Texting in GC Gift Officer

An admin guide to enabling and managing texting in GC Gift Officer (GC GO).

Texting in GC Gift Officer gives your gift officers a personal, one-to-one channel to the prospects in their portfolios. Each user has their own number, provisioned by GiveCampus. Texts are easily logged to each prospect's record. 
 

Getting Started: Quick Start Guide

• Send request to your Partner Success Manager to kick off texting registration process
• Review “Consent + Compliance” section at the bottom of  this document
• Grant Permission Roles with access to texting and text template creation to the right staff 
• Set a default texting contact method so texts can easily be logged as contact reports
• Build and share text templates for your team to use including within Cadences

Enable texting and confirm compliance registration

Texting in GC Gift Officer is enabled at the school level and runs on your school's GiveCampus texting account - the same account that powers GC Outreach Texting. Before any messages can go out, that account must be registered for carrier compliance (A2P/10DLC). Your GiveCampus team handles provisioning and registration as part of onboarding.

If texting isn't yet active for your school, or you're not sure whether your account is registered, start with your Partner Success Manager. They'll confirm the capability is turned on and that registration is approved so your numbers can send and receive without carrier filtering.

Grant texting permissions

Only certain permission roles within GC Gift Officer have the ability to send text messages. 

These include:

• Gift Officer
• GC Gift Officer Student

GC Gift Officer Admin users can also create Text Templates. 

Role Permissions are assigned to users via the Staff Management page within GC Gift Officer.

Configure School-wide Text Settings

A few texting settings live in one place and apply across both GC Gift Officer and GC Outreach Texting. You manage them on the Text Settings page in the Outreach admin area:

1. Default opt-out message. This message is added automatically the first time a recipient is texted from a new number, so every constituent knows how to opt out. You can include merge tokens, and a character counter keeps you within limits.
2. Voice response. If a recipient calls one of your school's texting numbers, they'll hear this response.Note: If you are using VoIP for calling through GC GO, a user’s phone number will be the same across texting and calling. The Voice Response will play anytime someone calls the number, so if using both VoIP and Texting, consider this when determining your Voice Response content. 

Because these settings are shared, the opt-out message you set here is exactly what gets appended to your GC Gift Officer users’ first texts. Set it once and it governs your whole texting program.

Set a default texting contact method

To let your team log texts sent via GC Gift Officer as contact reports, set a default texting contact method. In the Gift Officer admin area, open School Settings → Contact Methods, edit the contact method you want, and check Default for Texting.

This contact method is then selected by default whenever a gift officer creates a contact report from a text message. Until it's set, the option to create a contact report from a conversation stays disabled.

Create a texting phone number

Each user in GC Gift Officer will be provisioned their own phone number. Each user must create that phone number by navigating to their Settings > Text Messages, then typing in a Preferred Area Code and clicking Create New Texting Number. This will be their user-specific number for both texting and VoIP.

Build and share text templates

Templates give your team consistent, on-brand messages to start from. Users with template permissions create and manage them under Text Templates in the Gift Officer menu.

1. Personalization. Templates support merge tokens (like a prospect's first name) and personalization links, plus links to campaigns, events, and giving forms.
2. Sharing. Mark a template as shared so it's available to other gift officers, not just its creator.
3. Cadences. Templates can be attached to text steps in Cadences, so the right message is queued up when a task comes due.

How it relates to GC Outreach Texting

GC Gift Officer texting and GC Outreach texting run on the same managed GiveCampus texting platform. As an admin, it helps to know what they share versus where they differ.

What they share:

1. The same texting account. Both use your school's GiveCampus texting account and messaging service, registered together for carrier compliance (A2P/10DLC). Gift officer numbers live in that same account.
2. The same opt-out and voice settings. The default opt-out message and voice response you set under Text Settings apply to gift officer texts too.
3. Platform-wide opt-outs. If a constituent opts out, they're suppressed across both GC Outreach Texting and GC Gift Officer texting, so an opt-out is always honored everywhere.

How they differ:

In short: position GC Outreach texting for one-to-many sends to lists and segments, and GC Gift Officer texting for the personal, back-and-forth conversations your gift officers and students manage.

Consent and Compliance

Because GC Gift Officer texting goes out through a managed platform - GiveCampus-provisioned numbers tied to your school's registered account, not personal cell phones - it carries the same consent requirements as any other platform texting. Recipients must opt in before they're texted, and the automatic opt-out language helps your team stay compliant on the way out.

This is different from a gift officer texting someone one-to-one from their own personal cell number, which falls under different rules. As you set policy for your program, make sure your team understands the distinction and the opt-in requirements that apply.