donations

RSM 2000 acquires text donation business from Vir2

Posted on by Andrea Putnam-Moorcroft

RSM2000 logo

DIRECT DEBIT AND CARD PAYMENT SERVICE PROVIDER RSM 2000 LTD HAS ACQUIRED THE BUSINESS ACTIVITIES, STAFF & BRAND OF THE UK CHARITY TEXT DONATION AND MARKETING SPECIALIST, VIR2.

 

At a time when charities are worried about reputational risk from their suppliers, the purchase is the first time that a charity text donation provider has been bought by a fully regulated & compliant payment service provider. RSM 2000 can now provide a full range of payment solutions including text donation to charities under one roof and tick all the boxes for compliance and expertise at the same time.

For the full press release please read here: RSM 2000 acquires text donation and SMS marketing business from Vir2 final

19th Feb 2016 Charity Text Donation Seminar

Posted on by Andrea Putnam-Moorcroft

Download your Seminar information pack here: Charity Text Donations Seminar Event pack 19Feb16

This one day free seminar organised jointly by the Premium Rate Regulator PhonepayPlus and the Association for Interactive Media and Entertainment (AIME) provides the opportunity for charities to learn how to get started and maximise text based donations, Gift Aid, post donation marketing, regular gifting and competitions.

Text fundraising has grown to a £120 million pound opportunity with most charities finding new donors and differing demographics through this easy mechanism. Are you maximising your donation footprint in this growth market?

During this seminar, you will learn about:

  • Why 70xxx shortcodes are important
  • How to get started with text donations
  • Codes of practice for text donations
  • Latest developments in Gift Aid
  • The emerging role of a Gift Aid intermediary
  • Improving marketing footprint
  • Effective post-donation marketing
  • Competitions with donation elements
  • Proposed changes to regular donations

If you don’t currently use text donation for your fundraising, this seminar will provide a good introduction for you.

If you are already using text donations, this event will be looking at improving your skills and maximising your donation and Gift Aid opportunities.

With several expert speakers already lined up and more to be announced this will be an informative day not to be missed.

If you are a charity you can get your FREE tickets (maximum 2 per charity) here: Seminar Tickets

Download your Seminar information pack here: Charity Text Donations Seminar Event pack 19Feb16

BBC Children in Need breaks all time text-to-donate record with Fonix

Posted on by Andrea Putnam-Moorcroft

Mobile payments and messaging specialists Fonix’s payments platform processed more than £6.6 million in text donations for last year’s BBC Children in Need fundraiser.

Donations were gathered in combination with on-screen promotion in £5 and £10 amounts, across a number of BBC flagship shows and specially created fundraising campaigns including; The One Show – Rick Shaw Challenge, Countryfile – Ramble, One Big Night and the main campaign show itself which aired on the BBC on the 13th November.

This is the second year in a row that Fonix has provided the text donation mechanic for BBC Children in Need, surpassing the 2014 total and contributing to the record breaking £37 million raised (so far) in 2015.

Rob Weisz, CEO at Fonix says: “For Fonix, BBC Children in Need is one of the highlights of our working calendar.  Supporting such an amazing charity event with our platforms and processes is so rewarding and demonstrates the importance of text to donate mechanics in providing consumers with the means to make a simple, spontaneous donation.”

Karen Bass, Director of Operations and Finance, CIN adds: “The 2015 campaign has been a record breaker for us which we’re immensely proud of. Text to donate forms a fundamentally important part of our payment option mix.  We thank key partners like Fonix, Harvest Media Group and the Mobile Operators for their support in enabling us to raise such a fantastic amount.

ITV partners with Spoke as Text Santa increases Charity donations

Posted on by Andrea Putnam-Moorcroft

Customer engagement specialist Spoke provided automated donation processing for ITV’s recent Text Santa campaign to allow viewers to pledge donations of differing amounts via the 03 number which was promoted as part of the Text Santa appeal.  The number featured on a range of ITV programmes in December, as well as the actual event night of Text Santa 2014. Across all the donation platforms, over £6.3 million was raised for Text Santa 2014’s six UK-based charities.

Spoke has worked on many high profile charity appeals in the past, and following recent platform improvements saw the Text Santa campaign reach an all-time high for effective calls to date for this type of activity. Darren Worrell, Head of Technical Services Director at Spoke commented, “We were delighted with the outcome of this campaign. During 2014 we made a significant investment in our platform and it was great that we saw such high effective call rates, as this had a direct impact on the money raised for Text Santa”.

Spoke’s PCI solution provides charities with a secure facility to take donations at all times of day, as illustrated during Philip Schofield’s unique 24-hour presenting challenge, where calls were received and donations processed through the night.

Fiona Robertson, ITV’s Head of Charity Projects, commented “Our key objective with Text Santa is to maximise donations for our six chosen charities.  Having robust, efficient, cost effective platforms for processing donations is at the centre of our requirements and we welcome Spoke’s excellent contribution to our most successful Text Santa campaign to date.”

Damon Russell, Chief Executive at Spoke, added “We’re very proud to be part of ITV’s successful 2014 Text Santa campaign which allowed us to illustrate our ability to provide both technology platforms and management services for automated donation processing”.

 

 

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

About Spoke

Spoke (www.spoke-interactive.com) are consumer engagement experts, specialising in mobile and interactive solutions for brands, agencies, media owners and charities. Spoke provide everything from strategy to implementation, management and analysis for a broad range of interactive and mobile services, Social TV and donation and payment solutions. Clients include BBC, Channel 5, UKTV, STV, Time Inc. News International and many others.

About Text Santa

Text Santa is ITV’s annual charity fundraiser appeal, raising money and awareness for six UK based charities each year. The selected charities for the 2014 appeal were Alzheimer’s Society, Guide Dogs, Marie Curie Cancer Care, Teenage Cancer Trust, Together for Short Lives and WellChild. 100% of donations made by ITV viewers are evenly distributed to the chosen charities, and over £21 million has been raised in the last four years.