GiveSmart
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GiveSmart
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- Setup fee optional
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- Free Trial
- Free/Freemium Version
- Premium Consulting / Integration Services
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Product Details
What is GiveSmart?
GiveSmart™ is a mobile friendly online fundraising management platform designed to maximize and accelerate donor impact via event/campaign management tools, mobile donations, auction management, peer-to-peer, and secure payment processing for a single fundraising campaign or all year round fundraising. The vendor states their mission is to help nonprofits and organizations reach their fundraising goals while creating an engaging, exciting, and easy giving experience for their donors.
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GiveSmart Video
Are you looking for help with fundraising for your cause? GiveSmart has easy-to-use technology that makes fundraising beneficial and fun!
GiveSmart Downloadables
- Learn the highest performing silent auction items by region and season! We pulled 880,000 lines of data from our own silent auction software platform to analyze silent auction item performance across the country and dove deep into the data to get answers to common silent auction questions. From categories and regions, the trends are evident and we’ve done our best to track these by quarter, region, and by type of silent auction item, so you and your organization can utilize this data to strategically create a silent auction that is successful and stands out.
- Host a successful school fundraising event with tips and tricks from GiveSmart. At GiveSmart we are focused on providing plenty of resources for our partners to be successful in their endeavors. The Ultimate Study Guide for School Fundraising provides access tips and tricks to ace your upcoming fundraising events and efforts.
GiveSmart Competitors
GiveSmart Technical Details
Deployment Types | SaaS |
---|---|
Operating Systems | Unspecified |
Mobile Application | No |
Supported Countries | Canada, United States |
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Frequently Asked Questions
What is GiveSmart?
GiveSmart, a Community Brands company, offers a full-service event management platform supporting event website, event registration, attendee tracking, donor management and data insights, and full customer service for entities wishing to raise funds via an auction or charity event. The platform also integrates technology from Community Brands brand Gesture to provide a comprehensive suite of services.
GiveSmart replaces the former 501 Auctions, a platform to support charity auctions, mobile bidding, and general event management with automation for nonprofit fundraising.
What are GiveSmart's top competitors?
What is GiveSmart's best feature?
Reviewers rate Usability highest, with a score of 8.9.
Who uses GiveSmart?
The most common users of GiveSmart are from Small Businesses (1-50 employees) and the Non-profit Organization Management industry.
Reviews and Ratings
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We use GiveSmart for our silent auction at our largest event of the year, the Annual Gala. This has helped save time with the auction setup and checkout. We now also use it at our Golf Tournament. It helps with saving time by selling raffle tickets.
- Donations
- Silent Auction
- Training
- Checking in before a fundraising event to ensure you are good to go before the event.
June 17, 2022
Make Fund Raising Easier
We use it at events for fundraising purposes.
- GiveSmart is user friendly for our school and our community.
- GiveSmart allows us to reach more people.
- GiveSmart's reporting is easy to access and understand.
- We recently had issues with the GiveSmart site going down during an event.
- I would like to receive an email notification when payments are sent to us.
I use GiveSmart for our Arbor Day of Giving campaign, which is different than Giving Tuesday. Instead of Giving Tuesday, our day of giving is Arbor Day.
- User Friendly
- Chat feature works really well-very helpful and efficient
- Customer service reps are always willing to help and train
- Text option with the feature of scrolling donor names so donors can add text, such as "this is in memory of"
- More color coding options for sections and buttons.
January 15, 2022
A very clean looking user experience
My organization uses GiveSmart for our annual Gala and Golf Tournament. We use it for guest registration, listing, and allowing donors to bid on silent and live auction items, instant items, and check out.
- Customer service
- Easy to use
- Ability to have a concierge at an event for troubleshooting
January 06, 2022
Highly recommend GiveSmart for your auction management
Our organization is nonprofit and we use GiveSmart software for the auction fundraising at our annual Gala event. GiveSmart handles the mobile bidding (silent/live auctions, raffle, wine pull, etc), check in and check out, and paddle raises/fund a need at our event. This software has replaced our need for bid sheets and additional staff at registration and has taken away A LOT of the stress of having to manage these functions on our own. Their support staff is very helpful in helping set up your campaign and in running reports post-event.
