The Chattanooga Area Food Bank's mission is to lead a network of partners in eliminating hunger and promoting better nutrition in our region. We want to connect with our community and empower them with knowledge on how to give back. We were looking for ways to better reach donors, volunteers, and the people we serve. The one thing all those groups have in common is text messaging—it’s how everyone communicates. That’s why we looked into Text Request as a solution.
We used Text Request for fundraising on Giving Tuesday and Channel 3 WRCB’s Share Your Christmas event. Abigail was a huge help on the front end. She gave us an initial training and was readily available throughout prep for our first campaign. Together we were able to figure out the best strategies for our Giving Tuesday texts to make the biggest impact.
It was easy to pull all our contacts from our databases and import them directly into Text Request. We then created different Mass Texts to prompt donations throughout Giving Tuesday. People loved seeing updates on where we were with our fundraising efforts. Even though the messages are automated, we still got that one-on-one text conversations from donors who wanted to share their support for the cause. Our team ended up raising $58,510 with the help of Text Request that day.
We reviewed how the campaign went with Text Request’s CTO, Rob Reagan, and he pointed out some more tools we could use for the next event. During Local 3’s Share Your Christmas Event we added a tracking feature, so we could see how many people clicked our donation link. SMS features like these help us see the impact we’re making. We ended up raising $113,298 during the event.
Texting helps us stand out among the other nonprofits gathering donations on Giving Tuesday. Everyone keeps their phones next to them at all times, so we know our messages are seen. Opening a text with a fundraising link is easy and much more efficient for the donor.
Text Request ultimately makes educating our contacts on how they can contribute effortless, which in turn helps us stand out as a leader in our community. Prior to Text Request we didn’t have nearly as much access to our volunteers, donors, and partner organizations. Text Request helps us reach and utilize all those contacts to make them a part of what we’re doing.
