CAF launches fundraising text service

The Charities Aid Foundation (CAF) has today launched a text donation service which will make it easy and affordable for all charities to fundraise and communicate with supporters through their mobile phones.

The new service, part of CAF’s Fundraising Support Service, gives charities a new channel for fundraising, opening up access to the 96% of adults in the UK who own a mobile phone.

Charities will be able to set up text donation campaigns quickly, allowing them to respond to emergency situations as well as using the service as part of their regular fundraising efforts, and to maintain ongoing communication with donors.

Working with Vir2, a provider of mobile fundraising solutions to the not for profit sector, CAF has set up two charity shortcodes to collect £3 and £5 donations.

CAF will run the service on behalf of charities – setting up campaign keywords, collecting payments from the moblie phone networks and claiming Gift Aid, freeing up charities to focus on running their fundraising campaigns.

John Low, chief executive of the Charities Aid Foundation,said: “Donating by text is easy, quick and simple for both donors and charities. We have seen substantial growth in donating by text with Comic Relief raising £7.8milllion this way in 2009.

“Since VAT free charity short-codes were introduced and mobile phone networks significantly improved their payout rates, it has become much cheaper and more effective for all charities to benefit from text donations.”

Roger Craven, managing director of Vir2, commented: “It is important that more charities can utilise mobile phone technology especially as the delivery of social networking, entertainment and payment are converging on the mobile phone."

Charities will be charged £20 per month for each keyword used and a small fee (2.5%) for every donation meaning the cost of the service will reflect the success of a charity’s campaign.

To support the new service CAF has produced a video and guide explaining how text donation works and the benefit to charities.

The video is available from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6BPLyAP4BY and the guide is available free online at www.cafonline.org/text.