- Customer support.
- Ease of use and implementation.
- Effective for in person or virtual events.
- Staffing changes affect continuity of service.
August 15, 2021
Look Smart: Customization For a Gala With GiveSmart
We use GiveSmart for live auction, silent auctions, and mission appeals at our golf tournament and galas. At this year's gala, we tried to centralize all of our revenue on the GiveSmart site, so that our guests could access all our content and merchandise on the sidebar of the presentation stream. Since we utilize it exclusively for fundraising, the development team is much more familiar with GiveSmart than the programs team and executives. It makes giving more accessible and helps capture more of the interest in our silent auction items.
- Simplicity. GiveSmart brings the event to our guests, and I struggle to imagine how we could make it easier for them.
- Reporting. You can break your revenue down by many parameters.
- Customizability. We found ourselves able to include a virtual version of most elements of our gala, including the written program.
- The site is largely customizable, but that reaches its limit in the html/CSS. Your whole site will pull from a style sheet housed elsewhere, and while my html abilities are limited, I suspect that the user cannot override the stylesheet.
- We asked for a vanity link to some of our sub-pages, but the way GiveSmart works, it generates a unique link for each user so that they can click and be already logged in. So users cannot really generate a print-friendly link to the stream page or the auction page. That became an issue when we wanted to include a hyperlink to our stream on menus included in our deliveries. We opted to include the home page and link from the homepage to the stream, which worked fine.
- The user cannot edit the tabs along the top of the site.
June 05, 2021
Making$$$
We use GiveSmart for our Annual Fundraising Event Hats & Heels. We utilize the Registration, Auction, Instant Sales and Donation functions.
- The online bidding for auction items. Having the ability to pre-bid silent auction items, show photos and videos of them has doubled our revenues.
- During the pandemic, we were able to more easily pivot to virtual events. Their features supported everything we needed for donations and auction items.
- We have also been able to institute monthly virtual appeals for on-going donations, especially with the ability for donors to make ongoing donations.
- We have a wide range of sponsors and would like to have the ability to showcase them at the various levels rather than all grouped together with only the distinction of premium or standard.
- We send tax letters out to all of our participants, donors, etc. Would love the ability to e-mail those letters rather than having to print and mail them.
June 05, 2021
User Friendly
GiveSmart is used as a fund raising tool for our annual gala.
- Easy and helpful reports.
- Generate receipts.
- Live chat is always able to help me with questions.
- User friendly.
- Ability to use the same credit card for different purchases multiple times.
June 05, 2021
GiveSmart is a worthwhile investment, with just a little room for improvement— just like the rest of us.
Our organization used The GiveSmart platform in our annual fundraising efforts. We have used them to help host our annual gala— hybrid (online and live), for a couple of years, and strictly online during COVID-19. It is used primarily by 3 or 4 of us to run our silent auction during the event. It also helps with communication during the event. Using GS has created ease in auction bookkeeping, payments, and generating post-event thank you/tax letters.
- Bookkeeping
- Uploading items and pictures.
- Generating thank you/tax letters.
- Making email and text communication easy.
- Need to add more options for video links.
- Some information in reports could be easier to find.
- Every year we have had at least one new contact— stability in staff would be helpful.
June 03, 2021
GiveSmart makes me feel SMART!
We are using it to fundraise for our political organization. We plan to have a marque event every year. It's used by a handful of people in my organization. Since Covid became an issue with in-person fundraising we decided to move to a virtual platform. It was very successful for our first attempt.
- Training was excellent. On demand as well as weekly lessons.
- Very easy to get in touch with the company for questions.
- Very Easy to use.
- Easy Instructions.
- Intuitive for non technical people to figure out.
- Uploaded pictures were easy but, figuring out the right format for those pictures was not.
- When to close out the auction needs better explanation.
- More choices in designing our brand.
