Text Raffle

DONATE’S™ text raffle service is available to any charitable organisation that is registered with DONATE™. If you are not yet registered with DONATE™ you can do so for free here.

Incidental Lotteries do not apply to text raffles (as no physical ticket is provided). Your text raffle will be classed as a Small Society Lottery (if under £20,000 of receipts) and you will need to apply to your local authority for the appropriate licence.

If you are going to raise more than £20,000 then you may need to apply for a Large Society Lottery which has more onerous requirements. See: https://www.gamblingcommission.gov.uk/licensees-and-businesses/page/society-lotteries

Please note that in all circumstances DONATE™ operates as a payment provider and not as an External Lottery Manager (ELM) and it is your responsibility to ensure you have the correct authority/licence to run a lottery/raffle.

The link to your Lottery licence page should be made available in your promotional material and the thank-you text response. Please note that the creation of your rules is your legal responsibility and whilst we cannot provide specific advice or guidance you should identify the promotion as a text raffle.

Once an organisation is set up with DONATE™ your text raffle should be available within one-two working days. You can see how to set-up a raffle here.

Yes. For each campaign you may rent, without charge, a memorable keyword (up to 8 characters) for entry ie WORKSHOP. Please note that some keywords may already be in use or not acceptable and you may therefore be asked to alter your chosen word or identify an alternative.

Please note that we reserve the right to recall a keyword at any time.

No. The text raffle response message is fixed in order to comply with current legislation.

Yes, once signed up you have access to your self-serve portal. This gives you 24/7 access to donation reports and GDPR compliant donor opted-in data. The portal also enable you to add/enable/disable campaigns, download signage templates, amend thank-you emails and texts and much much more. Login is here: https://platform.nationalfundingscheme.org/portal/login

You can promote a lottery across social media, email and other channels but you will need a local authority licence. This page from the Gambling Commission may be helpful.

Please note that your promotional material must include the following:

• That the supporter is participating in a text raffle
• That payment will be taken by National Funding Scheme, t/a DONATE.
• Your organisation name and lottery licence number as the beneficiary
• That charges will be made to the supporter’s mobile phone bill
• That National Funding Scheme charge 4.5%* of the ticket price for handling the raffle
• That persons under the age of 16 are not permitted to participate
• That further information is available at www.xxx (where xxx is your Licence webpage as identified in the text raffle reply)**

More tips on promoting your Text Raffle can be found here.

* 4.5% for charities, 5% for non-charities. Please adjust accordingly.

** Your Licence webpage will be dynamically created when your raffle is created.

You should only promote your raffle when you are ready to accept entries.

Our service is compatible across all the UK networks (EE, O2, Vodafone, Three. Sky and Virgin and others). Only UK mobile SIM phones can participate (this excludes Eire and the Channel Islands). Please note though that those with an overseas SIM cannot use UK premium text services. Our mobile web channel (PayPal, credit and debit cards) provides a giving route for these supporters.

Some mobile contracts preclude premium text billing and those users will not be able to participate. This is outside our control and could be for a number of reasons:

• A user may have reached their spend limit, there is a £240 per month limit which is a legal requirement.
• Their account may have been blocked (from third parties or premium charge numbers) by their Mobile Network Operator.
• Android phones automatically block third-party messages, this can be changed in the settings on the mobile phone.
• Their mobile network provider has not enabled mobile billing for this particular service.

To confirm if any of the above apply to a user account they should speak to their mobile network provider.

Firstly, please ensure your raffle has been ‘enabled’ (My Campaigns > Edit> Campaign Activation> [select]).

Unfortunately, mobile phone operators can block premium text messaging (the service used for text donations and raffles). We recommend you ask colleagues and friends to also test your campaign.

Please also contact your mobile operator and ensure your contract permits premium text messaging.

In rare circumstances the text service may not be working but in that case it will not be working for all our client charitable organisations and we will be aware of an issue and be resolving it.

Yes, this is possible. Entries made by cash can be added to DONATE’s™ text raffle entries using our cash entry screen. This enables your team to enter the number of tickets bought and a reference for the buyer (name, telephone number etc.).

We provide £3, £5 and £10 ticket prices without any set-up or monthly charge. There is a one off £50 charge for £20 and £30 ticket prices.

Please note that a £20 one-time cap and £30 daily cap is set by the premium text regulator Phone-paid Services Authority. Additional entry tickets above this cap can be bought by cash and entered into the draw.

Yes, the £3, £5, £10, £20 or £30 ticket price conforms to a single entry at that price.

It is not possible for a £3 ticket to relate to 3 entries etc.

Subject to the £30 daily spending cap, multiple entries can be made. For example, a single user could buy 6x£5 tickets per day.

We provide a web page from which a winning number (and numbered list of all runners up) are provided from the database of entries. You may make the draw from 30minutes after the last ticket entry. Winners can be notified by ringing or texting the winning number (or reading out the winning mobile number).

30 winning, randomised, entries are shown. A second raffle should be set up if more than 30 prizes are available.

By default a donor is not giving permission for their data being made available for marketing purposes. Should the donor give their permission (ie through responding to a specific request) then we will make such opted-in data available to you.

DONATE™ does not charge for running the text raffle service but we charge our normal transaction fees for each text donation made (4.5% for charities, 5% for non-charities). More information about our fees is available here.

Participants may additionally be charged their standard network rate. This should be mentioned on any accompanying literature.

Funds are received by National Funding Scheme (registered charity) and passed across (less fees) as per our Affiliation Agreements.

Gift Aid is not available on a text raffle ticket entry.

DONATE™ does not source prizes.

All organisational users of DONATE™ have access to our self-serve, management portal where administrators can access donation reports, download web, text, QR donation codes, user data and much much more.