The Guy Francis Bone Cancer Research Fund was initially started by teenager Guy Francis who was so shocked by the lack of research and funding into bone cancer  which he himself was affected by that he began fundraising himself to raise awareness and funding for research on bone cancer.

As part of the charities “10 Years On” programme of events marking 10 years since Guy died they will on October 23/24 2012 hold an event to help raise donations for the fund and they also attempt to set a Guinness World Record for “The most money raised for charity through SMS texting in 24 hours” This event will begin at 14:00 on the 23^rd of October and end at 14:00 on the 24^th of October.

This will be a huge event and with support coming from “Bone-Fone Heroes” which are current and former bone cancer patients who will lead the way using their contacts and providing information in their local areas to help create “Bone-Fone Buddies” that is anyone who wishes to help with the cause of the Guy Francis BCRF.

There will be added support from The Teenage Cancer Trust who will be assisting the Guy Francis BCRF, between the two charities’s they have been promised support from Lord Sugar, Robbie Savage and Chesney Hawkes. Other rumoured celebrity involvement may include Roger Daltry, Liam Gallagher, Jimmy Carr and Amanda Holden. These celebrities will act as “Bone-Fone Ambassadors” who can utilise their influence on various social media platforms to spread the word about the charity event & record attempt.

We’ve long been advocates of using SMS to empower fundraising. This led us very early on to develop our events fundraising platform. This was designed to bring the powers of sms fundraising to those who help us in the community, the Marathon Runners, White Collar Boxers & all of the other crazy people who go to superhuman lengths to support your cause. We’ve now seen the platform used for runners, singers & coffee moring hosts, what could you use it for?

To find out more download the PDF brochure: http://www.instagiv.com/pdf/2012_Events_Presentation.pdf

or call us to discuss your plans & how mobile can make your life easier!

Toybox are a Christian charity dedicated to helping street children and helping children at risk to avoid such a life, this great work is primarily undertaken in Latin America.

http://www.toybox.org.uk/

Toybox have been with us for 8 months and in that time have made excellent use of our platform using it for a number of events. They have recently had substantial success where they had a conversion rate of 30% of single donors opting to become regular donors using mobile donations.

Naturally, everyone at Toybox and also within instaGiv are thrilled in this achievement and it is a model example of how mobile donations is an easy way for charities to receive support and more notably allow an efficient method for those who wish to help by pledging regular donations without the need for bank/card details.

We hope that for Toybox this newly released figure grows so that they can continue their great and important work.

Saturday February 4th  saw Lewis Clay beat 10 other finalists at the grand final of Distribution’s Got Talent in front of 350 people. The event raised a magnificent £51,000 for Alzheimer’s Society.

“It puts the whole thing into perspective when you realise what a difference we all made in supporting Alzheimer’s Society.”

Lewis Clay

Text voting began two weeks before and continued on the night. The act with the most votes was automatically in the final sing off. An amazing 8,985 votes were cast with 100% of each £1 text going to the charity.Lewis took that place, and performed again alongside Michelle Norton, 20, representing Daventry Clothing and Jessica Gordon, 13, representing Widnes.
he final decision however lay in the hands of the five judges, including Boyzone’s Shane Lynch and eighties pop star David Van Day.

Head judge Nigel Jones, Director of Distribution, said:

“The whole Distribution team were touched by the personal nature of this charity and how so many people are affected and were determined to really make a difference.”

MD Michael Carlin had this to say:

“It was great to see the way the team at Alzheimer’s Society used the instaGiv platform to help drive this great success, we thanks Tesco’s & Alzheimer’s for the opportunity of working with them on this innovative campaign and are glad it was such a success, for Alzheimers Society, Tesco’s & the event participants”

This event used the instaGiv Event promotion & Fundraising platform to facilitate the fundraising of the participants in the final. They each were able to choose their own code based on the charities keyword SUPPORT (SUPPORT Lewis, SUPPORT Jess, Etc) The platform also created resources based on the campaigns branding. A bespoke landing page (Click to View)  & Business Cards (Click to View) were created automatically for each fundraiser.

Distribution's Got Talent Event Card

The instaGiv platform was providing detailed real time reports on the progress of each fundraiser via dashboard but also via a totometer (Click toView).As you can imagine, this particular tool really drove the competition as each fundraisers departmental colleagues from top to bottom swung into action to support their finalist.

Distribution's Got Talent Totometer

A Campaign like this is judged not only by it’s fundraising but also the level of engagement felt by the sponsor & individuals involved. You can see this reflected on the Facebook page created for the event. (Click to View)

At the beginning of May 2012 Amnesty kicked off ‘Pocket Protest’, the purpose of this campaign was to keep their constituents informed of the latest human rights breaches. The campaign used mobile where users would opt in to join the campaign, this text action gives amnesty the means to contact those who opted in and inform them of new petitions.

Pocket Protest Poster

Reply when a participant signed up for pocket protest:

When new petitions where organised for acts against human rights all of Amnesty’s campaign followers were updated with the following examples of messages request support:

When users responded to these support requests their names were added to the relevant petitions to make their voices heard against these violations.

The response and support for this campaign was great with people opting into have their voice heard to those needed to listen. The campaign was very well published, for example with traincards used in the busy London underground network asking commuters for their support and providing those wishing to speak up with a gateway to do so.

Pocket Protest in use on London Underground train carriage

The head of Amnesty International UK had this to say about the campaign:

“Amnesty has always been about ordinary people, busy people with lives and jobs of their own, who make human rights abuse across the world their business. Pocket Protest It’s about commuters in London refusing to be passive bystanders and instead taking action to demand change.”

- Kate Allen

So much was the support that those in the Music business wanted to endorse Amnesty’s message:

“Being able to use a mobile phone to help people whose human rights have been taken away is a simple yet fantastic idea. It’s really empowering. Everyone should become a Pocket Protester!”

- Richard Hughes, from the band Keane

This campaign utilised the instaGiv platform and mobile service to allow people to opt in and join the Pocket Protest using keywords and shortcodes to respond to calls for support like those used on London train carriages, vastly increasing the speed with which campaigns can be launched and responded to.

Amensty Protest responses graph

Another Charity accelerating change via Mobile.