Imagine that your nonprofit is gearing up to run a text-to-give fundraiser alongside your upcoming fundraising gala. You want to encourage supporters to give to your cause, but you’re not sure what type of messaging will be the most effective to engage donors and spur action. 

If this sounds like a scenario you’ve been in before, don’t worry! Rather than guessing what type of content will resonate with your supporters and push forward your fundraising goals, leverage A/B testing to make informed decisions. A/B testing is a powerful tool that enables nonprofits to experiment with different versions of texts and assess which one will perform best. 

In this article, we’ll cover how your nonprofit can incorporate A/B testing into your next text-to-give campaign to amplify your success. But first, let’s make sure you have the basics down. 

What is A/B Testing?

In text marketing and fundraising, A/B testing is the process of testing different versions of a text message to small subsets of your subscriber list simultaneously. Then, you can compare which text message performed the best in achieving a given goal—such as getting donors to give, register for your upcoming hybrid event, or navigate to a resource on your website. 

Once you know the winner of the test, you can send this message to the rest of your subscribers in your contact list. A/B testing is a great way to gather insight into your audience’s motivations and interests, pointing you to ways you can more closely tailor your appeals to your different donors in the future. This will help you strengthen your overall communication strategy and bring in more donations in the process. 

A/B testing is a tried and true method, as evidenced by the thousands of higher education institutions, churches, and nonprofits that have leaned into this experimentation tool to develop a reliable donation pipeline. If you’re ready to see how A/B testing can transform your text-to-give efforts, explore our top tips. 

1. Invest in a Nonprofit Text Messaging Platform

To get started with A/B testing, you’ll need a nonprofit text messaging platform that offers this capability. Look for an advanced tool that: 

• Allows you to test up to four different versions of a text message at once: Many platforms only allow you to test two versions at once, limiting your ability to experiment and play around with different concepts and messaging to inspire giving. By working with a platform with greater flexibility, you can test multiple variations of texts, from changing the copy to adjusting the multimedia content you send. 
• Gives you full control over the process: You should be able to pick the percentage of your subscriber base that receives the different versions of your message. For example, let’s say your nonprofit has 1,000 subscribers. You could test four different versions of a text message among 20% of your subscribers. This would mean that you could send each version to a different subset of 50 subscribers. After your experiment, you’ll be able to see which text performed the best. 
• Empowers you to make the final decision: The right platform will let you decide which message is best to push your goals forward, and then you can easily send it off to the rest of your subscribers who weren’t included in the A/B test. This way, you can feel confident that the message you’re sending will resonate with your audience at large and inspire them to take action. 

Tatango’s guide to nonprofit text messaging additionally recommends investing in software that empowers your nonprofit to segment your contact list, keep your data secure with automated logout and two-factor authentication, and send messages at rapid speeds. With an all-in-one texting solution that offers A/B testing and more, you’ll be in great shape to lead a winning text fundraising campaign. 

2. Decide What Features You’ll Test

There are many features you can test in your text messaging campaigns. For example, you might consider:

• Sending an SMS (text-only message) versus MMS message (includes GIFs, video, audio, and pictures): An MMS message also allows you to utilize an eye-catching subject line and use more characters of text, making it a good option to tell a compelling narrative and sway your supporters to give. 
• Using different subject lines: The quality of your subject line can make a big difference in whether supporters feel intrigued enough to read (and act on) your text, so playing with multiple versions can help you settle on the best subject line possible. 
• Sharing different media types: Not sure if a picture of a beneficiary or video of your nonprofit staff explaining your fundraising needs would best inspire audiences to give? Test different versions of the multimedia content you include to see what resonates the most with supporters. 
• Including different stories: Storytelling is one of the best strategies to connect with donors and encourage giving at scale, but what if you’re not sure which story to tell? A/B testing can help you determine which story creates the greatest impact. 
• Adjusting your call to action (CTA) language: Whether you want to play around with the active verbs you use or the length of your call to action, A/B testing allows you to pick the perfect CTA as it relates to your goal. 

