Item: GiveSmart
Rating: 10
Author: Amber Berkey

Overall Satisfaction with GiveSmart

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

GiveSmart is currently used by the Philanthropy department, for fundraising purposes. Its primary use has been for our annual Gala, especially as we needed to host a virtual gala in 2020. We have used the Silent Auction, Raffle, Registration & Ticket Sales, Sponsorships, and "Buy Now" functions. We are anticipating adding additional campaigns to fundraise among employees, utilizing GiveSmart's Champion pages to allow for crowd-sourced fundraising. GiveSmart allows us to have ongoing fundraising throughout the year via technology such as text to donate and text to bid. It provides excellent reporting features and tracks all event revenue sources.

Pros and Cons

Pros

Customer Service- We have a dedicated customer service representative who schedules a standing meeting with us each month and is available any time in between. They share best practices, campaign examples from other nonprofits, and will do live, hands-on training.
Reporting- The reporting capabilities from the system are easy to use and are very thorough. I can provide access to my finance team for their records and export easily to share with the Executive Team, event committee, and import into our donor database software.
Communication- GiveSmart has email and text features to communicate with guests, and provides a timeline for communication to guests with pre-populated texts to maximize engagement.

Cons

GiveSmart can and should add additional software that it can interface with. While there is the capability to export information (and then import into eTapestry, our donor database) it would be much more efficient if it interfaced directly.

Return on Investment

GiveSmart has improved our efficiencies as a department by providing a platform for ticket sales and sponsorship payments that is captured alongside the guest donations & purchases.
Hosting a virtual gala was directly impacted by our use of GiveSmart- we hosted our silent and live auction, along with other revenue sources from the platform easily. It was excellent, proactive planning on the team to bring GiveSmart on in late 2019.

Alternatives Considered

GiveSmart is much more user-friendly than MobileCause and has impeccable customer service. I would never recommend eTapestry for an event platform, but in comparing the communication features of both GiveSmart and eTapestry, GiveSmart far exceeds the capabilities of eTapestry. The provided resources and knowledge base that GiveSmart offers is very thorough and easily understood, while eTapestry often has complicated instructions, particularly regarding their reporting and query features.

Usability

GiveSmart has a learning curve, as does all software. However, the resources and unique customer service they provide will walk you through everything you need to know in a reasonable amount of time. The settings and setup of a campaign are logical and graphically pleasing, easy to integrate into your organization's website.

Support Rating

I have not experienced customer service like GiveSmart in the fundraising profession before. They truly go above and beyond with live training, recorded training, webinars, peer-to-peer advice and best practices, and one on one personal check-ins with your assigned representative. I have never asked a question that did not come with verbal instruction that was then paired with written instructions and video examples as well.

Customization

The GiveSmart platform is easily customized and branded- there are advanced options for HTML and CSS, but I have not found it necessary to use as their regular settings are so easy to use and allow for added photos, changes in color, and more. The user interface is branded to look like it is part of our website which gives confidence to our donors and guests, assuring them they are in the right place for registration or donations.

Other Software Used

eTapestry, Asana

Likelihood to Recommend

GiveSmart will work well for events- both in-person and virtual. It has all features needed to execute a successful event. I have not yet used GiveSmart as a landing page for donations to our organization, because it does not interface into our donor database. This would be ideal as the campaigns are easy to set up, replicate, and customize.

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