Good Option for Mobile Bidding

Unbelievable support - like having three more employees pitching in.

The time saved with the OneCause product is really like having extra employees/volunteers. Can't imagine doing it without them.

Pros

The software did everything we needed it to and more - from selling tickets and foursomes to silent auction and day-of fixed price items...simple to implement and a nice customer facing mobile app. But what really makes the product different is the incredible support you get from their team. Regular check-in's and calls - by the time our event rolled around, they knew more about it than I did. Although it was my first year running the multi-day events, I felt extremely comfortable and confident due to the support I received from OneCause.

Cons

I have only one complaint, and that is that there's not great-looking templates for the landing pages, and when we built our own, it was kind of a process in that it has to be stored on a website rather than uploading to OneCause. I believe they're working on improving that.

User friendly and a must-have for large events

While the community was sure it wouldn't work for them, it did! The ease of bidding from anywhere you are and sharing the items with friends and family near and far is extremely beneficial. Our auction proceeds have nearly doubled since we started using Onecause to its full capacity.

Pros

I love the max-bids function. We try to push this out to our constituents so that they can attend and enjoy the evening without worrying about getting outbid.

Cons

Three suggestions: Be able to select who has to enter a credit card to bid and who doesn't. As a school we know almost everyone attending and some of our parents prefer not to enter a credit card up front. While some attendees are not known to us and requiring a credit card would be a must. Secondly, allowing for more than one photo upload would be great. The added URL option is wonderful, but it's sometimes not easy to find photos of items online, especially if they are one of a kind. Another suggestion: We use the Auction Catalogue as our displays at the event. It would be really great to single page display option for items that need to be highlighted. A larger picture or event logo at the top would add to it.

Event Management - Online auctions

OneCause has been very fair to work with. The teams they send to events are always hard working and well prepared and the customer service team is prompt and takes care of business.

Pros

It's very simple, but effective to manage. Check in, auction management, and fund-a-need are all very straight forward and user friendly.

Cons

The design of the pages are a little outdated. Adding graphics through Dropbox isn't the easiest and I wish the designs were more functional.

BIDPAL sold our not for profit a bill of goods and then failed to deliver!

Zero

Pros

The best thing I can say about this software is my login worked and that's about it!

Cons

Customer Service was horrible. We got passed around from one person to the next and then was told that the program would have to be 'worked around' costing my volunteers valuable time to get what we were told we would have from the software. Our guests at our fundraisers complained constantly about the software and the onsite representative did NOTHING to step in and assist. When asked for a pro-rated refund mid year because the software was handicapping our events, we were told simply no. Thanks for nothing BIDPAL!

Proves Tools for Success

OneCause has been an overall positive addition to our fundraising toolkit. They provide immediate support when needed.

Pros

OneCause provides the tools including a knowledge base and customer success managers to ensure your event goes off without a hitch.

Cons

The OneCause software is split between BidPal and P2P. The P2P is a lot more modern and has a sleek design. The BidPal software could greatly benefit from an upgrade with a more intuitive and user-friendly backend.

St Paul Oktoberfest review

First time I used it. THe former user helped me a lot and so did Sara from OC and the support team.

Pros

Easy to use. Great support. I just started at my job here at the church and school and most of it was set up already, since we did a lot of the same things from the last auction, which made it easy to transition.

Cons

Too many moving parts and seems we have to enter info in several places, and too many steps on some tasks.

very helpful

Pros

Text messaging system helps enage attendees prior to the event

Cons

no mass delete button for the duplicates added accidentally

OneCause - OnePurchase

Over the past two years, we've had a great experience with OneCause. We loved our day-of team - their help and expertise was invaluable during the event.

Pros

The silent auction management feature is why we purchased the software.

Cons

We will always do ticketing through our website, but it would be great to integrate that info into OneCause somehow. It would certainly save me a few steps.

User Friendly for NPO and Donors

The more we use it, the better it gets.

