Givebutter Features

We needed the ability to sell (and comp) tickets (with different pricing tiers), to send tickets electronically, check-in guests (preferably with a quick ticket scan but also by name), and allow audience voting during our event. Givebutter delivered all of these capabilities. The event/campaign could be set up and managed outside of our CRM (by a volunteer who then didn't need full access to sensitive data) and integrated (limited) with our CRM. We also sold online tickets to the event and streamed it on Givebutter (although that was a complete hack)

Although the product satisfied our needs, there were many small frustrations and overall it felt like an incomplete product. Issues included:- High fee rate (standard credit card rate, although our actual fees seem higher) for non-profit use.- Additional "tip" to Givebutter both on the user side (can be removed if you pay even higher fees) and when making payout transfers is frustrating and not non-profit...

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Thank you for sharing these thoughts, Christine. We're always working to improve Givebutter and feedback from changemakers like you is the most important part of that process. I've forwarded your feedback to our engineering team so they can take it into considering on future updates.

The site was easy to set up, products were easy to add and there were plenty of options on how to customize the posting

There was no spot for a custom item # to better tag products. And there was no way to sort the items once loaded so to find an item I had to scroll through 4 pages of products.Also would be nice to be able to post an item without it being "for sale" to help promote our live auction products.

Thanks for sharing this, Shannon. We have some upgrades planned for Q4 that should address some of your concerns. We're always working to improve Givebutter and feedback from changemakers like you is the most important part of that process.

What attracted us to Givebutter was the possibility of not having to pay for it. We're an all volunteer organization run on member fees and having to pay a monthly fee for a platform to manage our donors was causing us some concern. Givebutter's solution works perfect for us. The next best thing about Givebutter is how intuitive it is to setup, manage and track the variety of events we put on. Super easy for use and our donors.

Biggest issue for us is the current inability to send an email to a specific individual. Currently to do that we need a complicated system of tagging to allow us to do that. To complicated and time consuming to really make it a viable workaround. Because that feature is critical for us, we feel great reluctance in having to search for a platform that does what Givebutter does AND allows the targeted emailing of an individual.

Thanks for buttering us up! We're glad to hear that you've found Givebutter intuitive and easy to use. We do have an active feature request for sending an Engage message out to select recipients – if you like, you can add an upvote here: https://community.givebutter.com/engage/p/send-emails-to-select-recipients

I love how easy to read the interface is. We also love how we can keep all donor related things in one place.

I don't like that with online auctions it's either everything is good for shipping or none. I wish we could select which items are able to be shipped and which aren't. I also wish there would be volunteer management side to it.

Thanks for sharing this Nereyda. The shipping function on auctions has now been set to "per item" instead of a universal application. This should make your next auction experience even better!

Having no up-front cost removed the fear of using this product. We searched countless donation processors and CRMs and it was very difficult for me to get our team to commit to any of them that came with an up-front cost. This removed those barriers and gave us a good level of customization for a system that we never had to put a dime into (either donors covered the fee or the incredibly minimal fee was taken out before it came to us)

I wish there was a volunteer event style function built in.

Thank you so much for buttering us up, Sam! It can be daunting to choose new software and we're glad that Givebutter made that cost-effective and pain-free for you and your team!

It has a clean and simple user interface, which required very little training time as I onboarded new Users from our staff. Their support team is very responsive and knowledgeable, and help to guide us through all of our questions. Their organization has a customer-centric focus, and is designed to receive and adapt based of their user feedback. We also really liked its ability to integrate with our CRM.

Currently they do not offer an online auction function (silent or live), but this feature is in development and anticipated this year. We also did not like the Tips feature, which if activated removed their platform fees. Essentially, if you leave the Tip feature on then at checkout it provides the donor with the option to also tip Givebutter. We felt that this was confusing to our donors, who may...

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Thanks so much for taking the time to write a review, Mary! We're so glad to read your entire team can use Givebutter with ease. Thank you for sharing all your functionality needs, too! If you haven't already, please reach out to support so we can be sure any feature requests are documented, or you can visit our Feature Request portal on our Community page.

GiveButter campaigns are so easy to set up; they let you duplicate a previous campaign and amend as necessary. It's intuitive and you can always view what your campaign looks like at any step of the way.

Some of the user interface seems busy and it's not always clear which areas of the page I should be giving attention to. But I do always figure it out in the end, and by looking at everything I find out more about GiveButter's functionality.

Thanks so much for taking the time to write us a review! We love hearing that your entire team finds Givebutter intuitive to use. Our team is always here to guide you when you're unsure what to do next, and we love to collect feedback about the Givebutter interface. Chat with us anytime!

Givebutter provided me a simple solution to create a campaign and solicit online donations for a family in need. The interface was easy to use. We were up and running in less than an hour. I was able to quickly make changes along the way as new donations became available. It was also great to assign other individuals access to run reports and track donations. Payouts were simple and quick.

