For better or worse, cellphones have become appendages for many users. That makes them powerful communication devices for nonprofits that want to inspire supporters to take immediate action.
“Think about where your cellphone is right now and the last time you checked it,” says Saskia Harak, distributed organizing manager at Food & Water Watch, a nonprofit that advocates for environmental protection. Chances are, your phone is in your pocket or within close reach and you looked at it very recently to check the time or send an email.
Food & Water Watch takes advantage of cellphone ubiquity by using text messages to recruit people to participate in advocacy efforts. It has collected tens of thousands of mobile phone numbers by inviting people to text a specific word to the nonprofit’s shortcode: 69866.
Because people have to opt in to the group’s text alerts, the nonprofit advertises its texting service at large events, such as marches. For example, during protests in January during Inauguration week, the nonprofit advertised a text-message call to action to help ban fracking on signs and flyers. That week, it gained more than 900 new text-message subscribers.
Since the 2016 election, the number of subscribers has grown, according to Ms. Harak.
“People are looking for ways to take action,” she says. “Mobile makes it easy to reach those people.”
Calling Lawmakers
One way Food & Water Watch uses text messaging is to coordinate call-in days, during which supporters make calls to elected officials to advocate for or against proposed policies. Texts go out to subscribers living in affected areas. The message includes a trackable phone number for supporters to use when making their phone calls to lawmakers. Using the tracking technology, the nonprofit can tell who has made a phone call and can therefore determine whether a text prompted the call.
“Someone could be walking down the street, we send them the text to take urgent action, and they could make the call before they get to the corner,” Ms. Harak says. “It’s a way to get people to take the really big step of making a call to a legislator.”
Recently, the nonprofit used a call-in campaign to try to ban fracking in Maryland. Staff members sent text messages to supporters, asking them to call the offices of state legislators. The texts spurred people to make more than 700 phone calls. Staff members also used email and social media to ask people to make calls. In total, more than 5,000 calls were placed.
Maryland became the third state in the nation to ban fracking, and Ms. Harak hopes the Food & Water Watch campaign contributed to that outcome.
Food & Water Watch also uses text messages to seek supporter feedback. For its campaign about GMO labeling policies, a text asked subscribers to take and send back photos of themselves holding signs with relevant messages.
“We received incredible photos from people all over the country, photos we could send to legislators and on social media,” Ms. Harak says.
Similarly, during a march held in Philadelphia to advocate for clean-energy solutions, Food & Water Watch asked supporters to text three words that described how they felt. The nonprofit used the words to create a “word cloud” graphic, which it shared with subscribers and posted on social media. The image created a sense of unity among supporters who were at the march and those following along from other parts of the country, Ms. Harak says. “It was super powerful to get that immediate feeling back from people there.”
Tips for Running Successful Mobile Advocacy Campaigns
Ms. Harak recommends several things to keep in mind when texting supporters during advocacy campaigns.
- Coordinate messages across all of your communication channels so people see similar information in texts, in emails, and on social media.
“We stay in close contact with everyone who works on these channels together,” Ms. Harak says. “It’s important for making sure messaging and timing all match up and we support each other. It might be confusing if people are getting mixed messaging on different channels.”
- Designate staff members to help answer questions from people who receive text messages.
“We try to personalize the experience as much as we can,” she says. “People like knowing and feeling they’re having a one-to-one interaction as well.”
- Respect personal boundaries.
“Mobile is an intimate platform you reserve for friends and family and a few organizations you care about,” Ms. Harak says. “We can’t be texting people every hour on the hour. We’re trying to find that line between giving people enough action so they’re staying engaged, but also being respectful.”
Correction: A previous version of this article said Food & Water Watch’s call to action to ban fracking came during the 2014 People’s Climate March in New York City instead of during protests during Inauguration week this past January.