Make sure you’re not just testing different features at random. The features you experiment with should be selected with thought in an effort to support the goal of that particular text message. For example, if your goal is to encourage donors to give to your year-end fundraising campaign, you might want to experiment with the story you tell about why you need their support. 

For instance, an animal welfare organization might tell a story about:

• A dog they helped save off the street who is now in a loving home all thanks to donor support.
• A family they gave free dog food and affordable veterinary care to so they could keep their dog.

The data results from the A/B testing will indicate which story resulted in the most amount of donations. Make sure to keep a record of what variable you’re changing so you can clearly tell at the end of your experiment which text message content resonates the most with supporters. 

3. Track Metrics

Once you’ve conducted your A/B test, you should be able to assess how each text variation performed. This is where choosing the right text messaging platform is critical. Your text software should automatically generate real-time data reports and empower your team to take an in-depth look at metrics for each text like: 

• Open rate
• Conversion rate
• Clickthrough rate
• Average donation amount
• Total donations

As with A/B testing in email or social media, this data can provide invaluable insight into the engagement levels and responsiveness of your audience to various messaging strategies. Once you identify the message that made the biggest impact and supported your goal, you can share that message to the rest of your subscribers in your contact list. 

You can also make slight adjustments to your text message so you can better target different donor groups. Double the Donation’s guide to text donations recommends segmenting your contact list so you can send tailored donation requests to different types of donors. For instance, you can adjust your solicitation so small donors are asked to give $25 to your year-end text-to-give campaign, while donors with greater giving abilities are asked to donate $100. 

Make sure your text messaging platform offers extensive segmentation capabilities so you can break up your contact list into subgroups—based on common factors like average donor amount or donation frequency—with ease. 

Wrapping Up

A/B testing should not be difficult or overwhelming! With the help of the right nonprofit text messaging platform and partner, you can easily experiment with different versions of your messages and text-to-give solicitations at any time. Do your research to find an intuitive solution that comes with A/B testing, data tracking, and more to support your fundraising strategy. 

Author: Mike Snusz
Mike Snusz brings 19 years of digital fundraising experience to his role as Director of Nonprofit Customer Experience at Tatango, a text messaging platform for nonprofits and political campaigns. Prior to Tatango, Mike spent 15 years at Blackbaud leading a team of digital consultants that helped nonprofits improve their online fundraising, monthly giving, email marketing and peer-to-peer fundraising programs. Mike started his nonprofit career managing the Ride For Roswell from 2003 to 2005 in his hometown of Buffalo, NY.

If your organization has made moves to tap into non-cash giving opportunities like donor-advised funds, gifts of stock, and various types of planned gifts, good for you! Studies have found that nonprofits that invest in their non-cash giving programs grow six times faster than those that stick to cash gifts alone.

Cryptocurrency represents one of the newest and most exciting (but complex) non-cash giving frontiers for nonprofits. Thankfully, accepting crypto gifts isn’t hard today. You can use a third-party processor to facilitate and liquidate the gifts or set up your organization’s own digital crypto wallet to manage and liquidate the assets yourself.

But it doesn’t end there—you need official gift acceptance policies in place to define and guide the process of raising and using crypto funds.

This is important for all fundraising but especially for crypto fundraising programs since it’s a new field with regulatory grey areas. Clear-cut policies will protect you and your donors, and they’ll simplify managing the giving program for your team. 

So what should your policy include? Let’s say you’re starting from scratch—we recommend following these steps:

1. Define “crypto” gifts.

First, clearly lay out what your nonprofit considers and will accept as gifts of cryptocurrency. You can draw from commonly accepted definitions if you’re open to accepting any form of crypto, or you can get more specific. Many nonprofits choose to only accept the most popular currencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum, for instance.

Early in your policy, you should also include IRS definitions of crypto and their tax and reporting implications—namely, that the IRS considers crypto to be property and is thus largely subject to the same rules as other non-cash gifts. 

