In the face of uncertain budgets and growing global challenges, humanitarian organizations are being forced to do more with less.
But amid the pressure, there’s opportunity - to rethink how we communicate, how we reach people, and how we deliver impact at scale.
In this Telerivet piece, we explore how organizations like Médecins Sans Frontières, the Norwegian Refugee Council, New Incentives, and Farm Radio International are using Telerivet to build smarter, more efficient communication systems - from SMS reminders to mobile incentives, mass surveys, and beyond.
We’ll cover:
- Now is the time of efficiencies
- How do humanitarian organizations handle communication?
- How the Norwegian Refugee Council scaled outreach through digital hubs
- New Incentives used airtime & rewards to rocket engagement
- Médecins Sans Frontières sent SMS to increase HIV testing
- Farm Radio International used live polling to communicate with farmers
Now is the time of efficiencies
“The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born”
Unfortunately, the funding situation for NGOs and humanitarian organizations around the world has been thrown into uncertainty in recent months, with the changing policy directions of the United States government.
"Uncertainty" is maybe not doing the issue justice.
Many charities, NGOs, and humanitarian organizations are already aware that their budgets are going to be deeply slashed by the cuts to USAID.
The reverberation of these cuts will be felt around the world. The impact will be seen on the ground - where aid matters most.
In the ability to provide services and resources to many of the people around the world who need it most.
But the impact and effects will also be seen in Western nations, where charities, NGOs, and humanitarian organizations are going to face reduced budgets and potentially job cuts, downsizing, or shuttering completely.
This is a potentially highly damaging blow to the third sector worldwide.
There isn’t an easy answer for how organizations can deal with this. There’s no one trick that doctors don’t want you to know for dealing with a budget shortfall.
The best we can do is try to find efficiencies where we can - so that we can extend those budgets, continue to deliver the impacts and services that we across the industry provide, and extend the timelines through which we can source alternative funding channels and new opportunities to access funds or support to help keep things going.
There are many people in this sector for whom it’s no new experience to have to deal with small budgets.
That said, there is space to be more ruthlessly efficient - and in this article, we’ll explore a couple of tips within our domain of expertise on how you can do just that.
How do humanitarian organizations handle communication?
Humanitarian organizations around the world handle communication in many very different ways.
There’s no industry standard, nor one single industry playbook.
Maybe we should try to create that playbook, to make things easier for people - but different circumstances require different needs.
It's one of the reasons we made Telerivet so flexible and customizable in the first place.
In certain areas of business, you can bend your needs to the communication channel.
But in humanitarian work, you're often needed precisely because the situation is unorthodox.
Many charities come to Telerivet to use us because we can deliver messages where others can't. We can operate in environments that lack the infrastructure that normally makes communication so easy in developed economies.
So, there's no one-size-fits-all approach to humanitarian communication.
But lots of charities, NGOs, and humanitarian orgs do what most businesses and private organizations do - they choose the big brands.
This can sometimes be a wise decision. It usually means a community of users who can help you out, a sense of trust that the money’s probably being spent well, and a sense of reliability - because you’re going with a trusted partner.
But now might be a very good time for these orgs to look outside of simply the biggest brands.
We know, in our space - communications platforms as a service - many of the biggest firms are not the cheapest, nor best value.
And by opting to work with them, you often enter into a closed garden, where other services are priced fairly high, or have usage pricing that kicks in at higher rates.
It’s why we made our platform open - to plug in providers of all different types - so that you can find the best deals across different providers and manage them from one central location.
It’s worth being savvy in the market.
How the Norwegian Refugee Council scaled outreach through digital hubs
The Norwegian Refugee Council came to us at Telerivet during the pandemic, when it was facing a similar type of shock to what we're seeing across the industry now.
The pandemic changed the circumstances of aid - and required new solutions.
Initially, for the Norwegian Refugee Council, the challenge was about continuing delivery in changing circumstances.
However, by the end of the process, an overall improved way of operating had been discovered.
