Customer Story · Maternal & Infant Health
From zero subscribers.To 10% of giving day.
March of Dimes started with no text subscribers. By treating list building as a year-round job rather than a campaign task, texting grew to carry 10% of total giving day revenue at an average gift above $70.
The Situation
A channel that lands in minutes, not on Sunday
March of Dimes works on maternal and infant health across the United States, and like most national nonprofits its fundraising leaned on email and direct mail.
Both work, and both were getting slower to land. The team wanted a channel where a message arrived and was read in minutes rather than sitting in an inbox until Sunday.
They started with zero text subscribers. That is where most large organizations actually are when they first consider SMS, and it is why many stall. The channel looks like it needs an audience you do not have yet.
What They Did
List building as a year-round job, not a campaign task
Text opt-in went onto every place a supporter already touched the organization.
None of that is clever, but it is consistent. Every one of those surfaces already had traffic, and each one added subscribers continuously instead of in a rush before a deadline.
By the time their annual giving day arrived, they were not building an audience and running a campaign at the same time. The audience was already there, and it had opted in at a moment when the supporter was actively engaged rather than in response to a cold list-growth push.
- Online donation confirmations
- Event registrations
- Email signatures
- The website itself
Why It Worked
The average gift matters more than the total
Text fundraising carries a reputation for small gifts, the $10 impulse donation. The $70+ average undercuts the main objection large organizations raise about SMS.
It is a consequence of how the list was built. These were people who had already given, registered for something, or chosen to hear more. A list assembled that way behaves like a warm file, and it gives at warm-file levels.
A list bought or scraped or rushed together before a deadline does not, and that is usually what people are picturing when they assume texting means small gifts.
Texting became a tenth of their biggest fundraising day
The 32% is total giving day performance, not SMS revenue in isolation. A channel they did not have a short time earlier became a tenth of the day.
They started at zero. What stalls most programs is starting list building late.
momoGood Capabilities Used
What was running under the hood
The same capabilities available to every momoGood nonprofit.
- Enterprise, permission-based text messagingEvery opt-in surface enforced at the platform level.
- Multi-surface opt-in captureDonation confirmations, event registrations, email signatures and the website feeding one list.
- Broadcast texts to the full listGiving day sends reaching hundreds of thousands in one action.
- Automation, segmentation & personalizationWarm-file behaviour preserved by sending on what a supporter already did.
What would a 32% giving day lift do for your mission?
See how momoGood turns opt-in surfaces you already own into a channel that performs on your biggest day.
Sources & notes
- Program results supplied by March of Dimes and used with permission. The 32% figure reflects total giving day performance year over year, not SMS revenue in isolation.