How to Use Text-to-Give in Your School’s Fundraising Plan

Incorporate text-to-give into your fundraising strategy using these top 3 tips.

If your school is short on textbooks or needs more funds to afford your annual field trip to the local museum, a fundraising campaign can help. Fundraising unites your entire community around improving your school, helping you secure extra revenue to power your extracurricular experiences, academic programs, and more. However, the success of your campaign depends on how engaging and accessible your fundraising efforts are.

You need to leverage text-to-give to bolster your fundraising plan and equip supporters near and far to contribute to your campaign. Text-to-give empowers schools to reach parents and community members with compelling donation appeals in moments. Text messaging has one of the highest open and read rates compared to other communication methods like email.

Plus, since donors can give anytime from anywhere, text-to-give makes donating to your school a simple and rewarding experience, allowing you to raise money quickly. Use these top tips to incorporate text-to-give into your fundraising strategy:

• Build Your Contact List
• Create Inspiring Messages
• Thank Your Donors

Whether hosting a standalone text-to-give fundraiser or pairing text-to-give with another fundraising event, this donation method can help you boost your ROI and strengthen your connection with the community. Let’s begin.

1. Build Your Contact List

To start with text-to-give, you must build a sizable contact list where a strong marketing strategy can help. Leverage the following channels and marketing tools to get the word out about your text-to-give campaign and encourage people to opt in: 

• Your website: Create a visually appealing and informative landing page dedicated to your text-to-give campaign. Include your keyword, short or long code, and the purpose behind your campaign. Letting your audience know exactly how you will use the funds will help increase trust and inspire giving. You’ll also want to consider the visual design of your landing page, so make sure it’s engaging and aligns with your school’s branding.
• Your social media: Generate quality content that will excite your community with your text-to-give campaign. For example, create a video walkthrough of a staff member showing how to opt-in to your campaign, share photos of the students who will benefit from your text-to-give campaign efforts, or create an infographic detailing the projected impact of your campaign. Pair your posts with a catchy hashtag to grow your reach and catch your audience’s eye.
• Email newsletters: Your parents count on your newsletters to learn more about what’s happening at their students’ schools, which is a great place to highlight your text-to-give campaign and encourage parents to opt in. Create a solid call to action to sign up for your texts and use a memorable subject headline to draw parents into reading your email.
• Flyers: Send students home with flyers that explain how their parents can get started with text-to-give and the purpose behind your campaign. NXUnite’s guide to fundraising flyers recommends including your school’s branding elements—such as your logo, color scheme, and visuals—to make your campaign credible and build trust with your students’ families.

As you share marketing materials online, tracking relevant metrics like the page views on your text-to-give landing page or the number of likes on your social media posts will help you pinpoint which content most resonates with your target audience so you can adjust as needed to grab their attention better.

2. Create Inspiring Messages

Once parents opt-in, you must develop compelling messages that inspire them to read and act on your messages. Use these best practices to create impactful text messages:

• Leverage storytelling: Stories can help you build connections and show the value of giving back to your school. For example, let’s say you’re running a text-to-give fundraiser to help your basketball team receive new equipment. You might tell the story of your basketball team’s success last season and how they’ve been gaining critical teamwork skills that will help them grow. Highlight specific students to help ground your story and demonstrate how the communities’ support will help them achieve their goals.
• Add multimedia content: Images and videos can help to strengthen your messaging and bring your stories to life. For instance, let’s say you’re hosting a text-to-give campaign alongside a cookie dough fundraiser to send your robotics team to an out-of-state competition. You might include a picture of your team of students working diligently to create their robot for the competition or a video with testimonials from the students explaining how going to this competition will make a huge difference in their academic journeys.
• End with a clear call to action: Make sure your calls to action to donate are straightforward, and include a mobile-friendly link to your donation page to give. Use active language and be as direct as possible in your appeals. Asking for a specific donation amount can help take the guesswork out of how much parents and community members should give and prompt them to give more than they were initially considering.

To send your messages quickly, research to find a robust text messaging platform that offers a full suite of user-friendly features, including fast messaging speeds, segmentation and automation capabilities, and a high level of security. This way, you can reduce your team’s administrative burden when running your text-to-give campaign and spend more time perfecting the content of your messages.

3. Thank Your Donors

Expressing donor appreciation is a critical part of fundraising. With the help of the proper text messaging platform, you can personalize your thank-you messages for each donor and ensure you automatically send them as soon as parents and community members give.

To make your thank-you messages meaningful, Tatango recommends the following:

• Greet donors with their first names to start your personalized note off strong.
• Reference their specific donation amount.
• Reiterate the purpose of your campaign and explain how their donation will advance your school’s goals.

Regularly expressing your gratitude increases the likelihood that community members will want to give again. If donors give a large amount, you might couple your thank-you notes with other stewardship strategies like thanking them over the phone or sending free school merchandise.

Wrapping Up

Whether you’re a higher education institution or elementary school hoping to raise more funds, text-to-give is the best way to reach members of your school’s community and compel them to donate. As you run your text-to-give campaign, use your text messaging platform to track metrics and assess your performance. This way, you can adjust your strategy to optimize your success.

Author Bio

Clay Boggess has been designing fundraising programs for schools and various nonprofit organizations throughout the US since 1999. He’s helped administrators, teachers, and outside support entities such as PTAs and PTOs raise millions of dollars. Clay is an owner and partner at Big Fundraising Ideas.