One of our Year End Wrap-up Blogs. Others include 2023 Year in Review, 2023 RunSignup Product Recap, 2023 GiveSignup Product Recap, 2023 TicketSignup Product Recap, 2023 Infrastructure Report, 2024 Company Strategy, 2024 RunSignup Roadmap, 2024 GiveSignup Roadmap, 2024 TicketSignup Roadmap.
Our GiveSignup 2023 Product Recap and 2024 Roadmap will focus on peer-to-peer fundraising. Since GiveSignup customers benefit from all of our platform enhancements, RunSignup, and TicketSignup updates, we will also link to those as they become available.
We will do about 2,000 software releases this year. This blog highlights key 2023 product releases that helped nonprofit events raise more money.
Peer to Peer Fundraising Features
We released a number of features to help nonprofits further customize their peer to peer fundraising events this year. Nonprofits can now display registration dollars in donation and fundraising goals. This is a great solution for any nonprofit event that wants to display the event’s combined revenue of registration fees + donations as the amount raised, as well as golf tournaments, stair climbs, and other P2P fundraising events that tend to have a higher registration fee that should count towards the fundraising minimum.
In addition to displaying registration amounts in donation and fundraising goals, there is now an option to include or exclude registration fee towards fundraiser minimums if your nonprofit enables auto-charge.
Some P2P events don’t want to accept general donations. Rather, they want to require that any donation is made to a fundraiser’s page. While we don’t recommend this setting since it could make donating more challenging, we’ve added an advanced option to require fundraiser selection when donating.
Managing fundraisers got easier with several updates to participant management pages. We added quick link options to edit a fundraiser’s individual page and add a manual donation to their fundraiser. We also now display the Team Fundraiser and ID (if the fundraiser is on a team) which also has a quick link to the team fundraiser page.
Fundraisers can now access links and QR codes for their fundraising pages to ask for donations in different ways.
Event Day
GiveSignup’s free mobile CheckIn App and full suite of Event Day tools are best-in-class for peer to peer fundraising events. More than 30,000 events use these tools to manage their events, from checking in participants and coordinating volunteers to assigning bibs and distributing swag to fundraising team captains. Unlike traditional nonprofit software like Classy, Donor Drive, and BlackBaud, GiveSignup’s EventDay tools are used at scale and purpose-built for nonprofit events.
The CheckIn App is highly configurable. Every event benefits from the hundreds of Event Day features we release each year. There are several features we added this year that specifically benefit P2P Fundraising events:
- Display fundraising data, including team fundraiser name, amount raised, fundraising goal, etc.
- Show fundraising team name in participant list
- Option to check-in all fundraising team members at one time, with options to collect waiver signatures and/or assign bibs for each member.
- Updates to GiveSignup’s free integrated Photos platform
Mobile-First Features
This year, event website traffic increased to 78% from mobile devices. More than 20% of carts check-out using Apple Pay. A mobile-first experience for peer-to-peer fundraising events is more important than ever before.
GiveSignup has always had a mobile-first approach to development, with every website, dashboard, and purchase optimized for mobile devices. In 2023, we added some key new mobile features:
- Apple Pay for both registration and donations, making it even faster and easier to sign up and donate.
- Apple Wallet so that participants can add their registration(s) to Apple Wallet, meaning QR codes and automated event reminders are even more available and automated. Plus we added an Apple Wallet Email Replacement tag so you can resend the option to add before the event.
- Click to Text Social Share, available on websites, registration confirmation pages, and fundraising individual/team pages.
Integrate GiveSignup P2P Event Data with CRMs and Donor Management Systems
In the past, nonprofits would choose to sacrifice P2P event technology that works for their event(s) in order to keep all their event data in their CRM. Early in 2023, we announced a new Zapier App that automatically pushes GiveSignup data to other CRM and donor management platforms nonprofits use. Some large nonprofits are using the GiveSignup Zapier App to integrate with their CRMs, including the DONNA Foundation, Pat Tillman Foundation, and Els for Autism Foundation.
GiveSignup partnered with Sidekick Solutions, a software consulting and integration developer, to provide a simpler option for integrating GiveSignup with a variety of other packaged applications without complicated programming. If your requirements require a custom solution, Sidekick Solutions can help with that as well. Contact Sidekick Solutions directly at sales@sidekicksolutionsllc.com
Just like the GiveSignup API, our Zapier app is available at no cost (Zapier fees may apply) and we will continue to invest in expanding it. Documentation on integrating GiveSignup to other applications can be found in our knowledge base.
Free Email Marketing for P2P Events
GiveSignup customers will send over 600 million Emails from GiveSignup’s free Email Marketing. Email V2 has been out for a year and there were many releases to enhance it this year including (but not limited to):
- Fundraiser Email Replacement Tags.
- Prebuilt Emails, including fundraising tips and donation appeals to save even more time when sending emails or setting up automated drip campaigns.
- Volunteer Communications fully integrated in Email V2, making GiveSignup’s free Volunteer platform even more powerful.
- Customizable Email Header and Footer settings.
- More Email Builder components to create beautiful emails, including 3 column layout, social media, and image grid.
- Automated Email Capture to get more contacts from website visitors.
- Share Email templates across events, perfect for nonprofits with multiple P2P events and/or locations each year.
- View Emails in browser, making it easy to share key Emails on social media or add to your website.
- Continual Email Deliverability enhancements to ensure your emails end up in inboxes.
Many nonprofits GiveSignup for event-specific communications. As we continue to release new features that make Email V2 a superior Email Marketing platform, we’ve seen more organizations cut their Mailchimp and Constant Contact costs by switching all of their Email Marketing to GiveSignup.
TicketSignup for Nonprofits
In 2023, we continued to see more nonprofits use TicketSignup to sell tickets and raise money for events beyond peer-to-peer fundraising. While GiveSignup and TicketSignup are the same platform and share many features like free Email Marketing, free Websites, shared Financials (your nonprofit can use the same payment account for both GiveSignup and TicketSignup!), and more, TicketSignup is purpose-built for ticket events and GiveSignup is purpose-built for peer-to-peer fundraising events. Examples of nonprofit events using TicketSignup include galas, golf tournaments, benefit concerts, conferences, beer and wine events, community festivals, and more.
More nonprofits continue to use TicketSignup for 3 primary reasons:
- One platform that’s purpose-built for events makes sense. Not only does it make financial reporting and reconciliation easy for nonprofits, but leveraging opportunities to cross-promote events helps nonprofits raise more and engage supporters. Plus GiveSignup’s Zapier App is available for tickets, again making integration with CRMs and DMS’s seamless across events..
- Option to collect one-time (and recurring) donations for ticket events. From a sticky Donate button to customizable donations in the ticket purchase path, TicketSignup is purpose-built for nonprofits. We also have advanced features like donation discounts – for example, make a tax-deductible donation and get $X/X% off your gala tickets.
- Eventbrite began charging for free events this year, in addition to continued price hikes. For the many nonprofits that have a mix of free and paid ticket events, this is no longer an affordable option. TicketSignup is always free – no subscriptions, no hidden fees, and no binding contracts.
Our GiveSignup Product Roadmap will be released shortly – we have a LOT of new P2P features coming soon!