What You Should Know

What is Crisis Text Line? And how can schools partner with us?

 

What is Crisis Text Line?

(Download info sheet)

Crisis Text Line is free, 24/7, confidential crisis support by text.

Partnering with Crisis Text Line

We welcome and encourage all schools to spread the word about Crisis Text Line.

Crisis Text Line currently forms keyword partnerships with school systems of 35,000 people (students + faculty/staff) or more.

What is a keyword partnership?

(Download info sheet)

1. Why We Want To Work With You

Together, we can save lives.

  • Crisis Support. A free, 24/7 solution for all ages. People in pain are quickly connected to a trained, compassionate Crisis Counselor by text.

  • The data. Being part of one large national data corpus means you can spot trends and learn.

2. What's included

Let us do the heavy lifting.

  • Unique keyword. We’ll give you a unique keyword (e.g. Text SMILE to 741741)

  • Marketing support. We’ll give you a best practices guide and marketing toolkit to get you started.

  • Data sets. We’ll provide access to a free dashboard including data on all conversations with your keyword. Reports will be displayed on a password protected online dashboard similar to crisistrends.org, unlocked after 200 conversations to your keyword and at least 50 conversations per month to continue receiving their report. This is to protect texter anonymity.

    • Premium dashboards. We’ll provide access to a premium dashboard with more filters, content and logins for an annual fee of $24,500. These dashboards will be unlocked after 300 conversations to your keyword.

What We Ask of You

  • Crisis Counselors. Promote this meaningful opportunity to learn a valuable skill set and volunteer to your community and recruit people to apply. We’ll guide them through the application process (and if selected) the training process.

  • Promotion. Loop in local partners and shout it from the rooftops! Share your keyword!

Next Steps

  • Decide. Send 4 keyword options to the Crisis Text Line team at info@crisistextline.org for optimization testing.

Keyword selection guidelines:

  • 6 characters or less

  • Does not autocorrect

  • Location or organization specific

  • Positive and uplifting

  • Get ready. Sign a simple partnership agreement. Plan how you’ll be marketing your keyword.

  • Promote. Upon signing the agreement, we’re good to go. Turn on those marketing channels.

  • Learn. Receive a password protected data dashboard from Crisis Text Line.

Talking about Crisis Text Line

(See also: External Communications Guide)

  • Be clear about our purpose: we’re not a service for ongoing care, or a replacement for therapy, friends, or other necessary supports in your life. We are here for people in immediate crisis.

  • FAQs: there are some questions that show up in the comments of every post about us: Is this free? Does it work in my country? What if I don’t have a phone? etc. Link our FAQ to your post to help people find the answers to these questions.

  • “Save this number": people seeing your post may not be in crisis at the exact moment that it crosses their feed. Instead of encouraging them to text in now, ask them to save the number for future use. We all experience crises in our lives, and there’s great peace of mind to knowing that someone will be a text away when you need them.

  • Linking to Crisis Text Line on your site:

    • Refer to us by name - “Crisis Text Line” - and link to https://crisistextline.org

    • Use our shortcode, too: "741741 in the US," and link to sms:741741