A unified fundraising short code needs five years of operating history

The requirementstatement

A charity seeking a single unified short code for fundraising must demonstrate at least five years of operation.

Severityseverity: MediumMEDIUMUsually survives review, but lowers your trust score or invites a manual look you would rather avoid.
When it bitesphase: Gates approvalapprovalGet this wrong and the brand or campaign is refused at registration.
What is checkedobject: charity operating history
Where it liveslayer: BrandBRAND
How Ekas settles itdetectability: External recordEXTERNAL_DATA; The fact that settles it lives in a register we cannot query, such as the IRS file, a postal database, or another provider’s tenant. Reported as a warning with the evidence to check, not as a pass.
What the fix involvesfailureClass: Wait on someone elseTERMINAL_EXTERNAL; Needs an external system or a waiting period, such as IRS propagation, a vetting result, or a carrier queue.
Who requires itauthorities: CTIA
When it appliesapplicabilityText: Applies when the use case is CHARITY.

Why this rule existsrationale

Unified fundraising codes are shared infrastructure with a high abuse value — a fraudulent appeal on a recognised code damages every charity on it — so the entry bar is time in operation rather than paperwork. Newer charities can still message; what they cannot do is join the unified code, and planning a campaign around one is the expensive way to discover that.

How to fix itremediation

Plan the campaign on a 10DLC number or a dedicated short code where the organisation is younger than five years. Revisit the unified code once the operating history is there; nothing about the registration changes in the meantime.

Check this yourselfattestation

No tool can settle this one for you. Here is the check, and what wrong looks like.

Has this organisation been operating for at least five years, counting from its incorporation date?

1Find the incorporation or determination date on the organisation's founding documents.
2Under five years, plan the campaign on a 10DLC number or a dedicated short code and revisit the unified fundraising code later — nothing about the registration changes in the meantime.

What wrong looks like: A four-year-old charity builds its whole appeal around a unified short code, and finds out at the point of application that the bar is time in operation and there is no paperwork that shortens it.

Notesnotes

A short-code path requirement rather than a 10DLC one, recorded here because charities plan across both. The user has to check their own incorporation date against the five-year bar before committing to a unified-code campaign — no part of the 10DLC registration will tell them.

Rules you will hit next

Other brand rules at the same severity. A registration is judged as a whole, not rule by rule.

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All brand rules

BRD-059 is one of 196 brand rules in the 915-rule 10DLC registry. Free to cite under CC BY 4.0.