CAF bows out of text donation

Fundraising | Kirsty Weakley | 13 Sep 2012

The Charities Aid Foundation has decided to drop its text giving service because the technology has moved on with new providers entering the market and it does not want to “duplicate the work of those organisations”.

It will be phased out by the end of the year enabling users to complete any campaigns. Beyond that CAF has selected fundraising company Vir2 as a partner which it has offered to transfer clients to.

A spokesman told civilsociety.co.uk that the number of charities using its text donation service was “relatively small”.

Paul Rees, executive director at CAF said: “We are proud to have worked to promote the growth of text giving and wanted to encourage the development of this exciting way of giving by offering charities a way of receiving donations by text.

“We have campaigned successfully to ensure text giving is free of tax and all networks pay the full donation direct to charity.”

He added that: “As a charity devoted to encouraging giving in all its forms, we want to develop a culture of giving whether through CAF or through other organisations. It is not our role to duplicate the work of those organisations which are well placed to encourage this form of giving.”

CAF launched its text donation service in November 2010 in association with Vir2 and charged charities £20 per month per key word and 2.5 per cent charge on the value of each donation. At the time it was the only service that offered a fully integrated gift aid service.

Vodafone and JustGiving’s JustTextGiving service launched in May 2011 - it was the first to launch with no set-up or recurring fees, and without charging donors. More than 9,000 organisations signed up to the service in the first two months.

Directory: Charities Aid Foundation | JustGiving

Comments

[Cancel] | Reply to:

Name *

Email *

Organisation

Job Title

Comments *

Verification *

* Please read our Community Standards

Close »

Community Standards

The civilsociety.co.uk community and comments board is intended as a platform for informed and civilised debate.

We hope to encourage a broad range of views, however, there are standards that we expect commentators to uphold. We reserve the right to delete or amend any comments that do not adhere to these standards.

We welcome:

Robust but respectful debate
Strongly held opinions
Intelligent relevant discussion
The sharing of relevant experiences
New participants

We will not publish:

Rude, threatening, offensive, obscene or abusive language, or links to such material
Links to commercial organisations or spam postings. The comments board is not an advertising platform
The posting of contact details for yourself or others
Comments intended for malicious purpose or mindless abuse
Comments purporting to be from another person or organisation under false pretences
Gratuitous criticism, commentary or self-promotion
Any material which breaches copyright or privacy laws, or could be considered libellous
The use of the comments board for the pursuit or extension of personal disputes

Be aware:

Views expressed on the comments board are left at users’ discretion and are in no way views held or supported by Civil Society Media
Comments left by others may not be accurate, do not rely on them as fact
You may be misunderstood - sarcasm and humour can easily be taken out of context, try to be clear

Please:

Enjoy the opportunity to express your opinion and respect the right of others to express theirs
Confine your remarks to issues rather than personalities

Together we can keep our community a polite, respectful and intelligent platform for discussion.