At any given time, churches constitute probably 75% of all Txt2Give users. Non-profit organizations make up probably another 20%. The last 5% is composed of a handful of universities, civic organizations, and political campaigns.

One group that is largely and noticeably absent from our user group; is public and private elementary, middle schools, and high schools. With the flexibility and customizations that Txt2Give can offer, we feel that public and private schools are positioned to potentially see a huge benefit from a mobile giving solution like Txt2Give. Over the next few minutes, we’ll explore a few examples of how schools can implement Txt2Give in ways that are pleasing to the office administrators, group sponsors, and parents.

Traditional Fundraising

One obvious implementation of Txt2Give is in the area of traditional fundraising. The name of the game, when it comes to mobile fundraising with Txt2Give, is the ease of use. For the same reasons that Txt2Give is so popular with churches, it would be popular with the parents of school children – we’re continuing to move away from a cash society (or for that matter – checks). Most people simply don’t carry as much cash as they used to. But, they always have their phones. Even if someone has forgotten their wallet at home, or left it in the car, they almost certainly have their phone in their pocket. That’s where Txt2Give comes in!

With Txt2Give, as long as you have your phone, you can give. Just text the word GIVE (or any other keyword that the school has set up) to their 10-digit Giving Number and you’re on your way. Even if you don’t have your wallet with you at the time of giving, our system will send you a reminder after 24 hours, again on day 3, and a final reminder is delivered on day 5 – until you’ve completed your payment registration to complete the giving process.

Another aspect that makes Txt2Give a great fit for schools, is that we offer the ability to create multiple giving options for your donors to choose from. So, using the same 10-digit Giving Number donors can choose between giving to the band department, the athletics department, a new playground fund, anything! When those separate designations are created, it makes tracking the funds collected super easy in the Txt2Give dashboard that the school account users will have access to. At any time, an account user can go in and filter the donation results to show only the funds that they need to see for reporting purposes.

Txt2Give also gives the account users the ability to connect those donation designations to specific keywords. For example, let’s say a school has 3 options set for their donors to choose from; Band Dept, Athletic Dept, New Playground

Those options will appear in a list when a donor texts the word GIVE. That’s easy! But we can actually make it easier! In the dashboard, the account user can go in and create a keyword, let’s say that keyword is “BAND” and they connect it to the Band Uniforms designation. Now, when a donor text the word BAND, instead of a list to choose from – they will give directly to the Band Uniforms. Currently, these designation options and keywords are both free and unlimited in our system, which opens up so many configuration options!

Non-Traditional Uses of Txt2Give

Depending on how you’re “wired”, you might have already figured this out, but because of the different designation and keyword options that Txt2Give offers – there are a few ways to adapt our system to accomplish some “out of the box” collecting of funds.

Aside from collecting traditional donations, we’ve also had organizations sell products using Txt2Give. This is made possible by utilizing our Default Donation Amount option when configuring your different donation designations. For example, maybe the chess club is selling t-shirts to raise funds to pay for a tournament entry fee – They could create a designation for their t-shirts, set the default amount to $20, and assign “Chess” as their keyword. When someone decides to purchase/order a shirt, they’ll text the “Chess” to their 10-digit keyword, it will automatically fill in the amount of $20, and their name will enter the Txt2Give dashboard with their name, phone number, and effectively their order.

Another cool thing is that our system will automatically send them a receipt – which the account user can customize to include whatever text they’d like. No more losing order forms, having difficulty reading handwriting or worrying about losing track of any cash or checks. When the fundraiser has concluded, just run a quick report to show the totals received and whoever oversees the account can cut the group a check. Piece of cake!

Another cool idea might be to set up Txt2Give so that parents can pay their child’s lunch bill. Just set up Lunch Bill as a giving option, maybe create LUNCH as a keyword? Parents text LUNCH to the 10-digit giving number, and they can add money to their child’s account. And again, a receipt will go out and there is a record in the dashboard of the transaction.

I hope all of that gives you a pretty good idea of how Txt2Give can be used in schools. I’m sure with a little more thought and consideration – you can probably think of a way to use Txt2Give that we haven’t even discovered yet. We’ve tried to configure Txt2Give in a way that allows for straightforward giving situations to be as easy as possible. That said, we are always excited to hear about new and innovative ways that our users have discovered that they can use our system.

If you have any follow-up questions about what was touched on today, just click the round blue button below to jump on a support chat with us. We’d love to hear from you!