GiveSmart by Momentive vs. GoFundMe Pro vs. Bonterra OneCause

GiveSmart changed the game for us in registration and bidding for our annual fundraising gala. We had tried several different software options and GiveSmart is far and away the best. It's AWESOME for our silent auction in particular, easy to upload items and helpful minimum bid and bid increment suggestions.

Incentivized

Well suited for organizations with large fundraising programs or many recurring donors, especially those who have the staffing to devote to reporting and fundraising data analysis. Variety of payment options is good for mobile-first or younger audiences who may be taking more frequent advantage of payment methods like Venmo and Apple Pay. Most useful if it is used in tandem as an event registration/event hosting platform (Classy Event Registration or Classy Live) as attendee data and fundraising is kept in a single place. Less appropriate for smaller organizations, or folks that will not be doing crowdfunding/peer-to-peer/events. There are other platforms that do standard donation pages well that have fewer bells and whistles but are accordingly cheaper.

Incentivized

They are very well suited at assisting with troubleshooting at registration. They are very helpful at the end of the event, where we are collecting payments and closing out auction items. The ticket process is confusing, and the table seating process is cumbersome.

• GiveSmart is a very easy-to-use platform that provides robust instruction on use but is so user-friendly that the instructions are mostly not necessary. I find it easy to update, change, and create all aspects of our page. For example, I first used GiveSmart without any instruction from a manager. She instructed me to look around and see what was going on. I was able to navigate the site effectively, and only found a few pieces for which I needed more instruction.
• GiveSmart offers a well-made item section. Our gala has a silent auction made up of more than 170 items, and GiveSmart makes it easy to upload those items in bulk or add them individually. It offers every field I would want to have for an item and provides a comprehensive and adjustable front-facing-view for donors that is easy to manipulate.
• GiveSmart's main page creator is easy to navigate and create the site you want. They provide helpful details like sizing for images and the ability to create buttons and links and different sections as our needs dictate. It's easy to adjust the colors and design to reflect our branding.

Incentivized

• The Classy platform is easy to use, both for the staff and our volunteer fundraisers
• It's easy to build a great looking fundraising page
• Classy support (particularly chat and phone) are attentive and responsive. Every one there is smart and nice!

Incentivized

• The raffle set-up is very easy to navigate and allows you to adapt your location's needs for raffle laws.
• The site design makes it so easy for you to set up your event page in minutes.
• OneCause makes it very easy for table management for large events.

Incentivized

• Lack of customization options when building each page. The website winds up not looking all that professional.
• The reporting functionality is not very helpful at all. This is a main area of improvement we've asked for.
• Better customization of emails and texts through GiveSmart. Right now, they are limited, and you can't make them look very nice.
• The process of logging back into your account as a ticket purchaser or donor is very confusing. Most guests don't even know they can log in to access their tickets, make another donation, etc.

Incentivized

• Campaigns lack customization options which can be limiting- while you can add code to make some changes, there is a basic framework that you can't always override.
• Slow to roll out some donor payment options like Venmo.
• Not inexpensive price point and on an annual contract, so the software is definitely an investment.

Incentivized

• Auto-numbering items in auctions need to be editable. Right now, when you add items, they are numbered consecutively, and you can't edit them. I want all of my items to be numbered together by item type. We always have last-minute additions, but there is no ability to renumber.

Incentivized

For us, we have a very dissatisfying donor database solution right now, but we have built the hacks we need in order to manually integrate data we pull out of GiveSmart with the system. None of us are trying to reinvent that particular wheel, so for now, until the organization decides to upgrade the useless database we've been saddled with, we are satisfied to maintain our GiveSmart subscription. Might this change if we acquire a more sophisticated donor solution? Maybe. But we will also be looking for options that will integrate smoothly with GiveSmart. What we like about GiveSmart, we really like. GiveSmart is great at what it does really well, namely event management. Yes, they need to address the inflexibility issues that make customization and some report features particularly frustrating, but for our organization the benefits are outweighing the drawbacks at this time. Their customer service is top-notch, and they have done an admirable job of creating an extensive Help section and responsive Support department that can assist with how-to's for various tasks within the system

Incentivized

We are a very small non-profit and are actually looking to use another service just to cut costs, but we may not stay with them and will coming running back to OneCause if we can't make the other option work! The ONLY reason to move would be to reduce the over-head cost of the platform.

Incentivized

For the most part, GiveSmart serves our organization's needs for creating fundraising forms. It is especially useful for our peer-to-peer fundraising and event planning and registration efforts. The dashboard is relatively intuitive, and there have been improvements in creating forms and managing campaigns since shifting from Mobile Cause to GiveSmart Fundraise.

