Around the world, people are affected by fragility, armed conflict, and natural disasters. Millions seek refuge. Many die in the attempt. Cordaid combines relief and development aid to help people move beyond survival and live in dignity. Suzanne de Koning, Fundraiser at Cordaid: "Besides emergency relief, Cordaid works on structural solutions for health, education, work and income." One of their recent endeavours to create a better life was aimed at girls in the world’s poorest countries, collecting donations to give girls access to education.
In the world’s poorest countries, it's a challenge for anyone to survive and build a future. Girls face an extra challenge, as they’re often expected to take care of the household, to care for brothers and sisters or do other work. Suzanne: "Boys, in contradiction to girls, are often sent to school as they are expected to bring in an income when they’re older. Traditionally, girls are kept at home. With obvious consequences.”
Cordaid is working on better education for millions of children in Africa, with extra attention for girls. In their 2019 campaign, ‘Help 10.000 girls to school’, Cordaid teamed up with popular Dutch television program RTL Boulevard and Conversational Commerce platform CM.com to raise funds for girls in Africa.
Stefanie Gordijn, Digital Strategist at Cordaid: "Once a year, RTL Boulevard focuses on one of our campaigns for a week. This year, they portrayed a couple of girls who aren't going to school, and asked them why they would love to attend. These portraits were combined with a call to donate via SMS to allow them to go to school. Within each broadcast, the score was continuously updated and shared."
Suzanne: "Halfway through the week, on Wednesday, we'd already reached our goal of 10.000 girls. By Friday, we had even surpassed the 15.000! Teaming up with RTL Boulevard was a great boost for this campaign. Especially with the help of the presenters, who did a great job in explaining our campaign to the public."
As well as explaining how the new flow works. Stefanie: "In previous years, we asked people to send a keyword to a given short code via SMS. This way, people could make a 3 euro donation per SMS. This year, we did things a bit differently."
Besides insight into their donors, this new campaign enabled higher donations. Instead of just sending a keyword via SMS, people would receive a reply via SMS, with a link to a landing page where you could finish the donation. Stefanie: "We need €27 to send a girl to school for one year. In this campaign, people could select to donate €27, €13.5 or fill in an amount themselves."
Stefanie: "After making the donation – completely anonymously of course as we don't have any information other than a phone number – the consumer is sent to a 'thank you'-page. There, we played a clip of a couple of girls thanking them for their gift. Then, a chatbot asked the donor a few more questions which helped us get more insight in our audience. Also, we asked the consumer if we could send them updates on this campaign.
Suzanne: "This was a very interesting case, as it's a new way of fundraising that matches this period in time. People are used to paying with their mobile phones. The flow was highly customer-friendly, and the consumer doesn't have to share more details than necessary, which of course is appreciated.
"Not to mention the results being great as well", Suzanne continues. "We were already excited after day one, after looking at the numbers: conversion, average donation." Having raising enough to send over 15.000 girls to school, instead of the 10.000 Cordaid aimed for, the charity is celebrating another successful campaign. Suzanne: "Starting with this new way of fundraising may have been tensive, we can now look back at a great campaign!"
CM.com is proud to have been part of the Cordaid campaign with a completely new way of fundraising. For this purpose, we deployed a smart combination of SMS, mobile payments via iDEAL, and a chatbot for opt-ins. With this Conversational Commerce setup, we made it easier for the consumer to make a donation. Accessible, safe and, above all, more successful. That is not just good news for Cordaid, but also for girls in the world’s poorest countries who are now able to go to school.
Stefanie: "We've worked with CM.com for several years now and know their quality and service. Together, we built a campaign to be proud of."
Cordaid’s aim was to raise enough money to allow 10.000 girls to go to school for a year. We are happy to say that goal was broken, collecting enough funds to give 15.835 girls access to education. Gilbert Gooijers, co-founder and COO at CM.com: ‘As a technology partner in the success of the campaign, we introduced a completely new way of fundraising. Thanks to the smart combination of text messaging, mobile payment and chatbots, we made it easier for people to donate and support Cordaid with a successful campaign.'
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