Fundraising Success Stories Using Peer-to-Peer Texting

Learn how these campaigns achieved fundraising success with P2P texting amidst COVID in the 2020 election cycle — and beyond 

General elections are filled with plenty of curveballs on their own without adding a pandemic into the mix. Traditional campaigning was brought to its knees and all in-person events, meet-and-greets, banquets, Q&A panels, door-to-door canvassing, and more were no longer possible for many candidates. The 2020 elections were especially difficult for campaigns that relied significantly on their in-person events to engage with voters for fundraising.

Hundreds of our clients were confronted with these hurdles all while dealing with their own unique circumstances. Many overcame the odds using peer-to-peer (P2P) texting to achieve their goals, including these two campaigns who had great fundraising success despite COVID restrictions.

Fundraising Success in a Major Election

Thom Tillis ran against Cal Cunningham for U.S. Senate in North Carolina. Tillis’ opponent received massive amounts of financial support for his campaign to the tune of $51,249,732, which posed a great threat to Tillis’ campaign. Tillis used P2P texting primarily for the purpose of fundraising. 

Our platform RumbleUp has a full suite of fundraising tools built-in, including integrations with Anedot for campaigns to seamlessly integrate their fundraising efforts. Sending text-to-fundraise messages with integrations like Anedot where all a donor needed to do was respond back to a text with the dollar amount they wished to give is the easiest way to get repeated contributions.

Tillis’ team used good fundraising language to inspire voters to contribute both to his campaign and for notable causes he supported. Most importantly, the team made use of our custom tagging and tap-then-send reply feature so volunteers could easily filter to locate donors after texting them and thank them for their contributions with a single tap of a pre-written message. Responding positively to supporters is a proven way to turn them into super-supporters and make them significantly more likely to contribute in the future. Tillis achieved this with a simple thank you text!

Fundraising Success in a Local Election

On a smaller scale race, Ron Muzzall ran for Washington State Senate representing District 10 in his first election. Muzzall wanted to find a safe and effective way to reach voters remotely in order to help with his fundraising efforts and to engage voters at his creative, COVID safe campaign event.

Muzzall’s team sent texts to a targeted list of voters to make sure he reached out to members in his immediate community who could feasibly attend the event. Since P2P texting allows for real-time two-way conversations at scale, their team was able to answer questions and concerns about the event faster, and in a personalized way that made people feel more comfortable.

His team used highly effective messaging practices to get the word out about his socially distanced drive-up event and added a fundraising prompt for voters who wanted to support Muzzall but felt uncomfortable attending events. He further targeted his list by sending reminder texts to those who had responded positively to attending his event.

Results of the Fundraising Success

According to opensecrets.com, the nation’s premier research group that tracks money for politicians, Tillis was able to raise over $5.3 million dollars in small individual contributions of under $200 which his texting campaign significantly contributed to. Muzzall’s strategy for fundraising via text was also highly successful, with over $90,000 raised by the campaign in individual contributions of under $200.

Every contribution made a difference for these campaigns. Tillis won his race by an astonishing 1.8% of the vote, and Muzzall won his with a 1.9% margin of victory!

Bottom Line:

P2P texting is the perfect channel for fast, personal fundraising while also providing a great alternative when in-person events are impossible or may not generate enough attendees. As these two case studies show, every dollar counts when the race turns out to be as tight as theirs. Add texting to your fundraising plan from the start, and see for yourself how P2P texting can lead to your own fundraising success story.

Sign up and start texting today at rumbleup.com or reach out to our sales team to talk about how texting can best work for you: sales@rumbleup.com.