2. Determine your approval process.

Some gifts made to nonprofits are closely reviewed in case of potential liabilities or hazards. For instance, you wouldn’t want to blindly accept a donated piece of real estate without first learning about it. 

This is common practice for crypto because it’s a new and relatively unregulated field. Implementing an approval step is also helpful for giving you a clear opportunity to refuse gifts if needed. In your acceptance policy, specify if you have an approval process and what it entails, who’s involved, and its timeline. 

Extra consideration: Donor information requirements 

Will you require all crypto donors to disclose their names and/or contact information? 

Using a third-party system will involve collecting this information automatically, but it can be contentious since many advocates and regular users of crypto value the privacy it enables. Whatever approach you take, clarify it in your acceptance policy.

3. Establish liquidation policies. 

Most organizations liquidate cryptocurrency immediately upon receiving it. The same is true of gifts of stock, which you might already accept. This prevents the assets from losing value and simplifies the process of managing the giving program. For newcomers and organizations that want to offer crypto options more casually, this is the recommended route. 

Liquidating crypto is now easier than ever thanks to third-party processors, similar to how any contributions made to a DAF are immediately liquidated by its sponsoring organization.

Some organizations (typically those with very robust fundraising operations, extensive crypto training for staff, and/or an explicit interest in crypto) don’t liquidate immediately in order to manage and potentially grow the gifts. If you go this route, establish policies defining when you will eventually liquidate the assets. 

Either way, make your liquidation plans clear. Some donors give crypto as a show of support for this form of currency and what it represents with the intention that the nonprofit will hold onto it. Clear policies will set transparent expectations for everyone involved. 

Extra consideration: Refund policies

It’s highly recommended to establish in your gift acceptance policy that gifts of crypto are nonrefundable. The volatility of these assets can make refunds extremely complicated.

4. Provide donors with valuation information for tax purposes.

You’ll need to provide cryptocurrency donors with receipts and valuation information to use when filing their personal taxes, just like you would for in-kind gifts or gifts of stock. In your acceptance policy, you don’t need to provide exhaustive tax instructions (more on this below), but you should clarify an important rule that donors will need to understand: 

• Donors can claim tax deductions for gifts of crypto valued at less than $5,000 using the price at which the coins were liquidated.
• For gifts that are worth more than $5,000 when liquidated, the IRS requires an independent appraisal of the gift’s value. This is because crypto exchange markets are generally considered less reliable for establishing consensus value than traditional securities markets. 

Make this rule abundantly clear and specify who will pay for the appraisal if needed—some nonprofits ask the donor to pay for it, while others cover it themselves or reimburse donors later.

5. Include a disclaimer about providing tax advice.

A financial planner, accountant, or tax advisor should be giving your donors definitive advice and instructions, not your development team or posted gift acceptance policy.

This best practice applies to practically all types of donations you might receive, especially more complex planned giving arrangements and other non-cash gifts, so your nonprofit likely has similar disclaimers already in use. Feel free to reuse or adapt them for your crypto-specific policy.

At the very least, explain that you or your third-party crypto processor will provide donation receipts. You can also go a step further by providing some background information to help donors better understand when they should seek professional advice. 

Specifically, donors should be aware that gifts of crypto can trigger additional tax reporting requirements that aren’t present for other types of donations. To claim a deduction for amounts greater than $500, donors will need to complete IRS Form 8283, which your nonprofit will need to sign to substantiate the gift and acknowledge receipt. 

Although crypto brings a fair number of potential complications and differences from more traditional forms of non-cash giving, it’s a worthwhile investment of your nonprofit’s time and energy. 

Accepting cryptocurrency can help you secure larger gifts from donors who would otherwise give smaller gifts of cash since they can pass the tax savings onto your organization. Crypto is also favored by younger segments of donors who might not have yet been on your development team’s radar—connecting with them where they are can help you build long-lasting partnerships.

By anchoring your crypto giving program with a solid acceptance policy (and taking the guesswork out of the process by using a third-party processor that facilitates and liquidates gifts), you’ll set up your program for success.

