What is the Text Messaging Premium Feature?

Upon request, we can get you a phone number in your local area and connect it with your Helpful Village service.

Once you have a phone number, you can send text messages to an individual person (from the "Activity" tab of that person) or to a group of people using the "Text Messenger" module.

Text messages are bidirectional:

• The Village can send messages to your Villagers.
• Villagers can also respond to the text messages to communicate with the Village.

When a Villager responds to a text message, that message will be recorded in their personal text messages log and in the Text messenger module.

When we receive a text message, an email is sent to Village administrators, letting them know that a text message has been received and containing the text message in the email.

These are the costs for this premium feature:

• $6 monthly fee that includes a local phone number to send and receive text messages
• Then $0.04 fee per message segment. One message segment consists in 160 characters or less.*

*The fee for each message segment is for messages both sent and received.

You can activate / deactivate this feature anytime you want so we suggest you give it a try.

In order to activate the Text Messaging module, you can simply send us that request via Ticket or email.

Check out this live demo: https://support.helpfulvillage.com/hc/en-us/articles/5664611521559-Live-demo-Text-messages-demo

Text Messaging Compliance and Registration Process

Why Compliance is Important

Recent federal regulations are designed to reduce spam and scams by requiring legitimate organizations to declare the type of messages they intend to send. This step builds trust with telecom companies, allowing them to recognize your organization as a verified sender of text messages about legitimate activities (such as volunteer coordination, events, and emergency preparedness).

With these guidelines, telecom companies are encouraged to block messages from unauthorized sources, which helps protect individuals – especially Older Adults, who are often targeted by scams – from receiving fraudulent messages.

What This Means for You

To meet these requirements, we need to complete a registration process with the telecom provider that manages text messaging for our system. This process involves filling out a few forms together to ensure your text messages are compliant and approved for delivery.

How to Proceed

   1.    Schedule a Meeting: We recommend scheduling a Zoom meeting with a Helpful Village representative to complete the registration forms together. This step-by-step approach simplifies the process and ensures all necessary details are correctly filled out.
   2.    One-Time Fees: To complete the compliance registration, please note the following costs for the Telecom Operator Registration Fees will be included in a subsequent Helpful Village invoice, as detailed below:
   •    Brand Registration Fee - Additional Vetting: $46.00 (one time fee)
   •    Campaign Registration Fee - Verification: $15.00 (one time fee)
   •    Campaign Registration Fee - Charity: $3.00 (one time fee)
   •    A one-time fee of $50 for the Zoom session with our team to guide you through the form submission process. (one time fee)

If you have any questions or would like to proceed, please contact us to schedule your registration meeting.