mobile donation solutions

Category Archives: Featured Text Donation Campaigns

Street Child’s Comedy Night

Logo of Street Child

Street Child of Sierra Leone hosted a comedy night last month which involved some of the UK’s top comedians which included:

  • Jon Richardson
  • Milton Jones
  • Seann Walsh
  • Ed Byrne
  • Phill Jupitas
  • Adam Hills and many more

Marcus Brigstocke hosted the event at the Hammersmith Apollo, one of London’s major live entertainment venues,  during which the comedians appealed to the audience to show their support by texting a donation via an instaGiv provided KEYWORD to a SHORTCODE text number. The charity was also able to see which comedian had the greatest effect on the audience as our reporting system gave live feedback as the text donations were coming in. Donations were still coming in after the event which just goes to show the power of text messaging.

The event organiser Georgie Middleditch was kind enough to send this testimonial after the event:

“We have recently set up an I-Commit package with instaGiv. We have been wanting to do this for a while but have not found a suitable service provider. The instaGiv team were so helpful guiding even the most technically illiterate  person through the steps – they were so patient! We have just  had a comedy night at the Hammersmith Apollo attended by 2,500 people. It was a great way to launch our campaign! The online dashboard is ideal, updating donations every 10 seconds so we could monitor the results closely. The team at instaGiv are great, its so easy to set up and they can answer any questions immediately! I would highly recommend their products regardless of the size of your organisation, its  the perfect way to get people giving – there is something for everyone!”

The donations sent that evening were part of our i-Commit package, which offers charities the opportunity to take Regular Donations through their supporters mobile phone, doing away with the need to get people to fill in forms for Direct Debit Mandates, or collect credit card details for inputting later. A text takes a matter of seconds to do, and each month our automated systems take care of the donation, making sure that your compliant, informative and also Gift Aid ready.

If you have a planned event that you would like to donate via their mobile phone give us a call today on: 0844 847 9800 and we’ll make sure you up and running in time to take your donation campaigns to the next level.

Tesco’s Find a Star

Lewis Clay album cover

Following on from the success that Tesco’s had working alongside The Alzheimer’s Society last year with their ‘Distributors Got Talent’ contest, the ultimate winner Lewis Clay has gone on to record and release a single for Tesco’s for its current charity, Cancer UK.

Lewis’s new single features BBC’s The Voice singing sensation, Jaz Ellington who was coached by The Black Eyed Peas front man Will.I.Am. You can download the track (79p from iTune) of which all the proceeds go to Cancer Research UK.

instaGiv provided the platform that allowed Tesco’s and The Alzheimer’s Society to run a campaign across Tesco’s distribution chain, displaying who was leading the voting contest through our i-Events packaged system.

Each vote generated a £1 donation to the charity, with the top 3 contestants being invited to perform at a Gala Event where a panel of judges would pick a final winner. The celebrity panel consisted of a Shane Lynch of Boyzone fame and David Van Day from Bucks Fizz

The system was easy to work as it involved a simple instruction: TEXT SUPPORT LEWIS TO 70700

A text was sent which costs the bill payer a standard network charge plus £1 which was donated to charity. The donation triggered a push on the online Totometer which was visible to all the contestants as the ultimate goal was to be one of the top 5 for the final at a Gala Event.

Charity Guinness World Record Attempt

Mike and Ros Francis, of the Guy Francis Bone Cancer Research Fund

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 23rd of October and end at 14:00 on the 24th 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.

Macmillan’s WBCM 2012

wbcm-logo-2012

Macmillan held their world’s biggest coffee morning event this past Friday September 28th 2012, the coffee morning events where far and wide all across the nation. There were even sessions held as far away as Dubai which really highlights just how big the event was!

We at instagiv are really pleased to have had the opportunity to work with Macmillan this year on the WBCM . The instagiv platform was utilised to support text registration and to enable each individual coffee morning to raise donations via  text .

 

We here at instaGiv would like to congratulate MacMillan and all who took park for a job well done!

 

Alzheimer’s Society – Digital Fundraising Award

blackbaud-digital-fundraising-awards-large

We here at instaGiv are very proud to work with the Alzheimer’s Society for as long as we have and now we have another reason to proud of their excellent work.

Alzheimer’s Society has been nominated for this year’s Digital Fundraising Awards for best use of mobile fundraising, learn more here . We are thoroughly thrilled and rooting for them to win!

They have been honoured for their distributions got talent event which was hugely popular and more importantly successful. See our earlier post on their distributions got talent event here.

This encapsulates what mobile fundraising is all about in that making it easy for donors to show their support in a quick and easy way. We are pleased that their fundraising has been so successful and that now they are being recognised for their efforts with their nomination for this award.

We feel this is not the end of recognition for the Alzheimer’s Society who are currently leading the way in mobile fundraising.

If you would like to vote for Alzheimer’s Society in the digital fundraising awards please see here for details or alternatively click the image below.

www.digitalfundraisingawards.co.uk

www.digitalfundraisingawards.co.uk

 

Who is in your Twitter Cabinet? Using Twitter to promote your Mobile Fundraising & Text Donations

stephen fry tweeting registration code for WBCM

Twitter supporters can have a massive effect on your mobile fundraising campaigns.

Before even launching your campaign, create your twitter cabinet of powerful tweeters who can give your campaign a  massive boost!

Identify your current supporters who are actyive on twitter, contact them and ask for a mobile number or email addreess you can use when to contact them when you need help. and also an agreement that when you need a message broadcast they will tweet if for you

Identify local personalities or celebrities with an affinity with your cause and ask them to do the same (join your twitter cabinet!)

When launching campaigns reach out to your cabinet with some content that they can easily personalise and be sure you have created a good hashtag for your campaign!

And let us know about your campaigns to @instagiv

 

Using Mobile to support those who support us – Events Fundraising using SMS

fundraiser

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!

 

Near – Field Communication for Charities = Easier ways to donate

Near-Field Communication, sounds complicated, right? Well what this actually means in a nutshell is the ability to scan information when a device is held next to where the data is being held. This little piece of technology is quite cool.

You might not know it, but you’ve probably already seen this technology in action, it has been utilised by Supermarkets for years in security tags and more recently by Banks to allow for even more efficiency in carrying out money transactions with what they call ‘Pay Tags’.

Image taken from link

This technology is not new but is similar to QR codes and with smartphones, and can be applied with fantastic results in todays tech savvy world.You can scan or exchange data in the form of text, images, codes and URL’s to name a few common examples. These can be scanned from objects like stickers, glass and posters.

Currently developers are also working on creating apps that will utilise NFC as like Bluetooth allowing two devices to pair, but unlike Bluetooth there is no fiddling with settings to set it up as discoverable and create access codes to connect etc. It just works with no hassle when the devices are within about 4 cm of each other or touching.

Below is a well illustrated video from Blackberry UK on the everyday uses of NFC.

This has monumental potential in the third sector where, for example, a fundraiser could have a sticker on their top/t-shirt similar to a name badge and when a person holds their mobile device to the sticker they could receive links, info or even send a donation. Of course this might be a few months down the line, but that is really just around the corner.

We, at instaGiv, are working with some of the major developers and already exploring the best way this technology can be utilised within our services so that when your smartphone supporters are ready, so are you.

Toybox Donor Conversion Rate

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.

ToyBox

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.

 

Alzheimer’s Society event featuring instaGiv platform raises over £50k

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.

DGT event card

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

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)

Distribution's Got Talent Facebook page
Distribution’s Got Talent Facebook page