Keeping 80,000 Promises

How Santa Shoebox uses SMS to connect donors, recipients and impact

For the Joy of Giving Trust, the NGO behind the Santa Shoebox project, SMS is more than a communication channel. It helps a lean, seven-person team coordinate thousands of donors and recipients, keep Santa shoeboxes moving and ensure that promises made to children are kept.

Every year, thousands of South Africans make a promise to a child they may never meet, to fill a Santa Shoebox with gifts and essentials and deliver it to a designated drop-off point on specific dates and times. The Santa Shoebox Project distributes around 80,000 shoeboxes annually, while also running a growing education and school-building legacy programme in some of South Africa’s most under-resourced rural communities. From its very first 180 Santa Shoeboxes in 2006, the Joy of Giving Trust has donated over 1.35 million Santa Shoeboxes to underprivileged children attending over 1000 educational and care facilities each year across South Africa.

Behind the scenes is a team of just seven people in an operation that links donors, beneficiaries, drop-off points, children and individual shoeboxes throughout their journey. And one of the simplest and most reliable technologies in their tech-stack plays an outsize role: SMS.

Turning a pledge into a promise kept

According to Debbie Zelezniak, CEO at the Santa Shoebox Project, the technology platform is central to managing the journey of every individual shoebox. “When I pledge a box, I know I'm pledging for a child in need living in and around my own community. Each pledged shoebox is linked to a specific child and drop-off point, with a QR-coded label allowing it to be tracked from the moment it is pledged through to the point at which it reaches its intended recipient.”

But long before this happens, is the intense and pressured “drop off” stage where donors need to deliver their shoeboxes. “Donors are busy, and circumstances can change. People don't like to break their promises, but life also happens,” says Zelezniak. “We have worked with BulkSMS since 2011, sending SMS messages to remind our donors to drop off at X place, on X date, at X time, to make sure that we can keep our promises to both our donors and our beneficiaries.”

Lesley Thomas, IT Manager at the Santa Shoebox Project explains: “One of the biggest challenges the Santa Shoebox team faces is ensuring that, after the donors pledge their gift boxes, they deliver them to the right place on the right date. Any no-shows have to be made up at the last minute or else a child will miss out. Thanks to an annual donation of SMS messages by BulkSMS, the Project sends SMS reminders to donors in advance of the drop-off, and then sends targeted SMS reminders, anywhere in the country, dramatically reducing the no-show rate.”

Reaching people where they are

16 years since the very first SMS was sent, BulkSMS remains a stalwart in the communications for the project - with both donors and beneficiaries. The effectiveness of SMS becomes even more important since many beneficiaries live in deep rural areas where connectivity and access to data are limited.

“Besides donor communication, we also use SMS to reach schools and care centres to encourage them to register and apply as beneficiaries. They often do not have mobile data or internet connectivity, and we need to make sure our messages reach individuals even in far-flung locations. Whether we are coordinating with donors or beneficiaries, the reliability and deliverability of SMS is critical to our operation,” adds Thomas.

While email is also used extensively during the September pledging period, SMS comes into its own when the physical delivery process begins. “People, in general respond to SMS far better and quicker than any other communications channel. We can send multiple messages around a particular drop-off, depending on what donors need to know, helping to keep the process moving without placing additional pressure on our very small team. It’s a quick, simple, affordable and effective channel, and you know your message is going to get delivered and read regardless of internet connectivity or location of the recipient,” adds Thomas.

From boxes to bricks

The impact of the Santa Shoebox project extends well beyond the annual gift-giving initiative. Corporate partnerships also help the organisation turn Virtual Santa Shoebox pledges into long-term infrastructure through the Santa Shoebox Project Legacy initiative. Because sponsors contribute toiletries, school supplies, clothing, toys and other essentials for the Virtual shoeboxes, the project generates cash surpluses that it invests in building schools in rural South Africa, aptly described as: from boxes to bricks. “Love drives this project,” says Zelezniak, “and we simply wouldn’t be able to get it done without the trusted SMS to reach and motivate our donors.”

The enduring value of simplicity

According to BulkSMS Managing Director, Richard Simpson, SMS continues to offer a powerful combination of accessibility, immediacy and reliability – particularly when organisations need to reach large audiences across different levels of connectivity and geographic spread. “SMS remains one of the most dependable ways for organisations to reach people directly, regardless of whether they have mobile data available. For the Santa Shoebox Project, where a timely reminder makes the difference between a pledge being fulfilled or a child missing out, that reliability is critical.”

Futureproofing the Santa Shoebox Project means that the team is also evolving its communications strategy. The project recently piloted RCS for business as it looks to incorporate richer content, visuals and links into its fundraising communications, while SMS retains its place as the mission-critical messaging that gets the hard work done, on time.

“Behind every SMS message is something much bigger than a notification: There’s a donor who needs a timely reminder, a shoebox that needs to arrive and ultimately, a child waiting for a promise to be kept,” Zelezniak concludes.