The NRC was able to operate at larger scales - more efficiently - than it had been able to before.
These outcomes came from a scheme the Norwegian Refugee Council had run to construct digital hubs, in partnership with a range of technology providers.
Telerivet was one such tech partner, along with other established firms like Microsoft and Cisco.
These tech hubs were designed to use technology to reach larger numbers of people - to be able to help, to understand needs, and, where possible, deliver services and support to vulnerable people in a very difficult period of time to be a refugee.
In 2023, with only a small team, the digital hub was able to serve over 465,000 people in less than a month.
This example shows the potential of incorporating tech smartly into your service provision.
New Incentives used airtime & rewards to rocket engagement
New Incentives is a charity that works with pregnant women in Nigeria, to make sure that women have access to healthcare surrounding their pregnancy.
New Incentives provides a money transfer to pregnant women as a reward for accessing their medical care in a certified and participating clinic.
The typical amount they send to expectant new mothers is around $130.
However, they faced the challenge of being able to send this money effectively and securely to the mothers in question.
Infrastructure in these areas is poor, and many of the participants are unbanked.
So to solve this, New Incentives utilizes airtime transfers - to send cash incentives directly to the mothers’ mobile phones.
This is a Telerivet product that has a range of use cases - from charity incentives in rural parts of Nigeria to motivating sales workers in the field during commercial activities in major cities in Southeast Asia.
In some parts of the world, mobile phone users are on prepaid monthly contracts. In other parts, they utilize a pay-as-you-go system - where providing a direct mobile credit top-up is effectively a direct cash transfer.
You can manage the process of sending airtime from within your Telerivet account - and in doing so, build incentives into your communications.
This approach is an easy and accessible way to get cash transfers to parts of the world where infrastructure is normally lacking.
Médecins Sans Frontières sent SMS to increase HIV testing
Médecins Sans Frontières came to Telerivet with the goal of increasing HIV testing, screening procedures, and adherence.
The goal was simple: to see an uptick in adherence through sending reminders and follow-up messages.
The plan for Médecins Sans Frontières - or Doctors Without Borders, as they’re known in many English-speaking countries - was to increase the number of touchpoints and see increased engagement on the other side, by using automated SMS to deliver this communication.
The cost is very low - and the impact potentially very high.
If you were to compare this approach to having a field worker or two trying to personally follow up with these people, then the relative cost difference would be quite significant.
Médecins Sans Frontières found that appointment reminders and rapid follow-ups increased engagement in the targeted groups dramatically - and allowed for many more people to be tested and screened for HIV.
And in doing this test, they discovered a scalable method to countering HIV more effectively across Cape Town and their broader efforts.
Farm Radio International used live polling to communicate with farmers
So far, we've covered massively increased reach and efficiency through scalable automated technologies.
We've covered automated SMS reminders and follow-ups.
And we've covered the sending of airtime as an incentive structure.
The final communication practice we'll touch on is the use of SMS polling.
Now, there are many different approaches you could take to SMS polling - but in this example, Farm Radio International was working with smallholder farmers across multiple regions in Africa...
They wanted to deploy a method of interaction that would provide two-way communication between them as the organization and the farmers - from their homes - and do so in a way that was affordable for the organization and didn’t incur a charge to the farmers, who would otherwise not have been able to afford to participate in the process.
The way Farm Radio International reached the farms was by partnering with Telerivet to deploy a simple system, where the radio host would ask a question - and farmers could text in their responses.
This allowed Farm Radio International to communicate in real time, in a two-way process, with a large number of smallholder farmers across different regions in Africa.
This increased communication helped to uncover the challenges and pains these farmers were facing in their everyday labor.
And in doing so, they - as a humanitarian organization - were better able to deploy the resources at their disposal to meet the diverse needs of the smallholder farmers.
Telerivet: Messaging when it matters
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"The user interface is very intuitive and detailed, making it easy to set up. The few times we have required technical support, or had a query about a needed feature, the response has always been quick" - Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders)
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