Incentivized

VERY easy to use, but lacks flexibility. But very easy to learn and master, even for someone with technical skills. They offer live chat which is a great help for on-demand support. At higher call volumes, you may wait 10 minutes, but I’ve never waited for more than that and the support if 90% of the time very helpful.

Incentivized

Use of the software is generally fine, but the setup and implementation are not always intuitive. Though the knowledgebase is robust and covers a lot of areas (and the support team is pleasant and knowledgeable), the event setup process (particularly when setting up payment and bank information) can be a bit cumbersome and should really be streamlined

Incentivized

We never experienced any issues with outages, the system being down, etc. It's extremely reliable. That's very important when you're dealing with financial and personal information! We want to make it easy for people to give, and it's great that we've never had to worry about service issues making that more challenging/

Incentivized

Support staff is there to help out and it is nice knowing there are available on event day as well

Incentivized

We haven't had any issue regarding performance or reliability with GiveSmart. We don't integrate it with any other software so that issue isn't relevant. The pages load quickly and reports are completed almost as soon as you hit the "run" button. Overall, the system works as designed and is pretty quick when people use it.

Incentivized

This feature is amazing. Nice to have reports immediately when the event (auction) is over

Incentivized

We contacted support for clarification on distributions and reporting, and we continued to get escalated. However, we never had our questions answered or resolved, which was a bummer. Other members have contacted support for other reasons and received the help they needed.

Incentivized

Classy's team was very helpful as we transitioned over, and helped us get everything set up quite easily. The few times we've had issues or questions, their online chat feature has been a quick way to get answers. On Giving Tuesday last year, the site went down, but Classy was quick with communication to its clients and had the problem resolved in about an hour. I know that if we have any problems or questions, the company and its team will be responsive and helpful. That makes a difference to me and our small team. We don't have time to troubleshoot or stay on hold for a long time waiting for support.

Incentivized

Shelbe was my point person and she was available for me at absolutely anytime. No question was stupid or obvious in her eyes and she always gave me the exact responses and resources I needed to succeed. Could not be more complimentary of this software! Just have to convince my team to use it for more areas now!

Incentivized

We hired OneCause to guide us through our first event after we signed up with them. The staff they sent were pros. They gave us professional guidance and support. Once we had been shown the ropes, we knew we could take the reins and confidently run our next event

Incentivized

GiveSmart provides great training videos on their system. Not everything is covered with their videos but their support staff are very friendly and knowledgeable. I would have given them a ten but not everything is covered in their videos and sometimes you have to find the right word to search for in able to find the right training video.

Incentivized

Very thorough and nice to have a refresher when needed. Nice to see when I haven't used in a little while and refresh my mind how to update.

Incentivized

We just made the change using the band-aid approach. In other words, we just went for it and taught the users how to do it at our first event and went from there. 90-95% of people haven't used a mobile bidding software so most everyone was on the same stage of knowledge so implementing it was easy as people didn't have to re-learn anything.

Incentivized

I don't know if my insights are key but I can say that implementation was done in-house without any outside support for the solution. The staff influencing the solution had very little technical expertise and ability as well which showed just how easily the software was to implement.

Incentivized

I have been a guest at other non-profit events that utilized similar software, and I feel that the GiveSmart platform seems more user-friendly. I cannot speak to the efficiency on the administrative side because I have solely used GiveSmart, but I don't find GiveSmart lacking in any particular areas for our needs.

Incentivized

I have not used any other platforms like Classy. Given I came into this organization after Classy was already chosen, I was pleased with how easy it was to learn the platform and how user-friendly the entire thing is. Although I haven't used any other platforms like it, I would highly recommend it.

We looked at Auctria and GiveSmart, though we didn't go into great detail with either. We ultimately selected OneCause based on the recommendation of another local school that used it for its auction software. The customer service and support as we made this decision and transition was a confirmation for us.

Incentivized

We are a small, independent, private, nonprofit school. GiveSmart is very flexible and works extremely well for us. But I could also see it being equally efficient for larger school systems, large or small nonprofit organizations, etc. I never feel like the product is too "big" for us to use.

Incentivized

The product has everything I need

Incentivized

• We have not used the database to its full extent, so I do not have specific examples as we have not used the donor insights very much
• I appreciate that the events information is now transferring to the donor database so those contributions and people are being included in the master database.
• Certainly much more efficient for a one-staff person organization as all of the information is in one place!

Incentivized

• This has been nothing but positive. We use the basic version so there is no fee associated with it other than a percentage of each transaction. So everything that comes in is added revenue where the only investment is staff time, but there is no monetary investment.

Incentivized

• It has had an extremely positive impact on our Online Auction, with more items available, and the user-friendly platform makes our donors bid more.
• It has elevated our events with the easy check in features to keep the event smoth.
• It has saved so much time and stress with the customer service support accessibility and knowledge.

Incentivized