You will need the Limited Account permission to activate a texting number and submit it for verification, and Limited SMS to send texts. With more than one organization, activating a number also needs access to every campus.
Verification of toll-free numbers in the United States and Canada is required by the wireless carriers. Anyone who wants to send and receive text messages over a toll-free number must have that number verified first. It is a lightweight onboarding process: you privately submit your church's information and your messaging use case, and the carriers approve the number to route messages over the nationwide wireless networks.
If you have not enabled text messaging yet, start with How do I enable text messaging?
What happens while a number is unverified
Only a Verified number can send. Until a number is verified, three things happen:
Opt-outs are lost. Texts people send to an unverified number are ignored, and a STOP texted to one is recorded nowhere. Someone who asked to stop can still be texted later, which is a compliance problem for your church, not just an inconvenience.
Scheduled texts are not sent. A scheduled text whose organization's number is unverified when it comes due is recorded as Not sent. It does not fall back to another organization's number.
Automated texts are skipped. Texts such as workflow notifications are skipped when no organization that owns the record has a verified number.
Warning: Verification belongs to each number. If your account has two or more organizations, each organization has its own texting number, and each one needs to be verified. Verifying one organization's number does nothing for another's.
How to explain it to your congregation
The carriers (AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile and the rest) require every organization sending text messages to register the number first. They want to know who you are, what you will be sending, and how people agreed to hear from you. It is how they keep spam off their networks.
What verified and unverified mean
A Verified toll-free number means the carriers have confirmed your traffic does not fall under their disallowed content policy and is in line with their best practices, and that the number is associated with your church specifically. Verifying also gives you:
Better deliverability and predictability
Fewer messages wrongly flagged as spam
Reassurance that your number will not be blacklisted automatically
Greater carrier visibility, and automatic review when a false positive is detected
An Unverified number has not been through that process. Because the carriers cannot identify who is behind it, unverified numbers are blocked entirely from sending and receiving text messages.
Numbers are verified for United States and Canada nationwide coverage at the same time.
How long it takes
Expect 5 or more business days, and treat that as a lower bound rather than a deadline. The review happens entirely on the carriers' side, so nobody at One Church Software can see the queue, expedite a request, or give you a date.
Warning: Do not enable texting on a Friday expecting to text your congregation on Sunday. Submit the verification form the same day you enable, and plan around the wait.
When the carriers decide, your Verification Status updates on its own. There is nothing to check or chase, and resubmitting while a review is open is blocked by design.
What the carriers expect of you
These are the standing rules once your number is verified. Breaking them can put your approval at risk.
Consent
You must have explicit opt-in consent from a recipient before their first message. The disclosure has to sit near where the person enters their number, and it cannot be buried in a terms of service or privacy policy. Your One Church-hosted opt-in page handles all of this for you.
What is text messaging consent? covers how consent is recorded and what does not count.
Honoring opt-outs
Anyone can revoke consent at any time by texting STOP, and that request must be honored. One Church Software handles this automatically, and an opt-out someone made themselves cannot be overridden by your staff or by the support team. A STOP applies to the organization whose number was texted, because text consent is kept per organization.
Disallowed sending practices
Continuing to send to someone who opted out, working around opt-outs, or having multiple unrelated content providers send from a single number can trigger a review of your church and your number. A review can result in your sending rights being suspended.
Disallowed content
All toll-free traffic must follow the CTIA guidelines. Content filtering includes, but is not limited to, gambling, vaping, illegal drugs, and SHAFT content: sex, hate speech, alcohol, firearms and tobacco.
The following campaign types are not supported on the verified toll-free network. These categories can change, and traffic in other categories may also be blocked without notice.
High-risk financial services, including payday loans, short-term high-interest loans, auto, mortgage and student loans, debt collection, gambling and sweepstakes, tax relief programs, stock alerts and cryptocurrency
Get-rich-quick schemes, deceptive work-from-home programs, risk investment opportunities and multi-level marketing
Third-party debt collection, consolidation, reduction or forgiveness, credit repair programs and lead generation
Controlled substances, tobacco, vaping, illegal drugs and cannabis
SHAFT content and profanity
Scams, phishing, fraud, spam and deceptive marketing