June 03, 2021
GiveSmart is Smart but not a Genius
We use this platform for event-related fundraising: ticketing, invoicing, raffle, and silent auction features.
- Creating the tickets is very easy
- The platform works for both virtual and in-person events
- The silent auction is easy to set up
- Text and mobile features are nice for communicating with guests
- I can't always reach someone immediately for service and have had to leave a message and wait for a callback
- My personal account rep often takes several days to respond to emails
- The display page has limited design options in format, font, text size, color, etc.
- An attendee cannot order themselves if they want to pay by check. An organization should be able to decide if they want to take the risk instead of only allowing the administrator to purchase by check. If our users could choose a check option and we could verify receipt of the check, this would be much better for us.
June 03, 2021
We would not have been as successful this year without the virtual options from GiveSmart during the pandemic.
We are using GiveSmart for most of our virtual and hybrid auction & event registration needs for our fundraising efforts.
- Easy to set-up for the auction
- Easy to use for users
- Customer Service is very responsive and supportive
- Better way to merge items uploaded that later want to package together
- Better instruction on when promoting multiple of an item to separate those on the screen from those auction items. Such as gift cards or wine pulls
We use GiveSmart to facilitate a major fundraising event and a few additional campaigns throughout the year. GiveSmart is robust in features and allows us to handle ticketing, auction and instant purchase items, and marketing and communication needs.
- GiveSmart offers supportive training videos that are easy to share with staff.
- GiveSmart makes the deposit of funds regularly rather than at the end of an event.
- GiveSmart is easy to use for event participants.
- The cost vs. benefit ratio is not preventative, and is a competitive product.
- The customer service has been terrific!
- It would help our organization to have some flexibility in some of the fields. In particular, in the field of the Donate an ITEM button, we would like to alter the words to reflect that works of art are being uploaded to the instant buy. We would rather it say Upload Art Work.
- Also, it would be helpful to have flexibility in the field that appears as a banner when an item is available, we would like to have a banner read, "Accepted by Jury."
June 03, 2021
Happy with GiveSmart
We use it for Events like our Galas. We use it for ticketing, for Silent and Live Auctions, some messaging, and for donor information for these events. Another organization was doing a fundraiser totally for us and we were able to set up an online auction for that event as well.
- Ease of item entry for auction items - very straight forward and clear direction
- Ticketing - I don't do this part, but I know that we are happy with this function
- Tracking Users in the system - both through search and through reporting
- Reporting of revenue - the way you can look at the data from several angles
- Item Sheets...this is where I would ask for some upgrading. I like the way they are exported to a formatted sheet - but they way too limited on how much info from the description comes across. Causes a ton more work to get item sheets with enough information on them.
- Editing the item description - would like to see an 'underline' feature - and if possible a font color option
- Before our auction goes live, and all the items are hidden as I am developing the auction and entering items, I can't use the arrow to go to the next or previous item. During the editing process, that would be VERY handy to be able to do.
- Please bring back the option to have GiveSmart personnel at our event.
June 03, 2021
Build, Customize and Go!
We use it to build our event sales, auctions, and financial needs. We use it for ticket sales, auction items, messaging during events, and event records. It is used by several of the employees across the organization. It addresses the need to have all components in our events in one customizable software program and enables us to keep financial and other records separate.
- The software is very customizable for your specific needs.
- The help desk is very responsive.
- The event messaging system keeps our sponsors updated.
- I would like to see the app stay open longer so users don't have to re-sign in.
- I think the first time window should say create an account rather than sign.
- The auto assigned user and passwords are too long.
- We had some internet/wifi issues and the "Oh Snap" came up but the person was still charged and sometimes twice when they tried again.
June 03, 2021
Easy to use and master!
Whole organization - we use it for multiple events, auctions, ticketed and non-ticketed events, golf tournaments, etc. It very user-friendly and solves a lot of our problems and makes auctions very easy to manage and participate in.
- Auction Management
- Communications
- Reporting
- Reporting for fees
June 03, 2021
Easy to Customize and Optimize
GiveSmart was used for event ticket sales and silent auction.
