquisition to date comes from new online donors . They automatically get opted into our text program and then , like you said , have the opportunity to opt out if that's not how they want to hear from us .
We have done a couple of like smaller SOP campaigns where we've tried to promote our keyword but we have not seen a ton of adoption yet . So that's definitely an area that we are we need to improve on .
Okay . Have you seen a difference in donor retention since adding text messaging ? Ooh .
I don't know that I can speak to that in certainty that our text program , you know , helped our retention rate . I would say that we've had awesome response and conversion rate from texting much more from email . It was number seven on our channel list of revenue for 2024 , and it had the highest conversion rate in 2020 . Wow , Amazing .
Yeah , so it's been really successful . My logic and like thought to asking that question is around .
I know I miss so many emails on the daily just because you're inundated , or they go to a spam folder or promotions or something , or I have like a newsletter filter that a lot of times they go into and if I miss that I might be thinking , oh , they're not communicating with me , Although you are , I'm just not seeing it .
But my phone , to your point , I open every message because you want to clear them out , because you literally see the little number of how many text messages you have .
So you're going to open it and whether or not I click through to maybe a blog that you're sharing or something , I'm at least seeing it and therefore your organization is then again top of mind and I know you're communicating with me . So that's where my kind of thought is .
Is around this like omni-channel approach It'd be interesting to look at like pre and then with those specific donors , I guess from an overall retention perspective . But for the texting , because most of them are donors , then is that accurate ? That's accurate , Okay .
What's the strategy of like frequency that you're reaching out to them and what are the types of like messages that you're sending on each occasion .
Last year we sent about 30 messages outside of our automated welcome messages . About 50% of those were appeals , which is , I think , right on trend with the benchmarks that Tatango provided in their report . About 50% are appeals for most nonprofits and then the other half were mainly like cultivation and stewardship .
So we have some engagement emails , probably like a 25% , where we have like an e-card campaign where we're asking them to , you know , send a card to kids in our program e-card campaign , where we're asking them to , you know , send a card to kids in our program survey opportunities , basically ways for them to engage with us without making a donation .
And then for the stewardship , it's like success stories and gratitude , reporting back on campaigns that we've sent to them and making sure that they know , you know , that we're appreciative of them and the value that they're bringing to the organization with their support .
Awesome . Is there a learning , I guess , for your audience if it's like . I think the general sense is send in the evenings between 8 to 9 pm and a weekday versus a weekend , and what's cool in the platform is you can listeners , you can select like their time zone so they'll go out in a staggered approach . Have you seen any like lesson like that ?
That's worked specifically well .
Yeah , so when we first launched we did play quite a bit with the time and then Tatango came out with a report that recommended the evening send and since then most of our sends are in the evening and we have seen improved engagement since doing that , which is another great thing about Tatango .
Right , we try to when we work with partners and they take the time to do all that research and then share it like Read it , benefit from it , like kind of see what the trend is and what's working and then work it into your program .
So yes , I love that . I know it's cool because you can see , like , the responses from people . Do you have Tatango integrated into a CRM where you can see , like that donor relationship ?
Yes , so when we first launched Tatango we kept it completely within our department
¶ Engagement Strategies and Future Plans
, mainly because it was Q4 and we didn't want to add that onto our donor services team at the time . But it was kind of a blessing in disguise , because then our team got to see all of those responses from donors and see the kinds of questions they asked and the feedback they provided .
So initially probably for the first nine to 12 months , we did not have a direct integration with our CRM and we were doing some manual importing and exporting . We have since integrated and so all the comments that we get the one-to-one communication does go into our CRM and then our donor services can respond to them directly .
And that's the other cool thing about texting is it is given our donors just a different way to connect with us and for us to connect with them , like , it's so easy to send a text message and I think that it makes donors feel good when , like , we take the time to respond to them and we want to respond to them right , because we appreciate that they're
reaching out to us , and so that's been cool too .
Yes , I love that . I want to talk maybe about a couple of examples of an appeal text versus like engagement stewardship text . Can you share ? Like an example of both and like how the messaging is different ? Have you consistently been doing MMS more so than SMS ? Like just an example of what they can look like and feel like ?
can look like and feel like . So in our first year I would say we did primarily MMS , which is the more expensive way to send a text message , but it also gives you more characters and you can include a photo , photo , videos emojis yeah , gifs , can you do GIFs ?
You can do GIFs ? Okay , yeah , so it makes it really much more animated . Yes , yes .
