Bonterra Network for Good offers a nonprofit fundraising suite of applications, with donor management features like intelligent tracking of donor readiness and targeted messaging.
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GiveSmart
Score 6.9 out of 10
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GiveSmart, a Community Brands company, offers a full-service event management platform supporting event website, event registration, attendee tracking, donor management and data insights, and full customer service for entities wishing to raise funds via an auction or charity event. The platform also integrates technology from Community Brands brand Gesture to provide a comprehensive suite of services.
GiveSmart replaces the former 501 Auctions, a platform to support charity auctions, mobile…
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Pricing
Bonterra Network for Good
GiveSmart
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Bonterra Network for Good
GiveSmart
Free Trial
Yes
No
Free/Freemium Version
No
No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No
No
Entry-level Setup Fee
$500
Optional
Additional Details
Pricing is based on how many contacts are imported into the Donor Management System. All packages have unlimited users, unlimited campaigns, unlimited peer-to-peer pages, unlimited emails and communications, and optional events and auctions. All packages also include support and data migration.
I used Network for the Good to run a fundraising event it was awesome. My organization is part of a larger regional non-profit dedicated to servicing those in our community who need a little help. By banding together under a larger regional organization, we can extend our impact through the utilization of Network for the Good across all associated organizations. It empowers smaller groups to have a larger impact on their community.
GiveSmart definitely works for large in-person ticketed events which also involve auctions, paddle raises, and more. The workflow is relatively easy for guests, and especially for volunteers. We especially like how quickly you can add paddle raise donations to specific people's paddle numbers because it allows us to track in real time. The seating functionality has some odd quirks, but overall it works. We opted not to use it for our main donation capture organization-wide because it doesn't look as professional, nor is it as customizable, as some other options on the market.
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.
Every organization you enter has to have a point of contact with their email address listed. The point of contact also has be entered separately as an individual. If you use “email all” to your donor list, the contact gets emailed twice. This seems like it would be easy to prevent in the system but it’s currently not possible.
Event ticketing is extremely limited unless you pay significantly more as an add-on. This should be included as a default feature.
Emails sent through the system can end up in spam filters. Given how much email gets sent through their system, they should find a way to overcome that.
The distribution reports do not separate what campaign the transactions were for.
Revenue reports do not clearly state the CC fees for each transaction, which requires manual calculations.
We could not change the item a transaction was billed to if it was wrong. For example, if a donor made a restricted donation but was labeled unrestricted, we were told there was no way to correct it, so we had to keep track of those changes on the side.
We are still learning and rebuilding our nonprofit using this platform, so this year is a trial run to see how we can increase our network and our donations. So long as we are able to see a significant return on investment in terms of donations received through the platform, we will renew for next year.
For the most part, we are very satisfied with GiveSmart. There are some additional functions we'd like to see it have and GiveSmart has been responsive in the past to add new features that nonprofits are looking for. Their support teams and account representatives are very friendly and helpful. The ease of their system allows a competent person to enter the data and create campaigns without having to have much technical knowledge.
BGF is an easy-to-use platform for entering, editing, and analyzing customer or donor data and giving. I would highly recommend it to any organization looking to improve its customer relationship management functionality. As a previous user of different CRM platforms with other non-profits, BGF has made tracking donor information and communicating with donors much easier.
For the most part, GiveSmart serves our organization's needs for creating fundraising forms. It is especially useful for our peer-to-peer fundraising and event planning and registration efforts. The dashboard is relatively intuitive, and there have been improvements in creating forms and managing campaigns since shifting from Mobile Cause to GiveSmart Fundraise.
In 5+ years we have never had an issue with it not working when we needed it to. It is very reliable and doesn't seem to have a lot of bugs or interruptions in service.
We never experienced any issues with outages, the system being down, etc. It's extremely reliable. That's very important when you're dealing with financial and personal information! We want to make it easy for people to give, and it's great that we've never had to worry about service issues making that more challenging/
It is always fast for us and reports have a very quick upload time. We don't integrate it into other programs so I'm not 100% sure about that, but it always works when we use it and is very reliable. Even when we run Excel files for complete information on donors, it always works very fast.
We haven't had any issue regarding performance or reliability with GiveSmart. We don't integrate it with any other software so that issue isn't relevant. The pages load quickly and reports are completed almost as soon as you hit the "run" button. Overall, the system works as designed and is pretty quick when people use it.
Most of the time they are quick and friendly and help me resolve any issues. There have only been a couple of times that we couldn't find a resolution and I was just told that NFG didn't have that capability.
When I did have to reach out for support it was not always easy to get ahold of anyone to help. There were also times when I did get help where I struggled to understand and be understood. Not a language barrier, but more of a not understanding what my problem was. I am not sure if it was a problem on my end or on theirs, maybe both, lol
GiveSmart provides great training videos on their system. Not everything is covered with their videos but their support staff are very friendly and knowledgeable. I would have given them a ten but not everything is covered in their videos and sometimes you have to find the right word to search for in able to find the right training video.
We only had one hiccup with the domain that was an issue on our end but NFG struggled to help us. It was finally resolved and we've been good ever since
We just made the change using the band-aid approach. In other words, we just went for it and taught the users how to do it at our first event and went from there. 90-95% of people haven't used a mobile bidding software so most everyone was on the same stage of knowledge so implementing it was easy as people didn't have to re-learn anything.
Givebutter is not as user friendly, even though it is fairly easy to use. Bonterra Network for Good has many of the same options for running donor campaigns but goes beyond in data tracking and user friendliness. Bonterra Network for Good is extremely easy to learn. The only downside is the cost factor.
We used DonorPerfect and Handbid in the past and they lacked all the features we needed and their customer support was insufficient. The user experience on these platforms was always a challenge. GiveSmart is more streamlined and we have had better customer support when we run into issues.
We originally used it only for philanthropy and now our Outreach team is using it for newsletters, our Advocacy uses it for volunteers and tracking, and our Volunteer Coordinator puts in volunteer hours and in-kind donations.
For what GiveSmart is designed to do, the software works excellently. We haven't found something GiveSmart cannot do when it is used as designed. However, when GiveSmart is tried to be used as a total CRM, it doesn't do that but that is okay as it wasn't designed to be a total CRM but rather a mobile bidding software.
Our donors always want an easy method to donate before, during, and after our event—GiveSmart definitely gives them that flexibility.
Retaining the information that GiveSmart allows us is important, especially when we compile statistics and reports based on what was processed through our GiveSmart event site.
