Text message fundraising: How to drive donations with SMS campaigns 

Donations are the lifeline of every nonprofit, but emails and social media often fail to capture donor attention fast enough.

With 98% open rates and near-instant response times, text messaging has become a proven channel for nonprofits and advocacy groups to boost engagement and donations.

From quick “Text-to-Give” asks to automated donor nurturing campaigns, SMS can transform how organizations connect with supporters.

In this blog, you’ll learn:

Why SMS belongs in every fundraising toolkit

SMS has become an essential channel for nonprofits and advocacy groups looking to connect with donors quickly, cost-effectively, and at scale.

Immediate, direct, and scalable

• Instant reach: SMS messages land directly in donors’ inboxes, no app downloads or email logins required.
• Perfect for urgency: Ideal for disaster relief appeals, end-of-year fundraising pushes, or peer-to-peer donation campaigns where every second counts.
• High engagement: With 98% open rates, SMS ensures your message is read almost immediately, increasing the likelihood of a quick donation.

Supports both broad appeals and personalized outreach

• Text-to-give: Launch mass donation drives where supporters simply text a keyword to a short code to give instantly.
• Text-to-engage: Use SMS for two-way conversations, nurturing relationships with segmented donor groups.
• Automated personalization: With Infobip’s Moments and People CDP, you can trigger tailored donation asks based on past giving behaviour, campaign lifecycle stage, or donor preferences, all without manual follow-ups.

Examples of fundraising campaigns you can run with SMS

Fundraising via SMS isn’t one-size-fits-all. Different campaigns require different tones, timing, and messaging flows.

Here’s how nonprofits successfully use text messages to drive donations and deepen supporter relationships:

1. Urgent appeals

When a natural disaster strikes or a critical policy vote is happening, speed is everything. SMS allows nonprofits to mobilize donations within minutes of an event.

Example:

2. Matching gift countdowns

Matching periods create urgency and motivate larger gifts. SMS ensures every donor knows exactly how long they have left to double their impact.

Example:

3. Event-based giving

Whether it’s a gala, charity run, or virtual concert, SMS is perfect for on-the-spot fundraising during and after events.

Example:

4. Recurring donation asks

Turning one-time donors into recurring supporters sustains your mission long-term. SMS follow-ups with a gentle nudge often outperform email.

Example:

5. Volunteer follow-up for donor conversion

Volunteers are some of your most engaged supporters. SMS helps turn their involvement into ongoing financial contributions.

Example:

6. Post-donation thank-you and upsell

Gratitude builds loyalty. Following up with a personalized thank-you text strengthens relationships and can lead to larger future gifts.

Example:

7. Peer-to-peer donor challenges

Leverage supporters to help amplify your reach. Peer-to-peer SMS campaigns invite donors to share links or recruit friends, multiplying contributions organically.

Example:

8. Donor re-engagement campaigns

Target lapsed donors with reminder or impact-focused texts to bring them back into the giving cycle.

Example:

How Infobip powers smarter SMS fundraising

Infobip enables nonprofits and advocacy groups to run personalized, compliant, and scalable SMS fundraising campaigns without adding technical overhead.

Segment and personalize with People CDP

• Target donors based on giving history, campaign preferences, past event attendance, location, or language.
• Create dynamic message templates that automatically insert donor names, donation tiers, or previous contributions for a more human touch.

Automate journeys with Moments

• Set up trigger-based campaigns that send reminders to non-clickers or personalized thank-you texts to recent donors.
• Schedule nudges around Giving Tuesday, end-of-year deadlines, or live fundraising events to maximize participation.
• Build automated 4-step donation flows, from initial invite to thank-you follow-up, without needing manual intervention.

Track performance in real time

• Monitor delivery rates, clicks, and conversion metrics within the Infobip dashboard.
• Use journey analytics to identify drop-off points and optimize future campaigns.
• Run A/B tests on donation asks or timing to continuously improve results.

Connect your CRM and scale globally

• Integrate seamlessly with donor management systems, CRMs, and advocacy tools to sync data and trigger messaging automatically.
• Reach donors worldwide with Infobip’s direct carrier connections across 190+ countries.
• Send multilingual messages and use fallback options (e.g., WhatsApp or Viber) for donors not reachable by SMS.

Stay compliant while building trust

Trust is the foundation of successful SMS fundraising. Following compliance rules not only avoids legal risks but also ensures supporters feel respected and in control of their engagement.

SMS fundraising rules you need to know

• Obtain explicit opt-in: Donors must consent to receive texts via a form, keyword signup, or checkbox on your website or event registration.
• Provide a simple opt-out: Every message should include a clear unsubscribe option (e.g., “Reply STOP to unsubscribe”).
• Respect timing regulations: Adhere to time-of-day restrictions and regional sending rules to avoid disturbing supporters.

Common mistakes to avoid

• Unclear donation asks: Messages without a direct, clickable donation link confuse supporters and lower conversion rates.
• Missing acknowledgments: Failing to thank donors or send confirmation texts hurts donor experience and retention.
• Breaking consent or frequency limits: Over-messaging or ignoring opt-out requests can lead to legal penalties and reputational damage.

UNICEF: Turning caring people into regular givers with omnichannel customer engagement

Challenge: Boost donations and improve donor retention

Donations are essential to UNICEF’s mission of building a better future for disadvantaged children.

However, the organization faced:

• Declining donor retention rates
• An increasing number of first-time donors not converting into regular supporters
• Siloed data across SMS, Email, telemarketing, and WhatsApp, making it hard to deliver a consistent donor experience
• Limited visibility into which channels performed best
• Difficulty consolidating data into a central CRM

They needed a solution to improve donor engagement, turn first-time donors into regular givers, and reduce churn, all while maintaining efficient campaign costs.

Solution: Omnichannel engagement powered by Infobip

Infobip partnered with UNICEF to build a personalized, automated, and scalable donor journey:

• Segmentation and analytics: Leveraged Infobip’s People CDP to centralize donor data and build segments based on behavior, preferences, and stage in the donor journey.
• Journey automation: Used Moments to automate welcome flows, thank-you messages, cart-abandonment reminders, and event-triggered donation prompts.
• Always-on support: Deployed chatbots with Answers and live agents via Conversations to handle donor inquiries on WhatsApp and SMS.
• Omnichannel messaging: Unified SMS, Email, WhatsApp, and Voice in a single platform with automated failover to ensure messages reached every donor.
• Data hygiene: Used email validation to clean the contact database, ensuring high deliverability rates.

Result: More regular donors, lower churn, and increased conversions

With Infobip’s platform, UNICEF improved donor experience and reduced messaging costs while achieving significant results:

• 7.8% increase in the number of regular donors within three months.
• 33.3% decrease in donor churn rate compared to the previous year.
• 4% conversion rate from donation cart abandonment campaigns.

Your next SMS campaign starts here

SMS cuts through digital noise and gets supporters to act faster than any other channel. With Infobip, you can:

• Segment and personalize every donor interaction
• Automate multistep campaigns for timely, relevant asks
• Scale globally with local compliance and direct carrier connections

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