oneMESSAGE.tv Sees 260% Increase In Recurring Donors In First Year

Key Metrics

Within a year of using Keela, oneMESSAGE.tv refined its communication strategy, doubled its total number of donations, and converted many one-time donors to recurring donors. The faith-based organization has recorded significant growth on all fronts:

• ‍56% Increase in fundraising revenue‍
• 237% Increase in donations Using Smart Ask‍
• 108% Increase in donors acquired‍
• 260% Increase in recurring donors acquired

How Keela Supports oneMessage.tv

Smart Ask

Deploying Smart Ask on donation forms, oneMessage.tv raised 237% more compared to regular forms. Keela’s Smart Ask lets you maximize gift size by telling you how much you should ask your donors for. For oneMessage.tv, it meant increasing average gift size by 250%.

Payment Processing

Keela donation forms integrate perfectly with the two most popular payment processing systems, Paypal and Stripe. Registered nonprofit organizations can benefit from a discount transaction rate (2.2% + $0.30) using these payment processors.

Personalized Email Communications

Keela’s email marketing tools allow nonprofits to store donor data and customize fundraising appeals automatically. This improves email click-through and donation rates over time.

Donor Management

With Keela, nonprofit professionals can get key insights into donor behavior, segment donor data, and stay on top of all interactions with donors. The more nonprofits understand their donor persona, the more effective their fundraising efforts.

Challenge

oneMESSAGE.tv produces and shares a library of interactive bible stories around the world. With the support of donors and volunteers, the nonprofit has successfully partnered with several mission groups to engage and educate communities in South America and Africa.

oneMESSAGE.tv found it incredibly challenging to effectively communicate with the 3,000 existing unreached people groups with their network, many of whom are oral learners. Messages and stories are easily lost in translation. In 2012, while on a mission trip to South America, Paul Wynn and Doug Keesey sought to find a way to overcome these communication barriers.

Since many individuals in these people groups prefer to communicate by speaking and watching (instead of reading and writing), Wynn and Keesey decided to incorporate multimedia tools into outreach efforts. They realized that by producing visual stories in bit sizes and easily shareable formats, they could communicate better with locals and introduce them to the gospel.

To ensure the videos’ messages resonated with the viewers, the two missionaries invited native speakers from the communities to narrate stories and play characters from the bible. This proved effective as it allowed the community members to see and hear the gospel in a familiar language.

This idea led to the birth of oneMESSAGE.tv in 2019. The two men joined forces to facilitate the creation and distribution of visual bible stories to unreached people groups. Since then, the nonprofit organization has worked with churches and ministries to develop resources for communicating effectively with specific communities.

The oneMESSAGE.tv team has since leveraged Keela to stay organized, raise donations for mission trips, record and analyze donor data, improve donor communications and manage relationships with donors and partners.

Solution and Results

In March 2020, three weeks shy of oneMESSAGE.tv’s first anniversary, the COVID-19 pandemic struck. Due to physical distancing measures and travel restrictions, the team had to halt its outreach efforts temporarily. The nonprofit’s co-founders, Paul Wynn and Doug Keesey saw the forced hiatus as an opportunity to refine their communications strategy. It was around this time that Keesey found out about Keela.

“We were hoping to make two or three mission trips [in 2020], but of course, that didn’t happen,” Keesey said: “While we continued to have supporters giving and donating to our campaigns, the break gave us some time to use Keela to improve our messaging, donor outreach, and fundraising approach.”

Keesey, a self-acclaimed ‘techie,’ is quite familiar with the commonplace features of donor relationship management systems. Before using Keela, he’d trialed Salesforce, Eleo, NeonCRM, and Bloomerang. But, they were too complicated to use. After doing some more research, he stumbled upon Keela’s website and immediately booked a demo.

“We looked at several [CRMs], but I really liked what I saw in the Keela demo. It just seems like everything works better with Keela to me. It has credit-card processing, email marketing functionalities, and important donor management features. It’s an all-in-one package, so we went ahead and pulled the trigger on Keela, and we’ve been very happy ever since.”

Amongst Keela’s many features, our email marketing solutions have proven to be an essential resource for oneMESSAGE.tv. As his nonprofit’s outreach campaigns were being halted, Keesey spent some time thinking about his prospects’ journies, from being casual supporters to recurring donors. He used Keela Intelligence to learn more about donors, their giving history, and their likelihood to give.

Armed with this information, Keesey created email drip campaigns to send personalized emails to donors at each stage of their cultivation cycle. He used Keela’s email templates and drag-and-drop builder to create engaging and beautifully designed emails that resonated with donors. As a result, the organization’s appeals get an average email open rate of 39% (higher than the 17% industry average open rate for fundraising emails)

Instead of asking for random donation amounts in these fundraising appeals, Keesey used Keela’s Smart Ask Insight to automatically solicit the recommended donation amount for each donor. This increased each donor’s likelihood to give and encouraged them to give an amount that they were comfortable with. Since taking this step, oneMESSAGE.tv has seen a 108% increase in the total number of donations and is now successfully attracting recurring donors.

“We’re making more use of Keela’s artificial intelligence features,” Keesey said: “Since we figured out how to use Smart Ask in the emails, I’m not worried [about trying to get subscribers to donate on our website]. They can do it right from the emails, and I like that it changes the donation amount in the form based on their interactions with us. And it works; it’s given us better results than we’d have gotten from a generic donation form.”

As a relatively new nonprofit, oneMESSAGE.tv has a lot of growth opportunities. That said, the co-founders understand the importance of having a solid foundation, implementing a complete nonprofit management system, and getting the help they need to give their organization the best chance at success.

With Keela, the oneMESSAGE.tv team gets the timely support needed to grow and extend its reach to more communities. Our reliable customer care team provides guidance and assurance as oneMESSAGE.tv  learns how to make the most of Keela’s features.

Keesey also takes advantage of Keela’s free webinar series, tools, and resources so he can apply more proven nonprofit management strategies to his work: “We’ve got a lot of room to grow, so we’re always learning,” Keesey said: “One of the things I really like the most is just the ability to share ideas and ask questions, and I always get a response back very quickly. It feels good as a customer to know that the support team is always very accessible.”

Keesey believes that, with reliable nonprofit management software like Keela, small nonprofits can accelerate their growth, implement a cohesive strategy to achieve their goals, and measure their success over time. He appreciates the ability to quickly pull progress reports in Keela’s CRM during board meetings and share updates on campaign performances. This goes a long way to ensuring the team is aligned in their work and mission.

“[Keela] removes so much of the headache of trying to track information about who’s donating, how our communications impact donor support, and what kind of progress we’re making. I can’t imagine doing all that in an excel spreadsheet. It just saves me a lot of time.” said Doug Keesey, Co-founder of oneMESSAGE.tv

Looking Ahead

Following their hiatus, the oneMESSAGE.tv team has resumed its outreach campaigns. The nonprofit is preparing for mission trips to communities in Kenya, Peru, and a host of other countries over the next year. The team plans to keep using Keela to manage its relationships with partners and steward more one-time donors to join their recurring donor program.

You can learn more about oneMessage.tv’s impact here.

Scale Your Donor Communications with Keela

Like oneMessage.tv, your nonprofit team can share your organization’s story, engage more supporters, and have more meaningful interactions with donors.

Keela has the unique features you need to reach the right donors at the right time, send targeted fundraising appeals, steward donors and track your success. Now’s the time to turn your routine donor communication into meaningful connections.