Text-to-Give is a way of creating one-time or recurring donations through a phone's text messaging service. Organizations are able to choose their own unique text-to-give number and distribute it to donors. It's an incredibly quick way to donate - setup takes under a minute, and after that donations are instant. Text-to-Give is fully integrated with the rest of GivingFire - in addition to being able to set up one-time, weekly, and monthly donations, donors are also able to see the status of any recurring donation or their recent giving history - even if those donations were made offline.
How does Text-to-Give work for my donors?
Donors are able to send a few commands to the custom text number your organization selects. These commands are:
GIVE (fund) (amount) - creates a one time donation. If fund text codes are set up, then the donor may optionally enter an additional keyword to designate that gift towards a specific fund. If the donor does not enter a fund text code, or if fund text codes have not been set up, then the donation will default to the first fund in your organization's fund list.
GIVE (fund) WEEKLY (amount) - creates a weekly donation to the default fund. The donation runs the next day for the first time, then every week thereafter.
GIVE (fund) MONTHLY (amount) - creates a monthly donation to the default fund. The donation runs the next day for the first time, then every month thereafter.
STATUS - displays a list of recurring donations and their status (scheduled, needs repair, etc)
HISTORY - displays a list of the last five donations given, regardless of method
SUPPORT - displays a list of available commands
If a donor texts an unknown command to your text number, the SUPPORT text is displayed with a list of available commands.
Donors need a GivingFire account to use Text-to-Give. Additionally, their account needs a unique ten-digit phone number to identify incoming texts, and a default payment method. Payment methods can be saved through old recurring gifts, one-time and recurring gifts if the donor has requested to save the payment method, or manually in their donor dashboard. Most donors in GivingFire already have a saved phone number or payment method, and as such Text-to-Give donations will automatically go through with no setup required. If the donor doesn't have an account, or are missing a saved payment method or phone number, then GivingFire automatically prompts them to add any required components as needed. After a quick, 30-second setup, that donor will be able to automatically make text donations with no additional setup. Should the default payment method fail, GivingFire also automatically prompts the user to choose or create an alternate payment method.
Once the donation has successfully been made (or scheduled, in the case of a recurring donation), GivingFire texts the donor a confirmation and sends the usual email receipt. Text-to-Give donations are tracked alongside other donations and are available in all of GivingFire's reporting options.