Monthly GiveGab Product Updates – December 2020
The GiveGab team dedicates time every month to create impactful and robust additions to the GiveGab Fundraising Suite made available in our monthly product updates.
Let’s dive into some of the most notable updates made to our platform in December.
Giving Days
Giving Days are 24-hour (or longer!) digital fundraising challenges where organizations, schools, and hospital foundations can rally their supporters together to raise funds for different initiatives.
Free Agent Fundraiser Improvements
Giving Day partners with Free Agent Fundraisers enabled, have the opportunity to take P2P strategies and successes to the next level. Typically a peer-to-peer fundraiser is created by a supporter of a particular organization or fund to raise donations on their behalf. Following a similar concept, but on a larger scale, a Free Agent Fundraiser (FAF) is able to raise funds on behalf of the entire Giving Day. All donations made through the FAF’s profile will go towards the fundraiser’s total raised and will be highlighted accordingly.
It is important that the FAF’s profile represents all funds that were brought in directly from the fundraiser’s network. This allows the FAF to see the overall impact of their efforts, and allows you to better recognize their contribution to the overall success of the day. We commonly experience donors writing into GG Chat who want to give through a FAF but forget to delegate their donation to the fundraiser at the time the donation was made. It is also common that a donor may hear later on about a FAF created by a friend or family member that they would now like their donation to be designated to. New this month, our partners will easily be able to edit a donation that has already been made and attribute it to a specific Free Agent Fundraiser. This can be done directly from the Partner Dashboard allowing our Giving Day leaders to quickly make this edit at any time.
Mobile-Friendly Enhancements
At GiveGab, we pride ourselves on providing a platform that is completely mobile responsive to give the best user experience possible to those visiting on a mobile device. This is so important to us because we are seeing that over 50% of gifts are made on a smartphone or tablet. Our Giving Day partners keep their most important information in the menu of their site, and depending on the amount of information they need to share, the menu could appear lengthy on a mobile device. This could make it difficult for site visitors to find the specific piece of information they are looking for. The header menu on Giving Day sites will now be scrollable to accommodate long drop-down lists on mobile devices.
Customizability Added to Site Language
During your Giving Day, it is important to use language on your site that is familiar and resonates with your supporters. The language you use on your Giving Day also has a large impact on branding and how you promote the event. We have added more customizability to our peer-to-peer (P2P) features so that you may better represent the intent of these profiles. You are now able to make a site-wide change allowing you to use the word “Advocates” to represent those using P2P instead of the default “Fundraisers.” With this update, you will have more control over the look and feel of your site and use the terminology that makes the most sense for your day.
Accessibility Improvements
It is essential that our Giving Day sites are accessible to everyone. Giving Days were created to spread joy and support throughout your community or campus. We are constantly looking for accessibility improvements we can make to our sites to ensure that all can take part in these philanthropic movements. Updates this month include removing skipped headers, listing out the steps on the donation flow for screen readers, and having mobile pay appear as the first payment method if it is enabled.
Updates to Profile Redesign
In a previous Product Updates blog, we announced that our Giving Day profiles went through a redesign. With an updated and cleaner look, we are excited for the impact that organizations will be able to generate with the use of their new profiles, and the stories they will be able to tell. The position and size of the profile’s cover photo were changed in the redesign to fit our new styling. We have updated the aspect ratio of cover photos within the Giving Day dashboard to reduce the chance of images being cut off on different sized devices.
Platform-Wide Updates
Platform-wide updates refer to any changes made that apply to Community Giving, Giving Day, Crowdfunding, and Peer-to-Peer Fundraising functionality. These updates ensure that our platform remains robust and unified to create a seamless experience for all using GiveGab.
Donation Level Clarifications
Our donation levels available throughout GiveGab’s platform allow nonprofits and schools to visualize the impact that each gift will make. It is also an opportunity to showcase your organization’s story and mission. You can choose custom amounts, descriptive text, and photos to complete these levels. We often encourage those using Donation Levels to use custom amounts that are significant to the organization or that reiterate its needs. For example, if a nonprofit was founded in 1932 they might create a level using the donation amount of $19.32.
Our partners are able to set a minimum donation amount that applies to all participating organizations. Previously, organizations could still make any donation level amount despite the minimum donation allowed through their profile. New this month, organization administrators will now receive an error message with the minimum amount they may use when creating the level.
Verification Process Simplification
Many of our partners make the decision to fiscally sponsor the organizations or funds participating through their Philanthropy Hub, Community Giving, or Giving Day site. This means that rather than funds being transferred directly to the participants, they are first routed to the Partner, and then dispersed to the organizations. GiveGab’s secure verification process requires organizations to enter their EIN and bank account information before they are able to fundraise through our platform. The EIN is then run through an IRS status Audit and the bank information is vetted and approved through GG Pay. This is to ensure that only legitimate organizations are able to create an account with us, significantly reducing the chance for fraudulent activity.
When a participating organization is fiscally sponsored, they are not required to enter bank account information since the funds are not routed directly to them. Organizations are now able to enter an EIN without entering the bank info within the verification section of their dashboard. Those who only submit their EIN will still be vetted by GiveGab and run through our IRS status checker. If an organization is not fiscally sponsored, bank account information will be required in order to fundraise with GiveGab. Learn more about our verification process.
Philanthropy Hub
Be the philanthropic leader for your community by providing a centralized website that serves as a verified nonprofit directory for year-round awareness, engagement, and giving with Philanthropy Hub.
New Question Type Available
Within our Philanthropy Hub platform, you have the ability to add questions to your participating organization’s profiles. This could be any piece of information that you think is important to donors, grantmakers, or supporters who use your site to learn more about the organizations operating within your community. In a previous Product Update, we mentioned that we have been expanding the types of questions available to our partners such as multi-select. This month, we are excited to announce that we now support conditional questions. This means that an organization will receive varying questions based on how they answered a previous one.
For example, if you ask your organizations a single-select question of “Are you correctly looking for volunteers?” and they answer yes, they could be asked a follow-up question such as “How many volunteers are you looking for?” whereas those who answered “no” would not be promoted to answer the second question.
Organization Type Clarification
There are many different types of organizations that are able to fundraise on GiveGab through Philanthropy Hub (PH). We see everything from small volunteer-run nonprofits to chapters of larger national organizations. Within PH, an organization’s financial information is displayed within their profile. This information is automatically imported based on the EIN provided. When a chapter organization enters its national entity’s EIN, it can pull in financial information on the national level. This tends to not accurately reflect the information for the specific participating chapter.
Within the Partner Dashboard, there is now a “Chapter Organization” notation that can be marked. This new feature indicates that an organization is using an EIN that is not specific to them. This instructs the platform to not pull that EIN into our IRS importer that automatically displayed the information affiliated with it. This helps ensure that only accurate data is imported and that manually inputted financial information is not overridden.
GG Live
GG Live is GiveGab’s real-time virtual event dashboard, designed to take your Giving Day to the next level with live data, virtual interaction, and easy ways to give.
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