Panorama Reviews

Good Product for Mid-Sized Private Schools

Pros:

Product is easy to use and tech support is quick to respond with helpful information.

Cons:

This product is great and I really can’t think of anything I like least about it.

Fundamentally Sound

Comments: Panorama was originally our second choice because of the interface, but their robust platform passed our stringent IT security certification process. The functionality was great for both users and admins, with a few features that we would like to see improved such as automatic sales tax calculations based on shipping address for online orders. Customer support was top-notch before, during, and after our event. We weren't sure the platform would work as well as it did for a for-profit firm like ours since it's largely used by non-profits for fundraising, but there were no issues at all. Very reliable and mostly intuitive. They have ample documentation, help videos, and great support. We added premium support since it was our first time using it and I would recommend that for large events. Aside from the older looking web templates, and export-based reporting, I'd give Panorama an A- on their auction solution.

Pros:

Secure and stable platform, customer support, online auction capability, overall value

Cons:

Antiquated reporting, web templates are outdated, lack of truly responsive design for various devices, jumping between private/public auctions caused some confusion

Online Auction review

Pros:

Ease of use and fluidity from year to year. Ability to move information over to new years.

Cons:

Mobile interface. Customer service is difficult to get in touch with in many instances but I’ve seen a recent improvement

Great Product & Customer Service!

Comments: We have used Panorama for years for our online Auction needs, have worked with [sensitive content hidden] for several years and have truly felt very supported in this process.

Pros:

Bidding for Good and the ease of the platform for our online auction needs. [sensitive content hidden] were also excellent support for our school.

Cons:

This is small but when I uploaded images to auction items I found oftentimes that I would upload vertically but the image would switch horizontally. It was small and a minor inconvenience.

Good system but difficult to remedy certain quirks such as backing system up

Pros:

Pros are the efficiency of the program.Con is that it’s hard to buy a printer that prints receipts associated with the page size of the receipt we use.Hard for me to understand how best to backup our dats

Cons:

As stated above, it’s hard to find a comparable printer and backup my data

Using Panorama/Bidding for Good for Our Online Auction

Comments: Our online auction is our biggest fundraiser of the year. Using Bidding for Good which is a trusted platform for bidders has helped us achieve our fundraising goals.

Pros:

Bidding for Good is easy to use and looks nice to the end user. One of the best features is the ability to copy over previous donated items and revise for the current year. Since we have been using Bidding for Good for over 10 years this saves me a lot of time.

Cons:

I wish you could speak to customer service on the phone instead of just via email.

All Digital Fundraising Event

Comments: Great experience in running an all digital fundraising event.

Pros:

The most impactful features of the product I found the most useful in pivoting from paper in running a silent auction was to use the online bidding to attract guests to purchase tickets online.

Cons:

Unable to readily talk to a human unless the service to do so was bought. And the turnaround time to respond to online request for info was typically greater than 24 hours.

Nonprofit

Comments: Over good

Pros:

I like the look and the overall concept

Cons:

That I couldn’t have a button for sponsorship That I couldn’t stop the early bird shirt order without erasing all the data

Awful! Declined over the years!

Comments: We paid $600 for this service for the fourth year in a row, and now we can't set up our event or reach a real person to help us. I'll look to sue the company for our money back if we can't get the help we need. This is the last time we will ever use Firstgiving/Panorama. Awful company. Too bad. It used to be good.

Pros:

This service has declined over the years. Customer support is virtually unreachable.

Cons:

The new interface is not stable with Safari. Trying to log into our platform with Chrome and Firefox and can't log-in. When you try to reset your password a "page does not exist" message pops up.

We wanted to move to the Cloud version but the feature we needed membership was available

Comments: We used the desktop version for 7 years to manage donors, donations, memberships, classes and events

Pros:

Nothing, we wanted to move to the version but the features we needed were never converted. We asked numerous times when membership would be available and never heard back.

Cons:

Didn't convert the features were needed to the new version and no one could give us any idea when the features would be available. We converted to NeonCRM

Stay Away!

Comments: Created far more problems than it solved. I should have backed out of the contract within weeks of signing it.

Pros:

Rumor has it that the server-based GiftWorks was a solid and useful product. Not the Cloud version. What I liked was that by migrating to GW I was able to regain (from a GW file in our own electronic archives) 15 years of donor history that my predecessor abandoned when he transitioned to a different product.

Cons:

Everything! Endless "known bugs" that weren't scheduled for fix. A tech support team that, while awesomely kind, also appears to have been trained to "resolve" issues by postponing the solution. Having zip codes and state codes randomly disappear from my records. Having it "integrated" with a peer-to-peer product that has a different default Constituent name protocol, so every single individual who was uploaded from that product generated a new record -- most of them duplicates.

2022 Ride

Pros:

URL assignment to registered riders helps

Cons:

The software is not user friendly for the lay person.

