Text messaging is a difference maker for nonprofit organizations who are looking for easy and affordable ways to communicate with their community. In this article we break down some of the best practices for Nonprofits when it comes to text messaging.

As a community leader, you are likely trying to grow your member list or need help getting existing members and volunteers to sign up and attend events.

According to a recent study, 63% of nonprofit organizations in the United States are experiencing flat growth or declining membership.

A 2018 report from Volunteering in America found that only 77.34 million adults volunteered through an organization (30% of Americans).

In this article we’ll go over how text messaging can get your nonprofit over the hump by making it easy for volunteers to sign up, the community to donate and for more people to attend. As well as easy and affordable ways to get started with text messaging.

Text messaging is a great way to communicate with your volunteers since they don’t have to download an additional apps or software.

It takes seconds for a prospective volunteer to text a keyword to your number and get in the loop on how to contribute their time.

No more dreaded page-long signup forms on a brown clipboard.

Texts are 7x more likely to get a response than talking on the phone. 🤯

Texting is also better than email, texts get a 98% open rate and 45% response rate. If you sent an email to a group of 200 potential volunteers you’d get maybe 12 responses (6% response rate).

If you sent a text you’d potentially get 90 responses (45% response rate).

A constant worry in the daily life of non-profit's is funding. Volunteers are critical to a non-profit organizations success, but the organization does not exist without funding.

In the 2018 report from Volunteering in America, it was found that over half (52%) of all American citizens donated to a charity. In another report done by Giving USA, Americans gave $449.64 billion in 2019. This reflects a 5.1% increase from 2018.

2019 was one of the highest giving years on record for charitable giving in the United States.

People want to give, it is just about communicating to them as to why they should give to your organization. It is especially easy over text when 77% of Americans own a smartphone.

Phones are the lifeline to all of us, including to those that are undeserved or neglected by society. A recent study showed that 36% of those homeless had access to a smartphone and 72% had permanent access to a cell phone.

Although, a caveat is that homeless individuals numbers change frequently.

Even then, there is still a solution with autoresponders and being able to re-enroll into groups when they get a new number. Texting can provide a new and innovative way to offer help to those who need it most.

Broadcasts are a great way to engage with potential donors. It allows for you to send a message to many people in a group while letting them respond to start a 1-on-1 with you.

Autoresponders allow for you to send automatic text messages that are triggered by keywords. This feature can also sort those individuals in a group to send broadcasts to in the future.