Best tool for capturing guest credit card information and executing paddle raise

Lawrence Rush

Hi there,

What are others using to collect guest credit card information at event check-in? We're looking for a tool that can accomplish this and help us administer our paddle raise, live, and silent auctions. Are there any fully integrated Blackbaud tools?

Thanks in advance for the recommendations?

Kylea Johnson

@Lawrence Rush I use event.gives for all these features. They're working hard to improve the platform every year and the support is pretty good for it! It's integrated to RE NXT for some aspects. It can be a little buggy at times (as RE users we know all about that right!) but the interface is simple for users, and the back-end is pretty well thought out for admins IMO.

I'm going to keep plugging this product because I think it has a bright future and I need ya'll to get on board so it survives! ?

Edit: Oh and the pricing is really transparent so you can easily see if it's going to fit into your budget. You unlock extra features with flat fees, and this year they are allowing optional donor cover for platform fees and processing fees.

Carrie Aranda

@Lawrence Rush We use OneCause for all of our events and pay a flat rate for the year. Their merchant fees are not too bad and it is easy to move registration data from Raiser's Edge to OneCause by exporting from NXT and then importing into OneCause. We make sure to include there Constituent ID so that it is easy to use Importacular to bring back data into Raiser's Edge. It is not fully integrated but using the Importacular plug-in in database view allows for all of the transactions to be dropped into a batch, edited as needed and then approved.

We have also used GiveSmart in the past and it worked very similarly. We have enough events to justify the flat subscription rate and we don't bring their staff in to help. Our staff and volunteers do registration, monitor the auction and all of the other tasks. Both programs were easy to figure out and have great help menus.

Eniko Horvath

@Carrie Aranda Does Importacular work with GiveSmart too?

Carrie Aranda

@Eniko Horvath
Yes. The nice thing about Importacular is that it works with any csv/Excel file. All you have to do is export the information from GiveSmart or OneCause and then set up the import in Importacular. We simply use the free version to import constituent and gift data. I like it because it drops all of the transactions into a batch which allows us to edit and check them before committing. The import tool native to RE drops everything onto the record bypassing batch. We heavily rely on batch in our processes so Importacular works the best for us. There is a little bit of a learning curve to set up the import templates but it isn't too difficult.

Eniko Horvath

@Carrie Aranda Thank you!!!