Customer spotlight: Oxfam Australia

Oxfam is one of the most globally recognised not-for-profit organisations. Their main goal is to promote human rights and social equality. Oxfam Trailwalker events are notorious for getting communities together to raise money for people living in poverty. Oxfam Trailwalker takes place in India, New Zealand, Spain, Japan, France, UK, Ireland, Belgium, Germany, Hong Kong and Australia. The Australian events are held all over the country; groups band together to walk 100km and commit to raising over $1,000 per team. Each year more than 2,000 teams take part across Australia, with the support of more than 2,500 volunteers and 6,000 support crew members. The events raise more than $6 million. That’s a lot to organise, so this year Oxfam Australia sought the help of SMS. Currently, our platform enables Oxfam to contact event volunteers, providing them with reminders and requesting confirmation of their attendance. It’s also used to contact participants and fundraisers. Text messages offer the volunteers information regarding the event and remind them to register before the close of registrations. SMS also helps to push fundraising, especially around the end of the financial year.  SMS is the most reliable method of communication, which is why Oxfam will also be using the service in the case of an incident or emergency during the events. If a certain group of, or all, participants and volunteers need to be contacted.When they first signed on, they planned on sending 40,000 messages across the 4 offices for the first year, with a review after one year. However, they have easy access to add more credits as they go and the ability to increase their maximum limit as necessary. SMS has provided a great way for Oxfam to contact people on their database directly so they don’t burden them with emails or phone calls.  The SMS strategy first showed its success during their Sydney event for the end of financial year fundraising campaign push. SMS reminders were sent to participants and a huge spike in their fundraising income was the direct result.According to Oxfam Trailwalker Event Manager, Georgina WestGarth, “Esendex has been a great additional communication tool for the Oxfam Trailwalker team.  It was very easy to set up a national account and the customer service received in doing this was excellent.”Implementing the service has also been easy and intuitive for users. “Using the SMS tool is very straightforward for bulk SMS messaging our database and that’s exactly what we hoped for.  Adding credits and additional users is instant and we have found it great value for money,” she said.  Oxfam will continue to use our service and develop new ways to directly contact volunteers and participants.If you are a charity organisation looking for ways to get in touch with volunteers and boost fundraising capabilities, give us a call today on  1300 764 946!