Greater Giving Reviews & Product Details

Greater Giving is an easy fundraising tool. When I encounter something I have trouble with - setting up webpage or other technical things the Tech Support can always walk me through it an help! Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Would like the webpage to be easier to set up. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The webinars! They're so helpful! I watched so many of them to learn how to navigate the software and I loved having them all right there when I needed to go back and do something again. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

During our silent auction some of our winning bidders got a notification that they had been outbid. Since they didn't think they won they left the event. We then had to call and tell them they won and find a time to get their items to them. W Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

How much the staff is willing to help out when you have issues or need guidance on how to do something. For the most part, it is easy to figure out on your own. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Had some issues with duplicated charges for our event and it was taking a while to get resolved, but once we got someone to reach out it was resolved quickly. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The website is easy to work with and understand. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Have not found anything as of yet. If you can not figure it out they are there to help you. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

We love how user friendly it is. And also the support we receive when we have a question. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

We would like to see better integration with our primary CRM. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The most helpful thing about GG is the reporting of all sales and RSVPs. I have used spreadsheets previously in capturing sponsorships and RSVPs and doing table assignments. The system is set up to help you do this and certain reports make the job easy. It takes time, but it was amazing and accurate when complete. I also loved how pretty everything is....the platform is glossy, professional looking and intuitive. Overall pretty user friendly. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

My least favorite aspect of GG is having a silent auction only available online. These are my issues:

1. When guests walk into an event, once they get through registration, most prefer not to have to spend more time, especially on the phone, creating a login and pw to bid.

2. The login process is cumbersome (as it would be for anything), but on top of that, we have been to 3 events that use GG, and GG remembers our email address, but expects us to remember our password (who remembers those?), or to set up a new one, which my husband and I both tried to do and it kept spitting us back out to either "forgot your password?" or a previous GG event, NOT the one we were attending in that moment. We almost didn't bother trying to bid because it was such a pain. We tried again, working off our registration welcome link (vs the link that had been shared pre-event) and it finally worked.

3. People 60 and over. many of whom have the deeper pockets, don't like or trust online giving.

4. When I personally attend a social function, I want to visit and interact, either with my plus one, or with other guests. I don't like being glued to my phone to shop or keep bidding on the silent auction. I also like the actual pen and paper aspect of a silent auction because you can see who you're bidding against and that's part of the entertainment for some.

5. All of the silent auctions I have been to that used this had issues when you got "to the end" of the auction items, it takes a few seconds to refresh to see the next section of items (like you used to get to the end of Facebook and have to refresh, especially with bad wifi). The problem is if you don't know there are more items, you might not wait that few seconds; you just assume you're at the end. This was especially frustrating in one venue, where we had great wifi, but slow refresh. Several of our items at the end had very low winning bids because not everyone saw them. We learned this because people were looking for a certain item, and complained that it wasn't on there.

6. When you get outbid, you are texted with the # of the auction item, but no description. If you have bid on a lot of items, and are interrupted by people, food or program, you have NO IDEA what you got outbid on. It's overwhelming, you skip it and when everyone does that, fewer bids happen.

Solutions:

1. Login process could/should be simplified.

2. Either remember us from event to event or delete all logins and pw post-event, so you have to start fresh at every event.

3. I'm not sure this problem is solvable.

4. Can you figure out a way to accommodate online and paper silent auction bidding seamlessly? I bet it can be done!

5. This particular problem made me very frustrated with GG. More so than with the login. Especially since we had good wifi.

6. Can name of package be included with the package # in the text that says you've been outbid? Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I can manage my auction, ticketing, seating chart, donations and sponsorships in one platform that is web based and offers an online auction platform. I have used Auction Tracker paired with a mobile bidding supplier and it was unwieldy and a pain to transfer over right before the auction. I have used Raisers Edge Events module for ticketing and sponsorships and would prefer to use that but they do not offer an auction component and so we made a conscious decision to use Greater Giving even though I have to do a lot of transferring of information into Raisers Edge after the event. Customer service through chat is great and very helpful if I have an issue. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The learning curve is very steep with Greater Giving bc as a database it has some significant idiosyncrasies that if you do not know about them ahead of time you can make some serious mistakes in setting up your auction/gala. I am not a web designer so my event websites tend to look rather plain compared to the sample ones. They are functional. The reporting is not ideal because in order to import my guest list and who actually attended/checked in into Raisers Edge I had to use two different exports and combine them with a vlookup. I do use the recommended reports but I also wish that I could get information just in CSV format instead of a Crystal Reporting type of formatting even with an excel export. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Greater Giving is incredibly user-intuitive. When I'm training volunteer teams, I know it's just going to take a few minutes to get them up to speed on event night. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The back-end could use a little more customization abilities, but generally it does all I need it to do. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I've been using GreaterGiving for years and wouldn't use anything else for our events! It's the most user friendly, great customer service too. The ability to swipe credit cards and pair them with bidder numbers is essential to a smooth event. The reports, the pre-made forms, all the guides - SO helpful! Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I really can't think of anything that isn't working well. If I can't figure something out, I just chat or call customer service and always get help quickly. Maybe improve the functionality of some things like silent auction signs so they could be edited to add graphics. That's the only improvement I can think of! Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I love that Greater Giving has full capabilities for events including taking payments, entering sponsorship info, seating capabilities, etc. and it is user friendly for the most part. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I would say the downside is that it can be difficult to do the back end of websites and I wish they had more user friendly templates. Other than that it would be helpful if is was also a full CRM with other features as well. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.