«A loving home for every child» – the mission statement for SOS Children’s Villages, a non-profit organization established by Hermann Gmeiner in 1949 during the aftermath of World War 2. After watching the war leave many children orphaned, Gmeiner conceived of a way to give these children a familial experience in the form of «Children’s Villages.»
The idea revolves around a set of houses/homes suitable for families with 5-6 members, where SOS parents take care of underserved children. The SOS parents live with the children 24/7 and provide for them. Children’s Villages builds families for children in need, helps them shape their futures, and shares in the development of their communities. SOS Children’s Villages believes that every child belongs to a family and deserves to grow up with love, respect, and security. Today, Children’s Villages exist in 130+ countries and territories.
Challenge
As with any charity, the organization is reliant on the generosity of external donors and leverages a fundraising team to help reach their financial goals. While using various channels to spread their message, operations are focused on razor-thin margins to ensure funding goes directly into care for the children, not into offsetting overhead.
One such channel that a local chapter in Eastern Europe was interested in was SMS. It is an easy way to connect fundraisers with donors and provide timely updates for their stakeholders. SMS is undoubtedly not a channel that requires a heavy investment, but every penny counts when trying to help children. Fortunately, Mitto was happy to help.
Solution
Mitto reached out to the group as part of an ongoing «texting for good» campaign. Mitto believes that removing barriers in communication can help people, and one of those barriers for this non-profit was connecting their various stakeholders. Therefore, Mitto offered free SMS services for the day-to-day communications between donors and fundraisers. Since deploying the API, SOS the organization has leveraged the Mitto platform to automate delivering mission-critical notifications and deliver thank-you notes to generous donors.
The partnership has significantly reduced costs for the group and helped conserve one of their most precious resources: time. The communications platform is fully automated through Mitto’s Salesforce Sales and Service cloud integration. With money saved on communication overhead, the organization can spend their time and effort on the things that matter most, helping children in need.
«We’ve found the platform incredibly easy to use. Mitto’s generosity has reduced our operating costs and allowed us to focus our time and resources on our true mission – helping children and young people in alternative care.»
Vesna Mraković Jokanović, National Director
Over 4 million children have been supported via alternate care and family strengthening over Children’s Villages seven decades in existence, with support from partners such as Mitto, helping make it all possible.