I wish I could have uploaded pictures of donation items directly into the interface rather than having to upload to a server and referencing them via .html. I think that there should be a better way to manage.

Thanks for sharing this, Carrie! I'll pass that feedback along about uploading photos directly for tickets/donation items. Glad to hear you were able to help someone in need and that Givebutter made that easy to do.

Easy to use. We can set up and deploy a campaign in under an hours. The platform is also easy for donors to navigate, both on desktop and mobile. The "upsell" on donations has also been helpful in increasing revenue.

We originally explored Givebutter as a platform to host an online auction. In the future we would love to see updates to create a more seamless experience combining ticketing, raffles, and auction items all on a single page. We've loved using it for raffles but ultimately went with another platform for auctions.

Thank you so much for the feedback, Jenny! We love hearing that using Givebutter has been so easy to use and has increased your giving!

You cannot beat free! For the level of service, constant improvements, support staff that is responsive and collaborative, we have been very pleased. Is it perfect? No - but again, their responsiveness makes it so you can tailor things to your needs. If they don't have a feature you need, they do consider it and crowdsource how other users feel about it, and it often is the case that others need it too. We aren't used to such behavior in nonprofit world - we are often told to deal with it and still pay up!

We have used it most for our Auction gala this year. It was our first time doing such work completely online, and it went so well! There were some hiccups - some of that on our end as we had a learning curve as well. For the attendees - who ranged in age from 20s-80s, there was a struggle for the older crowd, but I hear this is the case for many who utilize any online platform. They felt the registration process and sustained connectivity were an issue. There were also some things we would have liked to control more around timing/closing of auction items and end reporting, but overall it was very usable.

Andrea, thank you so much for the detailed and helpful feedback! We're always working to improve Givebutter and feedback from changemakers like you is the most important part of that process. Welcome to the Givebutter fam!

The user interface with Givebutter is much better than the previous online donation form we were using. We like that it is a step-by-step click through opposed to a long form to fill out. Having the ability to run an online donation and an event page in the same system is helpful to our team to not have to learn two different types of platforms.

Givebutter promotes itself to be free to the non-profit, and the donor pays the platform fees. We would like to be able to choose to pay a monthly price to pay some of the platform fees on our own (as we know it is part of doing business) instead of passing them on to the donor every time.

Thanks so much for taking the time to write a review, Rhea! We love reading that donors are finding your new donation form easier and more enjoyable to use. We appreciate you letting us know your preferences about platform fees, too. We can certainly take this into consideration!

The best part was the lack of cost. It was free.

There's a ton of room for improvement for using this as an auction platform. Bidders and items need to be able to be sorted on the dashboard. Registering guests was cumbersome - they had to enter their info at least twice. Listing items was okay, but the display sheets that GB generates don't include photos, so I had to edit EVERY SINGLE DISPLAY SHEET to make it visually appealing/include a photo. Time consuming.

Thanks so much for this feedback, Molly! We're always working to improve Givebutter and feedback from changemakers like you is the most important part of that process. We recently added a search feature on the auction items, which should make things much easier going forward. Feel free to upvote the request for images on the auction QR codes - every vote helps our engineers decide which improvement to implement next! https://community.givebutter.com/raise/p/add-image-on-the-auction-qr-code-items-downloaded

Being able to accept donations online is HUGE, we can take Paypal, Venmo, CC etc all through one platform and it's SO nice!

Some have complained that there's a few steps too many to complete a donation, it's a learning curve but we're getting more organizations across town to use this platform so more people will get used to it.

Thanks so much for buttering us up, Samantha! We're happy you're part of the Givebutter fam and that you're enjoying the platform so much!

Being able to use different campaigns and customize them is great! It provides the ability to reach different donor groups and is easy to track.

I wish there was a storefront feature as well. Sometimes we have trouble with the custom emails and sizing of images despite following the specs provided by Givebutter, so that could be improved. I was one of the first auction users, and there were some issues, but overall it ran smoothly. However, there are far too many individual tracking steps that need to be consolidated.

Thanks so much for sharing this, Erin! We're working hard to get Auction as streamlined and polished as the rest of our features and are making updates every day. We're always working to improve Givebutter and feedback from changemakers like you is the most important part of that process

Givebutter is an easy to use platform that is fun and engaging, especially for college students. What first drew us to Givebutter was that they keep fees super low, which isn't found on any other platforms. We also love the team fundraising option and your members can even personalize their page. The new event feature for selling tickets is a plus. They also have excellent customer service! The team really makes it personal and you can always get in touch in a timely manner.

I can't think of any. They are always making improvements. The Givebutter team is very open to feeback and will do everything they can to make your experience better.

The software is intuitive and robust and the best of all that is possible with Givebutter is the absolute world class customer service.

The inability to import historical donation history to be able to fully take advantage of the platform.

What I like most is the ease of use and the look and feel of the product.

