OneCause, headquartered in Indianapolis, offers their fundraising solutions supporting mobile bidding for auctions or peer-to-peer giving, Text2Give, and support for ticket sales for fundraising events. OneCause pricing plans support various service levels, including feature breadth for large giving organizations or smaller entities.
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Whova
Score 9.0 out of 10
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Whova, headquartered in San Diego, provides what they describe as Intelligent Event Technology Solutions by creating authentic audience participation and engagement and simplifying the entire event process from planning to registration, networking, and follow-up. Whova's mobile engagement apps support both on-location events and virtual events.
The OneCause auction platform works well for events of seemingly varying sizes (we are a mid-sized organization, but it seems to scale well). You can run a variety of things within the platform (live auction, silent auction, fund appeal, raffle, etc.), but one should be aware that there are limits to the software and we were forced to worked around these limitations.
Whova was appropriate for the purpose of a health conference. I would recommend the platform to other NGOs considering platforms for their conferences, particularly if engagement is a critical process and outcome of the conference. As a health conference that involved people with living experience of the health topics at the conference, i.e. peer workers, peers in professional roles, people from affected communities, engagement was important.
Speakers, exhibitors, and sponsor management (they can enter their own information/profiles!)
Webpages get generated automatically for agenda, speakers, exhibitors, and sponsor information entered within Whova! Then, we can drop this information into our website and it gets automatically when something gets updated within Whova (for example, a speaker updates their title
Options to personalize the text descriptions used in the registration process. Some of the wording is confusing and there's no option to edit those text boxes.
The set-up for the silent auction options is not exactly the easiest to follow for new users. Having some concrete examples or use cases to consult when first setting up would be helpful.
It would be great to have a "check for errors" functionality when you're going through the auction set-up. For example, for some reason when our live auction was set up, two items didn't have "Apply Sales Tax" checked and so they got erroneously listed without the sales tax. Given that ALL the other items had sales tax applied, it seems like it should be easy to have something run in the background that flags potential errors for review.
We already registered with Whova for our 2024 event and we will continue to use Whova for the foreseeable future as long as the price doesn't rise too high. It was a bit of a shock to see the difference between last year's price and this year's price - nearly 2k increase! We were able to negotiate, thankfully, to lower the price.
I give it this rating because when I first started using OneCause, I was concerned it might be complicated and I could make mistakes that would negatively impact our organization. OneCause's usability has made me feel confident and stress-free in every event we use it for because it is easy to use.
Most of Whova's functions are intuitive and you can self-teach about 80% of it with ease. I really was impressive with the messaging, follow up meet-up capabilities and sharing of contact information. My only few concerns were about the lack of an archive or back up, [perhaps cloud-based?] of the meeting room and round-table's presentations
We had no performance issues with our event delivery. We did have some meet-ups that had some glitches for some attendees, but I believe they were quickly resolved and were more on the part of user error than anything. Once they got the hang of it, their meet-ups went more smoothly.
They have a fantastic tech support team who typically responds to your questions and concerns within minutes. They are available for emails, phone calls, and have also created videos that walked me through my problems. When you initially get started with their peer2peer platform, they provide you with a consultant whose job is to walk you through setting up your first campaign. You al so receive a specific to you Customer Success Manager who is there for any and all questions and will help you until you find the answers needed!
I only had a single issue regarding a photograph that was handled immediately and a colleague somehow ended up with two profiles which was also handled right away. Those two instances are all I have to go by. Other than that it was smooth but I did have ample information regarding who to contact if I experienced an issue
Very thorough and made sure I understood the process. Staff were very patient as well listening to my questions and understanding certain procedures. As an older person, I can be scared of technology, but this process was very easy to understand and I feel very confident using it.
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.
I found Whova to be similar to many social media apps that I already use. It was easy to navigate. This was my second experience using Whova in my presenter role. I liked the icebreaker section to connect with other participants before the event started. I look forward to next year’s event.
We had used GiveSmart in the past and had issues with connectivity during our event, when our contract was up we decided to investigate other platforms, we looked at more than just those 3, but can't recall the others. Givebutter - I absolutely LOVE Givebutter, so simple to use, but it does not offer an auction component and we didn't want to have 2 different systems to use. Classy - this platform seemed nice but extremely pricy and we still had to do "add-ons". We could not afford it. We went with OneCause in the end because of the simplicity, and training provided and wanted to give the product a try over sticking with GiveSmart. We are so happy to have made the switch.
We selected Whova for price, and ease of use. We would have chosen GoToWebinar but they did not have as many options for sponsor recognition. We will most likely use Event Rebels in the future for our needs. Tracking time and sessions viewed is a must for our industry as attendees rely on us to earn CEs to renew their licensing.
I especially liked the ease of communication, the ability to ask hard questions easily, and afterward the ability to survey all participants to see what we (and/or Whova) could do better going forward.
Once we joined OneCause for our event fundraising platform we never looked back. Each year we've experienced growth with not only the funds raised but also in the improvement of the event execution.
We've learned a tremendous amount for in-person fundraising success through the OneCause team and that has led us to explore virtual and campaign options.
The onsite event support has proven so valuable to our event success we have begun budgeting to have that same level of support at all our in-person events. The OneCause event team guides you well during the planning phase and then provides top-notch support and peace of mind the night/day of the event.
I didn't pay to use the technology; was a recipient as a result of attending a conference. HIGH ROI for me as a made a number of new contacts even though I spent the first full day listening to presentations. Having the app allowed me to do the networking I came to do without having to be seated next to the person I wanted to meet.
