Jack of all trades, master of none (but still pretty good)
July 21, 2021

Jack of all trades, master of none (but still pretty good)

Stephen Juliano | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with OneCause

Our organization's Office of Resource Development uses OneCause's mobile bidding software to provide electronic ticketing, silent and live auction management, and tracking, reporting, and event payments for our slate of fundraising events. The mobile bidding platform has been used at galas, golf outings, and general fundraising events. We discovered this platform while researching the best ways to manage multiple aspects of an event (including registration, ticketing, and auction management) from a single platform.

Pros

  • Streamlines check-in process for event attendees, which involves collecting payment methods during the check-in process.
  • Provides a large number of reports on various aspects of the event, including payments, attendees, etc.
  • Manages all event details, including attendees, payments, table assignments, sponsorships, auction item donations, etc.

Cons

  • One OneCause interface is difficult to use, both on the back end and the front end. As a senior living provider, we have experienced some issues with residents attempting to register for events and the steps not being as clear as they should be. Registering for an event and purchasing tickets requires setting up an account, which is a multi-step process.
  • The reporting is diverse but almost too diverse. It is often difficult or impossible to get one report that contains all of the information that you need. Instead, you must rely on a number of different reports to get a truly complete picture.
  • While they claim to have an integration with Raiser's Edge, it is through third-party software which is available at an additional fee. Even after purchasing the third-party software, OneCause has changed the export functionality several times over the past few months, which requires a large amount of staff time to create new makings in the third-party platform.
  • Certain aspects of the software just take too many taps to handle. If an event attendee at a golf outing wants to purchase a mulligan, for example, you must first look up their record on the app, then add a Misc. charge to their account, give the charge a name and amount, hit save, hit save again, swipe their credit card, then manually tell the system to process the credit card to ensure it is approved. Some settings (like automatically charge cards upon collection) don't actually work, and their support team says that this is a "feature". These numerous steps add time to an event's check-in process.
  • Mobile silent auction bidding
  • Event registration
  • We have not been using OneCause for enough events to see a true impact on ROI at this time.
Ultimately, OneCause was the only system that we looked at that was able to combine event registration and ticketing, silent auction bidding and alerts, and a seamless checkout experience in one platform. We were unable to find another platform that did all of this under one roof, however, we are realizing that the software may be a "jack of all trades, master of none" scenario, and we may be better suited in looking at separate platforms that specialize in their area of expertise.

Do you think OneCause delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with OneCause's feature set?

Yes

Did OneCause live up to sales and marketing promises?

No

Did implementation of OneCause go as expected?

No

Would you buy OneCause again?

Yes

OneCause's mobile bidding platform is well suited for a variety of fundraising events that take place in-person, but it is not without its quirks and oddities. The platform is extremely dated and can be overwhelming even to technical users. You can tell that all of OneCause's efforts have been focused on their virtual events platform which I have not used, as our organization only does in-person events and we did not hold any events during the times of COVID restrictions. The software, while effective, severely needs an overhaul in order to be competitive to today's modern donor.

Comments

  • Maggie Cavanaugh | TrustRadius Reviewer
    Thank you, Stephen, for your thoughtful input. We are constantly making enhancements to our software to bring you the best services possible. We love hearing how our software helped streamline your event!

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