- Simple layout
- Easy to customize
- Staff was helpful
- N/A
June 03, 2021
Quick and easy
The entire organization uses GiveSmart for our texting and online auctions.
- Texting our members
- Online auction
- Visibility to sponsors
- We are happy with all aspects of GiveSmart
June 03, 2021
Virtually all you need!
GiveSmart is an essential event management system we utilize with multiple events. It has integrated flawlessly into our virtual and now hybrid events in a way that allowed our organization to capture donor dollars from a distance. The platform is intuitive and can be customized to meet the needs of each event. The registration and checkout process is easily taught to volunteers. The system is user-friendly from ticket purchase, online bidding, and donation administration it is a must-have for non-profit organizations!
- Customizable event landing page
- Registration and ticketing system
- Online mobile bidding
- Chargeback notification
- Fee transparency per transaction
- Batch reports not specific to each event
Nordson used the GiveSmart platform for our annual employee giving campaign. We had to quickly switch from in-person events to online due to COVID-19. Multiple locations within the United States used the site to hold events and online auctions. This product was used by our production and office employees to raise funds for our communities.
- Ease of set-up.
- Ability to track users use of the platform.
- Ability to communicate to users via text message.
- Translations of the site to other languages.
- Customer care kept blaming issues on user error. There was no way to share my screen when I had an issue that I needed resolved. Sometimes trying to communicate your issue in words in slower than just showing the issue.
- Being able to interface your site within our employee giving platform to avoid multiple log-ins for employees.
We started to use GiveSmart last year primarily as a silent auction platform for an event that we switch from in-person to virtual, but going forward we will begin using the platform's full capabilities. It has been very useful for contactless uses in the time of Covid to make all participants feel safe.
- Silent Auction items viewed remotely.
- Push text messages to participants.
- Easy check-out and payments for auction items.
- Setting up pre-scheduled text messages.
- More design options to customize pages.
Our non-profit utilizes GiveSmart for smaller fundraising opportunities throughout the year, along with our major giving event that includes a silent auction and ticketing. It allows attendees and donors to manage their experience through a mobile device and easily participate in the giving experience. The reporting helps me, from a development experience, recap the donation and silent auction successes, as well as determine attendees for events compared to actual sales.
- GiveSmart is easy to implement and offers helpful webinars to encourage deeper use.
- GiveSmart's online chat for help is fantastic; love the real time assistance.
- GiveSmart offers detailed reporting that's exportable and easy to interpret.
- It would be nice to able to manipulate campaign page layouts more than what's available currently.
- It would be helpful to have the batch reporting and batch activity recap together so you could see the deposits and then all the transactions that correspond in one report versus the two that I end up manipulating for our finance folks.
- The ability to select export fields and put them in a certain order would be a great feature (and allow that to be saved so future reports export the same) versus manipulating after the fact.
- The ability to set the date on statements would be great versus today's date being the default.
- The limitation of a text to give "name" to only have one use and if another organization has it is frustrating. It would be nice to have it by organization versus globally across the GiveSmart platform
June 03, 2021
GiveSmart as a comprehensive event software
We use it primarily for event management and had it for a virtual gala in February.
- Ticket sales are automated.
- Purchases of items offered before, during and after an event.
- Auctions, combine live and online aspects very well.
- Batch loading into Salesforce for data.
- More automation for purchases.
- More metrics for specific aspects of the event.
June 03, 2021
GiveSmart saved our largest yearly fundraiser!
We initially used GiveSmart for a virtual event during the pandemic. It was successful so we now offer the option of donating through GiveSmart and it has been very beneficial.
- List and organize event.
- Easy donation procedure.
- User friendly.
June 01, 2021
Why we use GiveSmart
Our organization uses GiveSmart to help manage our annual gala. It is used by the auction committee under the school’s development team.
- User friendly.
- Admin friendly.
- Generating solicitor report.
- Report formatting so it works well with other systems.
- Pairing couples so it doesn’t have to be done manually.
- Sending out thank you donation emails post event.