JustTextGiving, the mobile SMS giving service, has signed up more than 9,000 charities since launching, less than two months ago.

The service, launched by Vodafone and JustGiving in early May, had 9,200 charity users at the end of last week, Vodafone chief executive Guy Lawrence told the Institute of Fundraising's National Convention in London yesterday.

Lawrence said that the pace of take-up for the text donation service was significant in light of the fact that it had taken JustGiving ten years to get 8,000 charities signed up to its main online sponsorship service.

The Vodafone chief said that the service, for which a national TV ad has just been launched, had clearly struck a chord with consumers and charities alike and that the omnipresence and importance of mobiles in people's lives now shows that “something is changing in society”.

The mobile company now has a full-time call centre fielding calls from charities wanting to use the service.

The individual fundraising offering from JustTextGiving, where runners and the like can develop their own fundraising text shortcode to promote to friends and others, has already proven popular, with 500 people signing up for a personal shortcode within ten days of launch. Within those ten days those 500 people have raised £20,432.

Lawrence insisted that this method of giving was opening up new charitable money, not shifting it around from other areas. “We're not trying to displace anything you're doing,” he said.

“JustTextGiving is a way of getting rid of the frustration around the democratisation of giving.”