Case Studies: Mobile Fundraising and Advocacy Successes

The objectives of the campaign were to:

• Illustrate how donations are spent.
• Reach new target groups.
• Establish a simple monthly donation service.
• Establish direct communication with donors.

And the real catalyst was to inform donors and supporters of the scope of MSF’s work.

“People tend to think that Doctors Without Borders is only about doctors,” Oscarson said. “We wanted to show it was so much more than that.”

So MSF and Mobiento came up with a unique mobile strategy — sending daily mobile updates following MSF workers in the field for a week to see what they do every day. MSF filmed workers on site, then sent the videos to Mobiento where they were cut, edited and prepared to be sent via MMS.

Every day, recipients who opted in would receive video messages from someone in the field updating them on what he or she did that day. It drove home the point: This is what MSF was doing … what are YOU doing while Doctors Without Borders is saving lives? And each MMS contained a direct donation link — one click and you could donate $5.

What MSF and Mobiento found was that donors became brand ambassadors. The messages were so unique and engaging that recipients would share them with their friends and families. So the mobile marketing campaign became a viral campaign. And the interesting thing was that the last message was sent at 8:30 p.m. on a Friday and had some of the best response. The reasoning behind deploying the final message of the week then was that recipients would most likely be out in social settings and would share it with those around them, which would in turn enhance the MSF brand even more.

‘Text a Coffin Away’
People who had been following MSF with the Working Week campaign mostly signed up for $5 to keep getting mobile messages. After a year, MSF called them from the call center and asked them to donate more as a cultivation technique. The MMS campaign was the entry step to bigger donations, Oscarson said.