Case Study: Special Olympics Virginia increases fundraising engagement with Twilio SMS

Finding new ways to motivate event participants

Special Olympics Virginia, the organization behind the Polar Plunge Festival fundraising drive, needed a better way to motivate participants as email and social media became too crowded to cut through. It turned to Twilio SMS through the Twilio.org Impact Access Program to reach plungers, team captains, and low-activity fundraisers with more timely, attention-grabbing messages.

Twilio helped Special Olympics Virginia build a simple SMS platform with partner OneReach, enabling segmented texting, list management, and unsubscribe handling without in-house developers. Using Twilio, the organization increased average funds raised by $20 per person and saw about a 7% rise in funds raised on average, while also getting far fewer unsubscribes than with email.

Special Olympics Virginia

Holly Claytor

Senior Director of Public Relations