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Affordable entry point for small nonprofits
July 31, 2023

Affordable entry point for small nonprofits

Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Modules Used

  • Programmable SMS

Overall Satisfaction with Twilio

During the pandemic, we needed to engage the many new hikers and other outdoor recreation folks coming to our parks. However, we had limited staff, budget, and capacity (it was 2020 after all). We found Twillio and with its grants program, got up and running in a couple of weeks with a text auto-responder to provide customer service and fundraising follow-up to a wider audience. Since then we have expanded our auto-responder to encompass many "questions" our visitors have in the field, allowing us to provide prompt maps, resources, and other problem-solving tools (paper free too!)
  • Customizable, infinitely so
  • Grants program allows nonprofits to try it out
  • Reliable, wherever an sms or mms goes, so does twillio
  • Communication about regulatory changes
  • Customer support, even when it's user error, team is supportive and encouraging
  • complex - user interface is good but you need significant programming logic and testing
  • alerts from errors - while we get alerts, we could use more descriptive/helpful alerts
  • New donors - Twilio is consistently our 4th or 5th most successful donor acquisition tool
  • ROI - Whether you count the actual cash or with the startup grant, we've net somewhere between 27-700 times what we put in.
  • Engagement - we can more easily track and respond to questions visitors have in the field, and folks appreciate the prompt help
We use 1 channel, and while we have explored more, don't have the manpower to invest at the moment.
While using the same basic setup, we have programmed different paths through our auto-responder to accommodate new programs and respond to varying visitor needs. Once you get a basic flow going, it's very simple to duplicate the patterns and implement new uses. After setup, the tending is also very simple, allowing more users to monitor and upkeep the system day-to-day.
The problem tends to be us, the user, rather than Twilio. We don't reach out to support fast enough (spend time struggling), but when we have, they've solved our issue immediately. We are rural, so there are signal issues to accommodate, however, we find that a few staff on a few cellular networks can triangulate where we all have signal to put up a sign.
We evaluated many fundraising-based text-to-give programs and found the subscriptions prohibitively expensive for our small scale and uncertain first few years of development. While we may be willing to invest that kind of money after discovering how things work, we're happy with Twilio now and have no desire to start over.

Do you think Twilio delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Twilio's feature set?

Yes

Did Twilio live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of Twilio go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Twilio again?

Yes

I recommend Twilio to many small non-profits, especially those with unmanned outposts in the world. While it takes some effort to get started, it nearly runs itself from there and is by far the most affordable option I have seen to-date. Like if you want to try text solutions, might as well start with the pay-per-message options rather than the multi-thousand dollar solutions, see how your audience responds.