Item: GiveSmart by Momentive
Rating: 10
Author: Maddy Lamers

Overall Satisfaction with GiveSmart

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

At my organization, we use GiveSmart to create event pages for two of our largest development events each year, our golf tournament and our Gala, as well as for one of our largest third-party events. GiveSmart allows us to check in our guests on the day of the event, manage their purchases, create displays, provide them with easy-to-access information, and offer our silent auction and items-for-purchase. Recently, we have begun to use the early-check-in option for registration, which has been very helpful.

Pros and Cons

Pros

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.

Cons

I think it would be helpful if we could use QR codes with the GiveSmart site. I don't understand why there's such an issue with the QR codes.
I wish the home page was almost completely customizable. I think it's pretty good, but it would be nice to be able to pull more than one display there and to have more linking options.
The display section is difficult to use and often frustrates me. I have used it 6 or 7 times now, and each time, I have to reteach myself how to use it by creating multiple displays. I am not usually slow with technology, so I feel this tool could be improved.

Return on Investment

I think that GiveSmart has given us more positive experiences with registration than the system we had before. Registration is as easy as possible because we are able to upload many of our guests before the event begins, which minimizing issues during the event.
We have also had more success with our auctions through GiveSmart. It looks professional, provides great tools like autobidding and texting, and promotes engagement with our items without us having to track them.
The data collected has been very helpful, especially for the auction. It's much easier now to pull reports from our events and use that information to determine future practices.

Usability

GiveSmart is very easy to use. Each of the pages is titled thoughtfully and is easy to navigate. The site is easy to intuitively navigate. Often, if I am not sure where something would be located, I click the tab where I think I am most likely to find it and find that I was correct. There are not many things that are buried in a large link tree, which also contributes to the ease-of-use of the site in general. When I'm not sure how to do something, you provide helpful resources right at the bottom of the screen, as well as live representatives to answer my questions. I have found the representatives very helpful when I have reached out to them.

Support Rating

I have reach out to GiveSmart for support, and I have found their responses to be very timely and very helpful. Overall, they have solved the issues I have been experiencing. I did a 9 as the rating because there was one occasion on which I reached out to support and found my experience lacking. I was conversing with them for over 30 minutes and I ended up solving my problem because they were not listening, but that was the only experience I had like that.

Key Insights

Do you think GiveSmart by Momentive delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with GiveSmart by Momentive's feature set?

Yes

Did GiveSmart by Momentive live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of GiveSmart by Momentive go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy GiveSmart by Momentive again?

Yes

Other Software Used

Virtuous CRM, Race Roster

Likelihood to Recommend

We were considering other sites earlier this year, as we switched databases and thought it would be prudent to consider other options for our other services. When we looked at other sites, they were much less user-friendly, looked less clean to our audience, and involved much more complicated registration processes. Plus, none of the other sites were giving us the same amount of tools and adjustments for a similar price. We don't use this for all of our events, but when we have auctions or additional items for sale, GiveSmart is still our go-to.

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