Text to Give or SMS Messaging

Keith Wilson

Hey Community! Hope your week is going great!

I've been poking around the Marketplace looking for a good SMS Messaging solution. None of the connected apps have any real reviews and most while “free” to connect to NXT, they are not at all free to use! ?

Just curious, what recommendations you could offer? Any product you love?

Also, brainstorming a bit, is there a way to create a Power Automate workflow that would get cell phone numbers and send an SMS message? (Ahem, here's looking at you @Heather McLean ?)

TIA, and Happy “almost” Friday!

Alex Wong

@Keith Wilson
we have used one call Textmunication before and while OK to use, we didn't feel this fundraising method giving much ROI and stopped using it after half a year.

As for the automation, you will have to find a SMS messaging service that support API sending of message in order to make use of Power Automate for sending. Textmunication does have API support, which I don't remember if it has API endpoint that support sending message.

If the service support sending message via API, then you can definitely use Power Automate to automate some filtered list of donor that has mobile phone and send message via the API of the service you use.

Heather McLean

@Keith Wilson - I'd look at the Blackbaud Marketplace. A quick search for SMS pulls up several options depending on the nature of the campaign:

Miki Martin

@Keith Wilson we also used Textmunication in 2022 for a short campaign. I was not really happy with it.

This last spring we tried Parlance, based out of Georgia. I felt the set-up fee was a bit much, but now if we use it it's a flat rate per month per number. The interface is easier to use than what I recall from Textmunication. They do work with several RE customers, but it does not actually tie into NXT directly. Importing/exporting is easy, though, since they recognize the constituent ID field.

That is all I can offer. I have not entered the world of PowerAutomate yet. Good luck!

Keith Wilson

@Alex Wong and @Miki Martin thank you both for this feedback.

@Heather McLean I was in the Marketplace but there were no reviews of anyone's experience with those apps.

I reached out to someone within our organization who has been instrumental in setting up a lot of our PA Flows, and there is a service our org uses called Twilio that has the API's Alex referenced. This seems the most promising at this point, but I am still investigating, and still open to any other comments! Thank you all for your sharing your knowledge! ?