This document summarizes benchmarks for nonprofit organizations using text messaging. It finds that the average list growth rate for mobile numbers is 49.5% annually, while the average churn rate is 30.7%. The average unsubscribe rate for text messages is 0.69%. Fundraising and advocacy text messages had higher response rates than emails, with advocacy texts seeing a 4.7% response rate. The document outlines best practices for different types of outbound text messages and notes that 73-87% of text subscribers could be matched to email lists.

1. 2010 Nonprofit Text Messaging Benchmarks http://mobilebenchmarks.org/

2. This study was sponsored by:

3. Thank you to participating organizations

7. Between 73 and 87 percent of text subscribers could be matched to a subscriber in the email database. Relatively few subscribers (ranging from 0.8 to 2.7 percent) were opted-in via keyword / shortcode to receive text messages.

14. Advocacy Messaging

15. Unsubscribes

16. http://mobilebenchmarks.org http://mobileactive.org http://mobileactive.org/mobile-fundraising