“This Is Exactly What I’ve Been Looking For”
A nonprofit testimonial on upgrading to Give Lively’s free fundraising platform
Khalisa Jacobs, the Senior Director of Development and Communications of Break the Cycle, a nonprofit working to combat domestic violence, was skeptical when our team at Give Lively contacted her about another online fundraising platform. “I get five calls or emails like this a week, and I was like, ‘you’ve got to be kidding me. I don’t want to be talking to another sales rep!’”
“Once I was able to have a conversation with Give Lively’s [membership director] Jamie Feldman, though, I felt an automatic connection to Give Lively’s mission of helping organizations meet their objectives by providing free tech resources,” she says.
“Normally tech companies are focused on what they’re going to get out of nonprofits. They charge you this much for a package, then there are add-on costs later. That wasn’t the Give Lively approach. They came to me and said, ‘we think this will help you raise money, and it won’t cost you a thing’.”
She added, “When I first saw Give Lively’s platform, I thought to myself, ‘this is exactly what I’ve been looking for. It’s so sleek and intuitive. The impact stories were perfectly worded to match dollars to the cause. It just makes sense.”
Even better was the collaborative approach. “The team asked me at every turn whether the tech had what I needed, whether it was missing anything, and whether it suited my needs,” she says, noting, “that’s the way you want to walk into a partnership.”
When we showed Khalisa the first prototype, she said she wanted the ability to customize the donation amount options presented to donors. “Flexibility there was very important to me,” she says, “I might have said no without that ability, but the Give Lively team made it happen.”
Break the Cycle used a Give Lively fundraising page to raise hundreds of dollars during a two-week beta testing period, while our team stood by to ensure the donation process was flawless.
“The response time for things that weren’t working so well was super fast and effective, which is something we don’t always experience on the software side. Anytime we asked for something to be fixed, it happened much faster than expected.”
Khalisa also got a preview of our Nonprofit Member Portal, where nonprofit organizations can customize their fundraising page and access donor information. “When I saw the dashboard, it was exactly what I hoped it would be,” she says. She was most impressed by how flexible her organization’s fundraising page could be. “It’s easy for me; I can just plug in the information myself and the page is up and edited.
The donation results were extremely positive too. “A relatively high percent of people who beta tested the page ended up being monthly givers, and are still continuing with that,” she says.
Khalisa and her staff at Break the Cycle are excited to be part of shaping the future of online fundraising with this platform. “The test showed us that if you have a platform that’s easy for the user to interact with and looks professional, there’s no question your donations are going to go up.”
