Send text outreach and handle texting limits

For school administrators using GiveCampus Outreach. Controls can differ between the classic email editor and the newer Composer editor.

How to use

Open Outreach → Outreach → Draft Outreach → New Outreach and choose Text in the Create Outreach panel. Complete the creation choices, then review the draft’s Recipients before composing and testing the message. Include the required opt-out content and review any attached media. For replies to existing text threads, use Outreach → Conversations. Legacy Online Giving Texting and Gift Officer texting are separate workflows.

Before you begin

Text outreach requires content, opt-out content, included recipients, a sendable state, and a valid school texting-account setup. Supported MMS image MIME types in the validator are JPEG, GIF, and PNG. Unsupported images must be uploaded in a supported format.

If recipient conversations are still missing, the validator says “Recipients are still processing. Check back in 15 minutes.” Daily text capacity is checked against unsent included recipients. Scheduling for a future calendar date skips the current-day enqueue check but does not bypass send-time limits.

Troubleshooting

Check the explicit validation error before retrying. A texting daily limit, an account-setup issue, and an invalid recipient are different problems. Do not assume a fixed school-wide quota or bypass an opt-out to force delivery.

How many characters can I include before an SMS splits?

The usual single-segment SMS limit is 160 standard characters, or 70 Unicode units when emoji or certain special characters are present. Count the final recipient-specific text, including links and any opt-out wording. The editor’s Estimated Character Count is not a segment calculator, and its 350-character warning is not the SMS splitting threshold.

See How many characters fit in one text message? for segment capacities, character-counting exceptions, and how to check a message.