Giveffect

Pros

I found Giveffect in an online search when I took the new role of Director for Institutional Advancement at Los Angeles Community College District. In my role, I serve as the Executive Director for the non-profit auxiliary Foundation for the Los Angeles Community Colleges. Giveffect has been a life saver. It is easy to use and I love that the software has email capability, online giving, relationship management tracking and great reports.

Cons

The main downside it that at the basic price level, I don't have access to many of the other great processes. Wealth screening for example. I also wish the Spark Post was integrated a little better. It works well but requires signing into two accounts to manage.

Pros

We have been with GivEffect from the very beginning in 2015. We took a leap of faith with the platform and have had the opportunity to see it grow over the past 5 years from a simple software to something much more robust that more than fulfills our organizational needs. We are most impressed by the CRM and peer-to-peer fundraising features. With the CRM, there is so much capacity customization, automation, and segmentation. The peer-to-peer fundraising also allows great flexibility and automation all while still aesthetically pleasing and user-friendly.

Cons

The email WYSIWIG (what-you-see-is-what-you-get) email editor is lackluster but it's understandable as GivEffect is not an email platform. I anticipate that they will make make the editor more customizable in the future.

Pros

This software is easy to use, intuitive, and the knowledge base and on boarding are well done. After orientation and with the help of customer support, our team quickly got a handle on our average tasks. The CRM features are very easy to get at a glance overviews of donors & I feel that we have a better handle on our prospecting since switching to this software.

Cons

The data migration progress for us was glitchy in our membership. Their automation was one of the reasons we wanted to switch, however, their automation when it doesn't work correctly can be a nightmare. During migration, their system encountered a glitch that ended up emailing over 700 donors with information about their membership expiring, even when it wasn't. While you're given a 2 week review to make sure your data is correct, it is useless if something like this happens as the database is "live" and will communicate with donors for a glitch like this.

Our other issue is the membership module is quite basic and does not meet our needs. During our trial, we asked our sales rep about membership tiers to address the issue and she believed it was an easy fix. When we got to our transition in June, we questioned work arounds with our client success team. For 5 months, we have been chasing them down for answers. Their client success team and a separate feedback team keep promising that product team is working on a fix and deadlines pass with no communication and no fix. They have actively ghosted us on the issue now and it is appalling. They were promoted as incredibly responsive and were until we encountered a problem and now it just feels like we are being strung along for the duration of our 1st year contract. While software problems are to be expected the lack of customer service is awful and our biggest issue with this system.

Pros

I started used Giveffect with the start of a new job and was basically on my own to "get up to speed" and use the software optimally. It is really intuitive in its design and after viewing the relevant training videos, I was able to apply it's use to my daily workflow. For the first time, the branch I was working for was able to have volunteers sign up online, check in and out on an iPad, and have their hours tracked in real time. Anytime I needed a little help, the customer service team was available through the "Chat" feature and incredibly responsive and patient.

Cons

Honestly, I have suggested several changes or additions and often they implement the change with their next update. They are very open to suggestions and adopt them! Amazing!

Pros

Creating online events is a breeze and looks great! With our old software, we had to pay per online event and the process is antiquated. With Giveffect we can have an idea and create a page for it in no time at all!

Cons

Cutsomizing emails and landing pages is not very user friendly.