‘JustTextGiving’ – Enabling Charities to Harness the Power of Text

It was announced this week that JustGiving and Vodafone have teamed up to launch a new service that will enable all UK registered charities to raise money through text donations. The initiative, called ‘JustTextGiving’, is a simple and free service. Unlike previous charity text campaigns which have involved a steep charge on the donation value, this removes the set up and running costs, as well as the commission fees. This means that the donor can be confident that every penny of their donation goes towards their chosen charity.

So, how does it work? The charity must obtain a ‘JustTextGiving’ unique six digit short code, which allows it to invite others to make donations of up to £10 by texting the code to 70070. The value is then secured from the donor’s bill or pay-as-you-go balance. However, nothing has yet been said about ownership of data which poses the obvious question ‘just how valuable the donors might be in the long term, given that this is based on a one-off gift.’

The new initiative is available across all network providers and will be welcomed by fundraisers. We’ve already seen the potential of text as a means of securing incremental income across a number of our clients’ results – RSPCA, WaterAid and The Salvation Army have all capitalised on the use of text as part of their DRTV campaigns as a means of increasing income in some instances by up to 30%. This has transformed results in a time of declining phone response rates (not to mention a decline in overall giving, as reported by the Pennies Foundation last week).

Not only will this initiative make text giving more accessible for all UK charities but it will also facilitate and improve engagement between charities and the next generation of donor. It’s now more important than ever that fundraisers are speaking to potential donors in the most relevant way and using all of the tools at their disposal in order to do so. Some of our clients have already seen the potential value that text has to bring to the table – for other charities, it’s just a matter of time…

Helen Guard
Senior TV Planner Buyer