In year one, so far so good!
October 19, 2022
In year one, so far so good!
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with GiveSmart
We use GiveSmart for various fundraising events across our 11 school districts. We appreciate the ease of use, quick payment, and easy reconciliation. We currently have five events that we are using the application to support.
- Selling Admissions.
- Creating an Event Website.
- Item / Package Maintenance.
- User / Donor Management.
- A portal for prospective donors / outgoing solicitations.
- This is our first year using the platform, so it is difficult to determine ROI. It is definitely very affordable, and we are very happy we chose this product.
- Unlimited events have caused us to use the product even more. It is very easy to create an event, so we have used it for much smaller events than we have in other event platforms.
- We have had users manage the event entirely in the GiveSmart application instead of using spreadsheets and other ways to manage items/donations.
We also checked out HandBid, Charity Proud, and Auctria. We chose GiveSmart for the breadth of capabilities, competitive pricing and credit card processing fees, unlimited logins, ease for our accounting staff to manage, and high support availability.
To be fair, we have not done any branding because each event has its own look and feel. I think that the capabilities are there, but we have not needed to use them because these are smaller, themed community events.
Do you think GiveSmart delivers good value for the price?
Yes
Are you happy with GiveSmart's feature set?
Yes
Did GiveSmart live up to sales and marketing promises?
Yes
Did implementation of GiveSmart go as expected?
Yes
Would you buy GiveSmart again?
Yes
Using GiveSmart
35 - Parent Volunteers for fundraising activities System administrators Accounting and finance for reconciliation.
2 - I am the administrator that creates events and adds event administrators. I am a parent volunteer and would say that I spend less than 1 hour a week supporting the product. We also have one finance user that runs reports and reconciles payments in the application. That is about 2 hours a week. Everyone else is a volunteer and only uses the application as needed during the event.
- Event management - Package and Item maintenance.
- Admission sales.
- Bidding portal.
- Item sales - for example, Christmas wreaths, spirit wear.
- Golf Outings.
- Ticket sales.
Evaluating GiveSmart and Competitors
Yes - Greater Giving It was very expensive, complex, and difficult to use; they would not combine our nine schools in one affordable contract. Their software was, at times, overwhelmed by our number of bidders. I will say that the support was great. We have not needed to use GiveSmart support yet because the product is so much simpler, but when we did need Greater Giving support, they were very helpful.
- Price
- Product Features
- Product Usability
The contracting structure was the most important. We needed to have one contract for a number of different events and schools and also keep the donor databases separate per event. We also needed it to be easy for our accounting teams to easily access the data that they need to reconcile by the school and by the event.
I am not sure that I would change anything. We had a good team of stakeholders and a good list of products. We met regularly and easily narrowed it down throughout the process, and Give Smart was a clear winner. I think we are happy with our decision so far and will assess after contract year 1.
GiveSmart Implementation
- Implemented in-house
Change management was minimal - Training is very easy because the application is very easy. The hardest part was reporting, and that was also very easy.
- Reporting - not significant but that was the most significant.
Using GiveSmart
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
Like to use Relatively simple Easy to use Technical support not required Well integrated Consistent Quick to learn Convenient Feel confident using Familiar | None |
- Item management.
- User Management.
- Event Creation.
- Website creation.
- Reconciliation - could do a better job indicating which charges belong to which event.