Author | Patrick Schmitt, Co-CEO of FreeWill

Patrick Schmitt and fellow FreeWill co-CEO Jenny Xia founded at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business in 2016. FreeWill’s charitable giving platform makes it easier for nonprofit fundraising teams to unlock transformational gifts, and to date has generated over $6.6 billion in new gift commitments for thousands of nonprofit organizations. Patrick hosts FreeWill’s popular webinar series, educating thousands of nonprofit fundraising professionals each month about planned and non-cash giving strategies.

Before FreeWill, Patrick was the Head of Innovation at Change.org, where he helped grow the organization to 100 million users in four years. Prior to that, he ran email marketing for President Obama and served as Campaign Director for MoveOn.org.

It’s been a bumpy road for cryptocurrency over the past year. In 2021, cryptocurrency did not seem to have any limit to its heights but in 2022, the crash came. Many predicted it was the end of crypto. But 2023 has been an interesting year with the price of Bitcoin rising again. The Giving Block, a full-service crypto exchange solution provider, predicts that over $1B in cryptocurrencies will have been donated by 2027. Boston Consulting Group forecasts that the crypto market will grow significantly by 2030. 

What does this mean for the fundraising world? Opportunity! It’s a chance to raise additional funds, engage new donors who may not have been interested in philanthropy anymore, and find new ways of fundraising. It’s volatility and risks. But there are ways to mitigate and manage risk. 

What is this Report?

The report is the 27^th annual world wealth report by Capgemini Research Institute. The report analyzes the state of wealth and wealth management across the world in the prior calendar year. The report focuses on High Net Worth Individuals (HNWIs) defined as individuals with assets of $1M+ and over.

What are key findings from the article?

• The global economy showed signs of slowing compared to prior years. Notably, the global economy grew 3.2% in 2022, compared to 6% in 2021.  North America saw a steep decline in HNWI wealth of 7.4% and HNWI population in 6.9% but North America remains number 1 in wealth amount and total population. Asia-Pacific and Europe saw declines in both wealth and population of HNWI. Africa, Latin America, and Middle East saw growth.

By Elisa Shoenberger

Asking for a major or transformative gift is a little bit like asking someone to marry you. You’ve (likely) been dating one another for a while and know quite a bit about your respective interests. Maybe you’ve discussed marriage; perhaps you haven’t. Ideally, you have an idea that the other person will actually say “yes.”

But timing is everything. You probably don’t want to ask your beloved to marry you when they are dealing with their dying father or in front of a crowd of people if they’ve told you that public proposals are not their thing. Maybe you want to ask their father and/or mother for their hand in marriage. The way you approach the proposal may say a lot about the response.

By Elisa Shoenberger

Most of us have eaten cheese in our lives. Some of us may have grown up with American cheese, string cheese, and cheddar cheese. Maybe you’ve tried mozzarella, spreadable goat cheese, and a bleu cheese. While all of those cheeses are delicious, it can be a little intimidating to walk into the cheese aisle or a cheese shop. Suddenly there are tens, even hundreds of cheeses in all different colors and shapes. So how do you figure out what goes best on a salad or on a steak?

That’s what it might feel like when you’ve met with prospects in your portfolio. You know something about them; maybe you even requested an Aspire Snap Bio on them before meeting them. But what do you do next? How do you cultivate them towards a major gift in the next few years or so? How do you fit the cheese to the cracker or side?

Remember the first time you got behind the wheel of a car? Maybe you had taken your learner’s permit test or not; maybe you had watched your parents closely as they drove. But when facing the wheel, pedals, and all those buttons for the first time, it might have been really daunting. I was frustrated the first time I got behind the wheel; no matter what I did, I could not get the car to go. I soon realized that no one had told me to push the brake while starting the car!

Naturally, if someone is getting a donor profile for the first time, it can be a bit daunting. There are lots of sections; some filled with charts and graphs while others have lots of information. And what’s with the “likely” and “possibly” speculation?