justgiving

Posted on: Monday, May 9th, 2011



Free text donations for all UK charities







We are so excited to launch our free text donation service to all UK charities, thanks to our friends at Vodafone. Anne-Marie Huby, JustGiving’s managing director, explains how the new service will transform the way charities and their supporters raise money.

When we created JustGiving, we wanted to make fundraising amazing. No more dog-eared sponsorship forms, just a simple, friendly and personal experience for everyone, with a lot more money going to charity than ever before.


Ten years on and £833m later, we knew that mobile would be the next chapter in our story. We also knew how tough it would be to make it work: until now, it has been expensive to set up and run, which is why only a handful of large charities have been able to use it. And yet, every year, more and more people are choosing to donate via SMS. This year, Comic Relief raised over £15m through text donations alone, twice as much as the previous time.


So we set out to create the best text donation service in the UK, and make spontaneous, on-the-spot giving available to everyone in the UK. To succeed, we needed a partner that not only could deliver the most robust technology solution on an industrial scale, but also had a genuine commitment to the charity sector and would support the service over the long term. That partner is Vodafone.


Two years in the making, JustTextGiving by Vodafone launches today. It is, by any standard, a huge commitment by both companies. Thanks to Vodafone, the service will be totally free to use: there are no set-up or running costs for charities, and every penny, plus Gift Aid, goes to charity. For the first time, there will be no network charges for donors.


Most importantly, Vodafone will help us reach, and support, more charities than we could ever have dreamed of achieving on our own. Today, every charity in the UK will receive a letter inviting them to claim their unique text code, and start fundraising right away. Nearly 3,000 charities are already on board, from Cancer Research UK to Birmingham Children’s Hospital Charities. To find out more please visit www.justgiving.com/JustTextGiving.


This is only the beginning. Later this year, all of JustGiving’s individual fundraisers will also receive their unique, personalised text code. And, thanks to Vodafone, JustTextGiving will be advertised on television, to inspire even more people to get involved.

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  • http://twitter.com/MNDScotland MND Scotland

    Really excited about this here at MND Scotland. Well done @justgiving:twitter !

  • http://touchingsoulsintl.org/blog/ charity organizations

    Hello,
    Thanks for sharing such great news with us all. I really feel this is a great move. Donating money will now be such an easy task, all one has to do is send a SMS.
    :)

  • Pingback: Fundraisers can now receive text donations « JustGiving blog

  • Jules

    Exactly my experience, I am trying to fry my remaining PAYG credit in the form of a charity donation )im transferring my number to another operator), its taken me two hours to find out how to do this, but find me a single charity who actually publishes its VIC code online…its ridiculous, only one I found is for retired racehorses, they are not likely to get my money

  • Jules

    After googling and googling for these VIC codes I finally found one, cancer research can now be grateful for my contribution. My advice to charities, if they want people to donate, advertise these numbers on your websites too…they are ridiculously hard to find and in my case it was a case of first come first served.

  • http://www.justgiving.com Tal Wolgroch

    Hi Turkeyphant, it is currently up to the charities and fundraisers where they want to share their VIC codes, so we don’t have an aggregated list presently. We may look into creating this in the future. Thanks.

  • http://www.justgiving.com Tal Wolgroch

    Hi Turkeyphant, it is currently up to the charities and fundraisers where they want to share their VIC codes, so we don’t have an aggregated list presently. We may look into creating this in the future. Thanks.

  • https://www.thesslstore.com SSL Certificate

    Hi,
    First let me bring inform you that you guys done the great job to bring update this news at this stage. We believe that Donating to various resource now, will be easy and actively. We can spread the words of donation of services.

  • Deanne53

    Please do – it would make it so much easier to find someone to donate my excess PAYG credit to!

  • http://twitter.com/jon_bedford Jonathan Waddingham

    Hi Phil, thanks for the comment.
    You’re right in that you should be going for something simple and memorable. I’m not sure if you were already thinking of putting in a specific amount, or letting people decide, but asking them to text a specific amount would be best. The maximum donation is £10, but you don’t necessarily want to ask for too high an amount to put people off. I’d try it with £5 to give you more of a chance of people taking action when they feel compelled to – it’s enough to make a difference, small enough for people to not feel like it’s a burden and is a nice round number.
    Thanks, Jonathan