Mark Miller, Director, Philanthropic Marketing & Communications at Children's National Medical Center and Jim Manis, Chairman and Chief Executive Officers at Mobile Giving Foundation presented this session.
Mark discussed a partnership with The Washington Nationals Major League Baseball team. The Nationals are helping to raise money for the Washington Nationals Diabetes Care Complex. They decided as part of this partnership to hold Children's National Day at Nationals park. They arranged for the usual promotional tools, but decided to do something beyond the norm.
Mark and the Nationals team decided to try text giving - no other professional sports team had used this way of fundraising at the time. Fans could text NATS to 90999, then receive a confirmation message asking if they wanted to donate $5 to Children's National.
The Children's National team wanted to be sure that all fans were aware of the opportunity to give and wanted to be sure they understood the concept.
They:
- Sent news releases to sports, philanthropic and technology media
- Sent messages to their Facebook fans
- Distributed pamphlets at the ballpark explaining the concept
- Created t-shirts for volunteers that read "Ask me about text giving"
- Created stickers for ushers
- Created a testimonial video that was shown before the game
- Created an ad focusing on the ask for the back page of the game day program
During the game, the announcer repeated the call to action, kids threw out the first pitch, pulled the bases and clowned around with the Nationals' mascot.
They determined that they raised $10,000 including text giving, percentage of ticket sales and a donation during the promo week.
Mark said they were pleased with the visibility for their diabetes program and the national recognition Children's National received as a fundraising innovator (USA Today, Washington Business Journal, etc).
Lessons learned include:
- Timing - pre-game not best time for video because of activity
- Repetition - should repeat video again during game
- Emotion - they will focus next time more on the ask and will ask a player to participate
- Invest less - in materials and volunteers
Jim stressed the importance of the Children's National team being willing to be the first to try this technology. He discussed the 18-34 demographic and how they have embraced this concept.
The most successful text giving needs to have a personal call to action. Phones are so personal, Jim said that you need to have a trusted person making the ask. Consumers still need to be educated about this concept.
Text giving campaigns have the potential to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars and high visibility in the right circumstances.
Check out the Mobile Giving Foundation for more information about text giving campaigns. Great presentation today.
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