You're correct . The only thing I don't love about the videos is you can't track views . So oftentimes if we do video we will link to our website so then we can see clicks . But yes , it is a great option and we do have a video in our welcome message so they can see that right away .
So our appeals last year were primarily MMS and then we would use SMS for the kind of final , urgent , last-minute campaign ending . I was surprised at least we see awesome response with our SMS , and so this year we're testing can we send less ?
MMS .
Yes , Just for cost savings . If we can send an SMS and get the same results , that's great for the organization . So we're doing some testing around that .
I think that's really interesting , because it's probably just thinking about the demographic you were talking about , and this is different for every organization . But how do they use text ?
Are they putting a bunch of GIFs in videos and photos when they send messages , or is it just text-based , and it probably feels more natural to receive something that looks like something that they're sending all the time . Something I also really like is that you can create I'm not sure if you did this , yet I just created mine like a contact card .
Okay , will you explain how this works , because I thought it was so cool .
Yes , so we this was obviously recommendation up toango . Our first message , our welcome message , talks about the contact card and so essentially it allows the donor or , I guess , text subscriber , to update their contact . So then in the future , when they get email or text from us , it shows from Boys Town and it has our logo versus our number .
So , yeah , so that's a great tool that I think helps with future open rates and click through rates .
Yes , as it actually shows like so far in mind . It'll say like Dana Snyder , like sent you a text and open it up , instead of like a random phone number which can feel spammy .
I think it's so cool If there's organizations listening that are on the fence about getting started , and I do want to mention that we put together a really great introductory plan with Tatango to get organizations started and I will link to that below .
You can just start at $1.99 a month for a few thousand messages just to get started , get your feet wet and see how you like the process . What would be a recommendation if they're on the fence , if it's like we've thought about it , but X , y and Z right Excuse . What would be your advice to them ?
Well , first of all , I love that Tatango is doing a welcome offer . That's awesomely generous . I would say you should just try it . It's hard to make an excuse not to do it because you know , with the opportunity to take existing donors and enroll them , you've got a built-in list already . That's right .
If you're already sending email messages like , it's so easy to just kind of lift and shift , take that content , move it over to your text program . I cannot say enough good things about the program and what it has done for us , both from , like I said , a fundraising standpoint and then also just donor engagement .
We just don't know what privacy is going to happen . I'm sure that mobile privacy is going to get tighter and tighter , and so that was another one of our motivators is I'm like I feel like we need to get on this channel now , while it's hot , while people are engaging , before we can't .
Right , right , and I think it's also such an untapped space , like I get many things from e-commerce companies
¶ Closing and Call to Action
about sales and discounts and promotions , but very few and far between of organizations doing this , and I think what makes what I love about this , like intro plan , is it makes it possible for any size organization you don't have to be an enterprise , international , national organization for this to work .
This year , so 2025 , now you've had a couple years , a year and a half , under your belt . What are kind of priorities ? What are things that you're testing ? I know you mentioned SMS messages more . Are there any other things that you're testing this year when it comes to texting ?
I would say we are testing if we can send more messages and see if we can still maintain the health of our list and not lose subscribers . We are also testing to see if we can get more email subscribers to become text subscribers .
We pulled a report a couple months ago and we had less than 2% overlap on our list and our text list is significantly smaller than our email list , which makes sense because it's a newer program . But if we can get , I think , our email subscribers to become text subscribers , that would be a huge win for us .
Absolutely . I mean when you're looking at a 98 , 99% open on a text and the engagement with that versus an email , I mean when you're looking at a 98 , 99% open on a text and the engagement with that versus an email , I mean that's huge .
Can you please share again your code and how people can see like the welcome experience and then from the welcome experience , is that like a sequence that you've set up or is it just one text ? So first , of all .
Thank you again for mentioning it . They can text JOIN to 51550 . And our welcome text is a single text right now , but that is I guess that's another . One of our 2025 initiatives is to expand that and see if we can kind of add a little bit more to that experience so that we can better engage the donor right off the bat . So cool , I love that .
Thank you so much for coming on the show where , if you have questions , if they are curious , want to pick your brain . What's the best place for them to reach you ?
I would say the best place is on LinkedIn . They can send me a direct message and I'm happy to answer additional questions or share feedback . I hope that people try it out . It is worth it .
Yes , thank you so much for being here . Thank you so much for what you do . I will link all the good things down in the show notes right in this episode so everyone can take advantage of it and start your text messaging program . I want to sign up and see what everybody does , so thank you so much again for being here .
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