Missions to Movements
This isn't just another nonprofit podcast - it's your weekly invitation to think bigger, take bold risks, and create lasting change in an ever-evolving social impact landscape. Meet Dana Snyder, your guide through the evolving landscape of nonprofit innovation. She's on a mission to help change-makers like you push the boundaries of what's possible in nonprofit marketing and fundraising. Each week, Missions to Movements serves as your personal mastermind session, delivering actionable insights and bold strategies that challenge traditional nonprofit thinking. Dive into revolutionary approaches to digital fundraising, discover how to build magnetic monthly giving programs that create lasting donor relationships, and learn to amplify your voice as a thought leader in the social good space. Whether you're reimagining your organization's impact or forging game-changing partnerships, you'll find the ideas, insights, and inspiration to take your mission further than you've ever imagined. Ready to turn your mission into a movement?
Missions to Movements
How Boys Town Uses Text Messaging to Fundraise & Deepen Donor Relationships
Would you believe it if I told you that texting is now one of Boys Town’s TOP revenue generating channels? Text messaging isn’t just for appointment reminders. It’s becoming one of the fastest and most effective ways nonprofits can deepen donor relationships.
In this episode, I’m talking to Jasonea Shockey, Director of Digital Marketing at Boys Town, to share how her team launched their successful SMS strategy from scratch. With no new hires, they repurposed email content, added emojis, and saw sky-high engagement - think 98–99% open rates!
Jasonea walks us through how they leveraged their existing donor list, balanced MMS vs. SMS campaigns, crafted welcome flows, and learned from benchmarks around timing and frequency to improve performance. Even with an aging donor base (average age: early 80s), they found surprisingly strong engagement through mobile.
Whether you’re working with a small team or wondering how to stay visible as email privacy rules evolve, this episode offers a clear case for why SMS belongs in your nonprofit's toolkit.
P.S. Text DANA to 770-230-8422 to join my texting program.
Resources & Links
Connect with Jasonea on LinkedIn and learn more about Boys Town on their website.
Check out Tatango, the#1 SMS software for nonprofit fundraising.
Text the word JOIN to 51550 to join the Boys Town texting program. You can also text DANA to 770-230-8422 to see my own experiment with this.
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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.
Speaker 2: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.
Speaker 1: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.
Speaker 2: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 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.
Speaker 2: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.
Speaker 1: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?
Speaker 2: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.
Speaker 1: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.
Speaker 2: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.
Speaker 1:Okay, and I don't want to bury the lead. I want to give you the opportunity because this is I love 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?
Speaker 2: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.
Speaker 1: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?
Speaker 2: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.
Speaker 1:I can speak to that. I had questions when I was first getting started. Immediately the messaging like instantaneous from a real person.
Speaker 2: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.
Speaker 1: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?
Speaker 2:since so 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.
Speaker 1:Okay. Have you seen a difference in donor retention since adding text messaging? Ooh.
Speaker 2: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.
Speaker 1: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.
Speaker 1: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.
Speaker 2: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.
Speaker 1: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.
Speaker 2: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.
Speaker 1: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?
Speaker 2:Yes, so when we first launched Tatango we kept it completely within our department, mainly because it was Q4 and we didn't want to add that onto our donor services team at the time.
Speaker 2: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.
Speaker 1: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?
Speaker 2: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?
Speaker 1:You can do GIFs? Okay, yeah, so it makes it really much more animated. Yes, yes.
Speaker 2: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?
Speaker 1:MMS.
Speaker 2: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.
Speaker 1: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.
Speaker 2: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.
Speaker 1: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?
Speaker 2: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.
Speaker 1:Right, right, and I think it's also such an untapped space, like I get many things from e-commerce companies 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?
Speaker 2: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.
Speaker 1: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.
Speaker 2: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.
Speaker 1: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?
Speaker 2: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.
Speaker 1: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.
Speaker 3:Thank you so much for tuning into today's episode of Missions to Movements. If you enjoyed our conversation and found it helpful, I would love for you to take a moment to leave a review. Wherever you're listening, your feedback helps us reach more changemakers like you and continue bringing impactful stories and strategies to the show. Don't forget to hit that subscribe button too, so you'll never miss an episode, and until next time, keep turning your mission into a movement.
