Tag Archives: competitions

How can you optimise your Giving Tuesday fundraising campaign?

#GivingTuesday is one of the biggest days of the year for the charity sector worldwide, and this year it’s taking place on Tuesday 1st December. Giving Tuesday presents an opportunity for charities to increase donations, engage with supporters, raise awareness of their services and focus attention on campaigns.

This year has been tough on fundraising, with people in harder financial situations. However, it has also been a year that has increased the need for many charities’ services, and a year that has seen people coming together to care for each other and support important causes.

So how can you make sure you are making the most of the day?

  • Get your message out there – Promote your campaign via various channels such as social media, TV adverts, billboards, your website, newspaper and radio. SMS giving keywords are easy to advertise, and supporters can donate anytime anywhere.
  • Use your influencers – Do you have a celebrity spokesperson? Now is a great time to get them to promote your charity and the important work you do.
  • Corporate partnerships – Engage with your corporate partners to run fundraising campaigns around Giving Tuesday. There’s lots of ways they can get involved, from gamification to competitions. They can also help you spread your message to their employees and customers.
  • Launch your Christmas campaign – Launch your Christmas campaign on Giving Tuesday to gain attention and momentum early on.
  • Make it tangible – Connecting your campaign to something tangible can make it feel more real to supporters as they can envision the impact they are having. Let supporters know what different donation amounts could fund or set a target for them to help you reach. 
  • Show how you’re helping – Promote case studies that show supporters the work you have done in the past. This helps supporters feel emotionally invested and engages them with your work long term.
  • Thank your supporters – Make sure you thank supporters for their money, time or any other support they have provided to maintain engagement with them. Outbound SMS is a great way to cut through email competition and increase the chance of your message being read.

Get started today or to speak to our team email help@instagiv.com

Why are charities using text-to-donate?

I am sure you often wonder when you’re working within your charity or fundraising role, what is the best way to go with your next campaigns? Or why are charities starting to use SMS donations more and more now?

We have put together a few of our main thoughts as to why charities may choose text-giving over other methods, or else to add to their list of donation collection methods.

User-friendly

Our first thought is that text-to-give is incredibly user-friendly. There are no forms, fuss or verification checks required. The donor simply texts their chosen charities “keyword” to the 5 digit shortcodes and a donation is made.

People don’t often like to partake in anything that takes up too much of their time or requires long-haul forms. It is also user-friendly for the charity. Text campaigns can be created and inactivated in a matter of minutes. This helps to reach deadlines that little bit easier.

Quick and Easy

SMS Giving is also quick and easy to do. It takes around 60 seconds or less to send a donation by text. If someone wanted to give a charitable donation without much effort – SMS is the answer.

Most people within the UK today either own or have access to a mobile phone, therefore, it is one of the most effective ways to make a donation. If you are at an event with no change in your pocket, no problem – you probably will most likely have your phone with you so the donation can be made easily through your phone. Donations can be as little as £1 too.

Detailed reporting on progress

Reporting is so important when it comes to SMS fundraising, you need to be able to monitor the progress and measure the success of your campaigns.

Mobile Fundraising and Engagement with InstaGiv has a realm of various reporting functions from your inbound campaign report, consent and opt-in report, Gift Aid collection report and much more.

Our regular giving reporting displays everything from the number of subscriptions per month, number of new sign-ups, gross donations per donation, number of skips and stops, retention percentages and much more. This is essential and is readily available with InstaGiv campaigns.

These are just to name a few; the reasons are endless as to why charities continue to choose SMS giving as part of their fundraising efforts. Other thoughts we had include:

  • It’s cost-effective
  • Has a fast turnaround
  • Works in real time
  • It can be accessed 24/7 among lots of other benefits

We hope you enjoyed this week’s blog if you have any thoughts you would like us to focus on we would be happy to hear them. Reach out to us at help@instagiv.com.

More from instaGiv

Top Tips for your SMS Campaigns

Charities and Social Media

The Growth of SMS 

 

New Year, New Ideas at instaGiv

Start the new year right with instaGiv's Text Giving Products

Start 2018 Right with instaGiv’s Text Giving Products

Any regrets of Christmas parties or Christmas overindulgence is fading and people everywhere are starting 2018 with earnest resolutions. It’s a great time to think about how to boost your charity’s donations.

SMS Marketing could be just the thing. It was predicted recently that it will become very big in 2018.

The State of SMS report revealed that 93% of people in the UK now own a mobile phone and if sent a text message, 98% of them will read it by the end of the day.

The report also said that around 50% of companies use SMS Marketing at the moment. This is expected to continue to grow, reaching as high as 92% by the end of 2018.

Why not get ahead of your competition by sorting out your SMS Marketing with instaGiv’s range of Text Giving Products?

Text Giving Products – Single Giving

Single Giving involves texting a code to make a one-off donation. This proved to be one of the most popular products with clients in 2017.

It really comes into its own at big fundraising events. Instead of dealing with loads of forms and cash, you simply ask people to send a single text to short number.

It’s also great for raising funds in response to emergency situations.

Text Giving Products – Regular Giving

Regular Giving is a quick and easy way to sign up donors to donate a specific amount to your cause at regular intervals.

It’s a feature that doesn’t take much time or effort to get ready and can be fully automated once it’s all set up.

Visit our blog on Regular Giving to find out more.

Text Giving Products – Ready for Gift Aid

Our system also makes it easy to manage Gift Aid. This allows charities to receive an extra 25p from the government for every £1 they receive in donations.

Using instaGiv’s platform it only takes 90 seconds for a supporter to donate and sign up for Gift Aid.

Check out our Gift Aid blog for more information.

Text Giving Products – Competitions

Our Competitions feature gives supporters the ability to create and customise contests via SMS. The system can even automatically pick winners for you.

If you have some prizes which you think will peak your supporters’ interest, take a look at our blog on SMS Competitions.

Text Giving Products – Consent

Our Consent Feature helps to ensure that charities have documented consent from their supporters for all of their campaigns.

This is particularly important ahead of the General Data Protection Regulation. The GDPR, which comes into effect in may, will mean that companies need to rethink how they deal with the personal data of EU residents.

Read more about how instaGiv can help with GDPR Compliance in our blog on our Consent Feature.

Find Out More About instaGiv’s Text Giving Products

We are of one the UK’s leading providers of mobile and digital fundraising solution, working with more than 300 UK registered charities.

InstaGiv are passionate about securing as much funds as possible for charities using our mobile and digital tools.

That’s why we have simple and transparent pricing structure that allows charities to scale their fundraising efforts to suit their needs.