Acorns Children's Hospice (Acorns)
Acorns and Aston Villa FC Text to Donate Challenge
As the official charity partner of Aston Villa Football Club (AVFC), Acorns has the right to fundraise at every game at Villa Park. Historically this was done with bucket collections as supporters entered the ground. However, despite the size of the potential 'captive' supporter base (Villa Park's capacity is 42,000+), the income per game never met its perceived potential. Fundraising was experiencing supporter fatigue with its regular collections at games and in need of a new approach that would overcome two key obstacles:
- - Getting the fans to notice - a presence at every game had resulted in a level of 'invisibility' coupled with the fact that the fans' key motivation for attendance is not to support charity.
- - Making sure the bucket is big enough to be able to collect an increase in donations when the fans take notice.
The use of text donations was identified as providing an infinite 'virtual bucket' and in partnership with AVFC, Acorns set a challenge for fans to raise the most amount of money using text donations during a Premier League match (AVFC vs Newcastle Utd FC 17 Sep)
£7,500 raised during the game - a record amount collected by the charity through a match day collection. This represents enough funds to run a ten bed children's hospice for a full day. Over 55 pieces of coverage across local and national media with an AVE of £182,000 and audience reach of 8.5m.