If I'm going to be honest, the only thing I don't like about the product is the name. I feel I have to explain what the product is to potential donors because of the name.

Thanks so much for sharing this, Gary! We're glad you're having such a great experience!

Easy and very intuitive to use. Free to set up pages and has a good number of options to use, but not an overwhelming number of options. Love that on auction items, you can manually add bids (for live auction) and can change the auction start date for each item.The integration with Bloomerang is crucial! It is the reason that we are using GiveButter. There are other good options out there, but they don't have the native integration.The Live Display feature is slick and will come in handy at live events for real-time updates.

For some reason, text will not format correctly in the Story section, especially when copying and pasting. I have been told by support that I need to manually type everything in versus copying and pasting. Bullets when formatting text don't work correctly either. This is a basic feature that must be corrected immediately.The ability to use discount codes on the registration page is pretty weak. Cannot...

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Thanks for sharing these thoughts, Nathan! We're always working to improve Givebutter and feedback from changemakers like you is the most important part of that process. I've added all your feedback to our roadmap so engineering can take it into consideration for our next updates.

It's free which is great for me because I work at a small nonprofit and we have a huge upswing in money coming in for our annual Fundraiser in August, then the rest of the year there is little activity. Paying for a product all year when it's really mostly used a few months out of the year didn't make sense. Givebutter being free is the biggest Pro!

It was little hard to import donors and I never figured out how to put in past donations to get our records all in one place, but I was able to tag people as having donated in the past so that worked well enough.

Thanks so much for buttering us up, Sara! We're glad you're part of the Givebutter fam. If you still want to import those historical donations, we recently added that ability. Here are directions for you! https://help.givebutter.com/en/articles/6934176-how-to-import-transactions

I love Givebutter, and I love that they are constantly adding new features each month based on current users' experience and suggestions. This platform has everything we were looking for: auctions, peer-to-peer fundraising, event tickets, and so much more!

With it being a newer platform, they are still adding features, so things that we used in our old platform is not hear. Like the ability to set up custom filters. We'd like to be able to find donors who have lapsed in giving and their last date of donation.

Oh my gosh, Michael! That's fantastic news that you've raised $75,000 with us at Givebutter. We are working on some filter updates. I'll drop a link here that explains more. We do have LYBUNT and SYBUNT built in; it sounds like that would be useful for you. https://help.givebutter.com/en/articles/5489011-how-to-filter-contacts-and-save-segments

Givebutter's customer service is probably my favorite, though a close second is the format of the dashboard and ease of use. I always receive a response from customer service within an hour or less when I've reached out, and I see consistent improvements being made from suggestions made by users. They really, really listen to what users are saying and implement solutions quickly!

The only function I dislike is in the auction feature, where it cannot be deleted from a campaign. We launched an auction on the wrong campaign by mistake and now it lives there indefinitely, without a way to remove. However, I'm confident Givebutter will update soon to fix this, as they always have a way of listening to the needs of their users and implementing solutions quickly.

Wow, Jennifer! Thank you for this detailed and complimentary review! We're so glad you're part of the Givebutter fam. That's a great suggestion to remove the Auction tab from the main campaign page if an auction is canceled. I've created a feature request for that - feel free to add your vote! https://community.givebutter.com/raise/p/if-an-auction-is-canceled-also-remove-the-auction-tab-from-the-campaign-page

The price is unbeatable — it’s free, other than fees that can be passed to the donor! Not only is it free, it’s intuitive and powerful. It’s better than some of the paid tools I’ve used. The customer service is fantastic and they are always adding new features. Free SMS?! Such a bargain and has been so useful to our organization.

The email functionality isn’t great because the email design/template isn’t very customizable. However, it’s great for just transactional emails, and anything more sophisticated I use another email platform for. I also wasn’t a huge fan of the way the plain donate forms looked, but they’re updating those too!

Thanks for sharing this great review and suggestions! We're always working to improve Givebutter and feedback from changemakers like you is the most important part of that process.

Works well for simple online donation tracking and follow up.

The Auction feature is a big bust and I dislike the use of the word "tipping" for donors.

Thank you for sharing this, Helen. We're always working to improve Givebutter and feedback from changemakers like you is the most important part of that process. You are always welcome to turn the tipping option off, although keeping that activated is what makes Givebutter free for you to use. I'm sorry to hear you were disappointed in auction. We continue to add improvements on a weekly basis. If there's something specific you would like to see addressed, feel free to drop us a message at support@givebutter.com

Recently started using the Givebutter platform. Found it pretty simple to learn. Customer service is very helpful on things that I got stuck on. I like that a donor can give in just about any form (even checks) possible and we can collect as much or as little information as we'd like. And I like the team effort.

Have to say that although I understand it takes money to make these platforms affordable for all to use, I don't like having that passed on to the donor. I do like however that we have the option to pay the fees or at least lessen them, although I certainly wish there were no fees at all.

Thanks so much for buttering us up! We're glad that Givebutter is easy for you to use.