I love the software, I run an event entirely on my own each year & the platform is so user-friendly

Pros

When publishing prizes on line, the system guides you through and explains what each question means. It's very user friendly

Cons

I had a lot of trouble this year loading pictures to illustrate my items. I've never encountered so many error messages as I did this year!

The Ronald McDonald House in Baltimore, actually the one and only RMH in the State of Maryland, is hosting its first 5K event next month. This is the first time we have used fundraising software for an event. We researched a couple of different software packages prior to choosing FirstGiving. Based on the feedback we received from our event participants, the software has been very easy to use, which is very important to our Charity. We wanted to choose software that people would be willing and able to set up on their own. Our success and experience with FirstGiving has been great! One of the criteria in selecting fundraising software for our Charity was support; what type of support would be offered and at what level? Well, we are pleased to pass along that FirstGiving has EXCEEDED every expectation in terms of support and response to our questions! From day one to now (one month prior to our event) Nick and Camille in the Support Center have not only answered every question I called or emailed about, but they did so quickly and kindly. There was never a time when I was apprehensive about contacting them. One of the key aspects to a successful event is support and making sure that everyone involved with the event has a good experience. For our 5K, the capability of online registration and online fundraising was the key to raising key dollars to benefit the care of the Ronald McDonald House families. We are so excited about our 5K and looking forward to Race Day on April 15th. We would strongly recommend using FirstGiving as fundraising software; we are totally hooked and will continue to branch out and use this software in helping our Ronald McDonald House raise support in the future! Thank you FirstGiving, but a BIG THANKS to Nick and Camille for doing such a great job everyday in helping people and organizations like the Ronald McDonald House produce successful events!

Falling Down In Service

I have had to complain twice about the same technical issue. The problem takes weeks to get fixed. People don't call back when they say. I won't use them again after this year unless I see noticeable changes.

Pros

Relatively easy to use and ability to generate reports. The money easily transfers into my account; no issues with that.

Cons

Some parts of the interface don't work and it takes weeks for the company to fix. Only three customer service people tend to the entire country; very poor efficiency.

I've used this for a while and it is okay. I don't always get a response from customer support.

Pros

It's low cost, it was easy to put the donate widget on our website, you can store a fair amount of information in donor profiles.

Cons

Lack of customization options in the giving form, when downloading donations to GiftWorks, the memorial/honorarium fields do not format correctly, when using SmartEntry you can't include campaign information for donations. I have also at times gotten no response from customer support or had support that was completely unhelpful.

I was a consultant for Giftworks desktop, which is now Panorama and in the cloud.

A fully functional system for a small nonprofit. The capabilities include the ability to manage volunteers, which is unusual for this level of software. Also, the ability to push a lot of the work to the constituents, so the need for back-end data input is greatly reduced. This is especially a benefit for a small agency.

Pros

They have been able to reproduce the excellent, user friendly software that was on the desktop and put it in the cloud. This is not easy to do. I have not implemented the new software but I do have a copy of it and have played with it a lot. One of the things they are conscious of is the ability to have the constituents access the software and have donations, events, and memberships done online, which many others have not been able to do. I always felt that the desktop version was easy to implement and use. There are enough ways to customize the end user experience that accommodate a lot of needed customizations but not so much that the software couldn't be implemented without a lot of customizing, which makes it great for a small organization, which was Giftworks' strength.

Cons

Because of what makes the software good, also makes it limiting for many users who require a lot of configuration. There are some very sophisticated systems that would be more suited for that type of need.