Text-to-give is a great way for your organization to boost revenue and connect with supporters. However, if your messages don’t feel authentic and relevant to your target audience, you might struggle to convert subscribers into active donors of your cause. This is where creating a consistent brand voice can help.

Your branding helps supporters understand who your organization is, what you stand for, and why your nonprofit is worthy of donors’ support. By using a consistent brand voice in your text messages, you can increase trust with supporters, build stronger donor relationships, and inspire giving at a large scale.

Use these top tips to establish a consistent brand voice in your text messages and elevate giving:

Nonprofit text messaging is a powerful tool to communicate with your supporters, but to make sure your messages resonate with donors and motivate them to give, you’ll need a strong branding strategy. Let’s begin!

Infuse Your Mission and Values into Your Messages

Your mission and values let supporters better understand your nonprofit’s purpose and why they should give. After all, there are likely many other organizations serving a similar cause, so what makes your nonprofit stand out from the crowd?

To infuse your identity into your text messaging campaign and compel donors to give, you need to nail down your messaging and the way you describe your organization across your communications. Answer the following questions to create your verbal branding guidelines:

  • Mission: What is the core purpose of your nonprofit? If your organization’s mission covers multiple causes, boil it down to one single statement that you can reiterate throughout your messages. This way, supporters can clearly understand how your nonprofit is working to make a difference in your community.
  • Values: What principles shape your nonprofit’s culture and guide your actions? Values help to unite your team around your cause and bring in like-minded supporters to push your mission forward. Some common values for nonprofits include compassion, collaboration, diversity, and respect.
  • Challenges: What are the problems your nonprofit is trying to address in the community? Are you hoping to tackle overpopulation in shelters, find a cure for a disease, or combat deforestation? Let your audience know exactly what your organization is hoping to solve and why their support is needed to make your mission a reality.
  • Activities: What are the specific programs, projects, services, and campaigns your organization executes to advance your cause? In your text messages, you can call out different activities supporters can get involved in beyond donating, such as volunteering at your upcoming food drive or creating a peer-to-peer fundraising page.

Once you’ve created verbal branding guidelines for your nonprofit, it’s time to put them into action. For example, an education nonprofit running a back-to-school text fundraising campaign could emphasize that by raising funds for new school supplies, they are empowering children from underrepresented backgrounds to excel academically. This immediate connection between the campaign and the organization’s mission makes the messaging more compelling and likely to inspire giving.

Stick to the Same Tone

It’s not only important to consider what you say in your text messages, but how you say it. The tone you use in your text messages can significantly impact how your audience relates to your organization.

Consider the nature of your nonprofit and your target audience when determining the appropriate tone your organization should use. For example, a more formal and professional tone may be suitable for nonprofits aiming to establish authority or those addressing major injustices. On the other hand, a more friendly, casual tone might be the right choice for nonprofits seeking to connect with younger audiences or come across as more approachable.

To decide on the right tone, it might be helpful to conduct donor research with the help of your fundraising platform or CRM and identify trends among your supporters. For example, you might find that your audience is made up primarily of Generation Z and Millennials, indicating that they would respond best to a warm, casual tone.

Kwala’s guide to nonprofit branding recommends aligning your tone in your text messaging campaign with the tone in your emails, social media posts, and other marketing materials. This will help you maintain and communicate a consistent brand personality to your supporters, helping your organization come across as reliable and trustworthy.

Use Visuals That Strengthen Your Identity

Visual branding also plays an important role in strengthening your organization’s identity and connecting emotionally with your audience. According to Tatango’s guide to text-to-give, incorporating compelling visuals into your text messages can evoke powerful emotions and encourage supporters to take the desired next step, from donating to registering for your upcoming event.

For instance, you might feature the following visuals in your text messages:

  • Before-and-after photos of beneficiaries who received your services, showcasing the impact of donor support
  • Impactful videos of your nonprofit staff explaining the purpose behind your fundraising campaign
  • Pictures of volunteers in action
  • Infographics to showcase the difference your organization has made in your community
  • Engaging gifs to make your messages stand out

Visuals are a great way to make your text messages more inspiring and bring a story to life. For instance, let’s say you’re a higher education institution that wants to inspire alumni to donate to your scholarship fund.

You might tell a story about a college student who received a full scholarship and completed a groundbreaking research project with the help of donors’ support. Then, include a photo of the student at their graduation to create an emotional response in your audience and humanize your story. This will help motivate your audience to give so more students can receive the same academic opportunities.

Wrapping Up

By infusing your mission and values into your messages, maintaining a consistent tone, and incorporating visuals that align with your brand identity, you can create a powerful and cohesive brand voice in your text messages.

This consistent messaging will strengthen relationships with supporters, drive engagement, and bring in more revenue for your cause. Ensure your entire team is familiar with your verbal and visual branding guidelines so your texts will seamlessly align with the rest of your communications.