How to make a difference: boosting Mousetrap Theatre Projects’ communications

Boomerang Messaging values smaller realities as much as the bigger ones and, along with this, values being able to enrich the lives of disadvantaged people and opening new possibilities for them through collaboration with charity projects. Because of this, we are glad to announce that Boomerang has officially become a supporter of London-based charity Mousetrap Theatre Projects.

So far, Boomerang has dealt with IT companies, customer-facing services, healthcare, finance, military departments and crisis management bodies. But that doesn’t mean a messaging service can only benefit these specific fields and not become part of something that goes beyond work and customer care.

Charities have been using SMS for a while, and it still proves to be a successful means to reach their goals.

For example, back in 2013  Creation Trust, whose objective is delivering social and economic change to the Aylesbury Estate in south London, used an SMS campaign to advertise job opportunities to residents of the estate, which turned into almost 70% of the recipients showing up to the job showcase. (The Guardian)

Another case is the non-for-profit organisation SAWA-Australia (Support Association for the Women of Afghanistan), which has introduced SMS as an additional means to emails to alert supporters on events and news in real-time, increasing attendances at fund-raising events and reduced delays in communications. (Text Magic)

Seeing the positive outcome of using SMS to empower charities’ action, how could we not take the chance to do something concrete, contributing to something that has already done so much in making the lives of disadvantaged young people a little better?

Let us introduce you to Mousetrap Theatre Projects.

The Mousetrap Theatre Projects is a London-based charity that since 1997 has been dedicated to bringing the magic of theatre into the lives of disadvantaged young people.

Each year Mousetrap takes over 15,000 young people to see top London productions. They enhance that experience with education programmes in schools and communities, using theatre as a catalyst to explore ideas, learn new skills, develop creativity and offer new perspectives.

‘It has opened up a new world to our students… “life-changing” would not be an overstatement’ – Teacher

In short, Mousetrap’s mission is to engage, educate and inspire young people through theatre, running 23 varied programmes across four core areas:

• Opening Doors – to young people who have ever been to the theatre before, specifically those with limited resources, support or a disability;
• Creative Learning – using theatre as an educational resource in and out of the classroom to stimulate creative work and develop personal and theatre-related skills;
• Inspiring Future Theatregoers – enhancing young audiences’ knowledge and appreciation of theatre and helping them make theatre-going an enduring, inspiring part of their lives;
• Training – creating the next generation of theatre-makers and administrators through training and careers events, plus up-skilling arts, education and youth work professionals.

‘Without Mousetrap, we would never have been able to even imagine bringing up our children with this culture, education and creativity.’  – Parent

Application of the Boomerang technology in the charity’s work

The role of Boomerang in supporting Mousetrap does not stop at acting as a Supporter to the projects: Boomerang’s technology will integrate the charity’s data collection, customer support, and communication channels system, already based upon online surveys, communication through emails, and creation of focus groups to draw more specific and realistic data. Along with this, being supporters of the charity, Boomerang will provide an amount of half a million free messages for Mousetrap use across some of its products.

Two products have been identified as the most suitable services for Mousetrap’s needs:

• boomCast would allow a more effective data collection, which would still be based upon surveys, but would also automatically store results following specific criteria set by the charity itself, which could ideally be young people and families’ habits about theatregoing, behaviours after taking part to projects, or type of obstacles found in organising trips to the theatre. It would also integrate with the mailing system currently in use, facilitating email composition through templates and groups of contacts ready to use.
• boomMail would facilitate reaching families via SMS, being sending email-to-SMS messages its core capability.

The use of Boomerang’s products will make publicising of discount tickets to families and keeping them engaged more effective.

This would go beyond the mailing list used at the moment. SMS would once again turn out to be the most effective way to communicate in these kinds of scenarios, especially dealing with a portion of the population that might not have constant access to emails and for whom SMS is likely to be a more effective communication channel.

Find out more

You can learn more about Mousetrap on their website and see live updates on their activities and all the amazing projects happening every week: the best way to do it is by following their Twitter profile @MousetrapTP. 

If you like what Mousetrap does, why not contribute by making a donation to support their work?

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You can also get in touch with us to find out more about our services!