Pros

The analytics are great. The number and types of reports is incredible.

Cons

Ability to upload more photos per item without having to use URLs, the option to keep an auction item open when bidding activity is high, ability to select supporters to import instead of the current process.

Great Experience with OneCause

Overall, a great experience.

Pros

Easy to use and great customer service. Whenever I have a issue I call and the customer service team is right on it and fixes it immediately.

Cons

Sometimes pulling the reports can be a challenge.

It'll Get the Job Done

I would say that overall the end-user experience has been good with minimal complaints and confusion. The back-end for these systems is very confusing and takes a lot of technology understanding, Googling, calling the help center, and trial and error. There was a lot of frustration in our office as we navigated setting up the system (both years, because we unfortunately had to learn an entirely new system this year from the one we learned last year). I am so glad the events went well and the end-users were pleased with the experience, but the set-up was definitely hard to navigate. I hope the new VEC is more set-up friendly, and will integrate more of the OneCause products into one location.

Pros

The end-user experience was seamless and fairly easy to navigate. Our donors were impressed and excited about the interactivity and the ability to participate in the silent auction and get reminders right on their phones. We hosted an event last year in-person and used the Mobile Bidding Software for our silent auction, and our revenue was significantly increased because of the engagement. We then used the Virtual Event Software for an entirely virtual event this year including a silent and live auction and appeal. The engagement was great, and our live auction went far better than expected.

Cons

The fact that the Mobile Bidding Software (MBS) and the Virtual Event Center (VEC) do not integrate and the VEC was still under construction make it hard to leave a review for what I liked least. But in terms of the MBS; the software is not very intuitive and there are a lot of areas where I didn't like having to duplicate my process (like in the item vs. package). The reports you could run at the end using the MBS were really helpful, but the VEC had hardly any options for reporting and we had to create a lot of our own reports, which was incredibly time consuming. The lack of ticketing functionality in the VEC led us to use the MBS for ticketing only and then we had to comp every single ticket individually because the VEC did not allow us to upload a csv file for all of our comped tickets. There are a lot of pieces that can be improved in the VEC but they are planning to improve them as they continue to build the software. More knowledge about the system in the "help center" and "knowledge bank" would have been really great.

Worked for us

Overall this worked great for our annual fundraiser. We are looking forward to using it again for next year's fundraiser in a (hopefully) hybrid in person and online event!

Pros

It's fairly easy to use overall. We used this for one large event and it saved so much time doing some things on here that we would have otherwise done manually!

Cons

While some features are user friendly, the design component of the event isn't as easy. It's actually kind of of a pain to upload pictures and format your actual site. I would have expected it to be easier based on the webinars I'd attended and conversations with the host.

Excellent product

We lost many in-person fundraising opportunities with Covid and this has been the perfect pivot. While first holding only virtual fundraisers, we have been able to do a hybrid one as well as a silent auction. Going forward, the hybrid option seems to be the best choice for us, as our members are worldwide and this can be open to every one of them.

Pros

During Covid, it was critical to pivot from in-person fundraising to virtual fundraising and I learned about OneCause from my son's school fundraiser. The program was easy to learn and we've progressed from virtual only to hybrid fundraising and also held a silent auction. We have converted another department to also use the program and had two different fundraisers happening at the same time.

Cons

Our members are international. My own department only works with members in the United States, but when bringing this to other departments in the company we ran into difficulties with members outside the U.S.; however customer support has been awesome and helps walk us through everything when these issues arise.

OneCause offers a complete fundraising toolkit!

One Cause's greatest asset is their people. The One Cause personnel is friendly, helpful and knowledgeable. It was a pleasure working with every OneCause representative that I encountered.

Pros

Software is easy to use and the tutorials are very helpful. OneCause has a complete suite of tools to make event management and fundraising a breeze.

Cons

I wish it offered the user the ability to be more visual. I wish that One Cause offered an online market that anyone could utilize to bid on auction prizes or to show their generosity and support.