Unhappy user

Comments: We were using Giftworks Anywhere, but after pressure from sales switched to the cloud based app. They assured me the functionality would be the same or improved. This was BS. I wish now we had stayed with Anywhere...at least that was functional. Customer service is terrible. I've been trying to get their help since February and they haven't solved anything. It's going to be a real pain to switch software, but I'm out of options.

Pros:

I like the interface and the tools. Would be great if things worked properly.

Cons:

Smartlists are non-functional. They just issued a bug fix and now I'm getting duplicate entries! They take forever to load. You can't run a report from a smartlist or make a graph like before. You have to export it as an excel file or pdf, it doesn't give you an option for portrait or landscape, or show dollar amount TOTALS!

I've used this for a while and it is okay. I don't always get a response from customer support.

Pros:

It's low cost, it was easy to put the donate widget on our website, you can store a fair amount of information in donor profiles.

Cons:

Lack of customization options in the giving form, when downloading donations to GiftWorks, the memorial/honorarium fields do not format correctly, when using SmartEntry you can't include campaign information for donations. I have also at times gotten no response from customer support or had support that was completely unhelpful.

Giftworks

Comments: If I was starting out I would not choose this software. I feel stuck because I have been with them so long and have a large amount of info that would have to be moved if/when I move to another software.

Pros:

I like the desktop version very much. It is easy to use and learn. It has all the reports and fields that I need.

Cons:

The cloud version was released before it was ready and it is a train wreck. Many important features are not working yet.

Great software, but needs some fine tuning

Comments: The overall experience has been positive and does help us keep track of our donor database and donor amounts, which will help us create a capital campaign and other fund-raising opportunities.

Pros:

I like the setup and ease of entry of donor information and tracking how much donors give.

Cons:

Not very intuitive to use and creating thank you letters is not the easiest process. User documentation and support could be better.

Comments: We at Junior Achievement of the Upper Midwest have been using FirstGiving for the last few years for our biggest fundraiser, bigBowl. This is personally my first year running the event and I have been nothing but impressed with the support provided by FirstGiving. The bigBowl event has increased this year and we have over 3,000 bowlers. With the 3,000 bowlers come plenty of questions, which come through me, and I pass them along to the FirstGiving support team. I am beyond impressed by how quickly they answer my questions and make adjustments for our bowlers. Not only are they very timely (most of the time within a few hours), but also they are extremely polite. Even after the second or third email request I send to them on any single day, they have continued respect for the easiest question. I never feel like my questions are irrelevant. The support team helps me learn more about the program, which I am very thankful for. With the support of the FirstGiving staff and our increased knowledge of the site, we have increased our fundraising greatly from this time last year. I can't thank the support team and out account leader, Lucas, enough for all of their help in making the fundraising process VERY easy. THANK YOU!

Comments: I have been working with FirstGiving fundraising pages since 2004 when it was still named Justgiving, was still centralized in the UK, and was fairly new to the U.S. market. Online fundraising was in the infancy stages and we needed a way to do this without investing time and capital in building and maintaining our own system. FirstGiving was the answer for us. There have been many reasons why we "stuck" with Firstgiving over the years. The webpages are easy to build. The cost is minimal compared to other online fundraising pages we investigated. The donor data was secure. We did not have to deal with any credit card information. We would get a check every month from the active pages we had available. FirstGiving had a strong customer service and support staff. Most of the time, they were quick to answer my frantic calls. FirstGiving's pages were not set up to make it easy for them, but with the potential donor in mind. They were always asking the question, "What will encourage this person to give?" That made sense to us, but we really liked was the option for each donor to make a comment on the page that showed their support for the fundraiser. That's huge! Thanks, FirstGiving!

Giftworks has been a very good fit for our small non-profit: cost wise, ease of use, and features.

Comments: Great way to keep up with donors, current and potential.

Pros:

The ease of entering data and the connection to Mail Chimp are the most important features for us. The simple ways to pull and query data also rank high.

Cons:

Some of the terminology is hard to understand and the documentation doesn't always clarify it. We're using the Membership module and would like to move to the Cloud version when it's available.

Friendly and accessible service

Comments: Streamlining donation requests.

Pros:

I liked the ease of use and setup, as well as the transparency and accessibility of the support staff.

Cons:

Would have preferred a little more customization - many of the fields were fixed.

Good Value!

Comments: Straightforward and uncomplicated but has a lot of really great layer of information. It's the little things that make it easier to use, such as emailing a data pull directly and volunteer hour tracking, that make this a good product. My only real complaint was the fact that it wasn't cloud-based...until NOW.

Inexpensive alternative for donor managment

Pros:

Inexpensive, not complicated, importing and exporting is easy

Cons:

Runs slow with large merge mailings, need to separate and/or pull into word

Easy to Learn, Use and Manage.

Comments: We began using GiftWorks in 2009. We are an older, established agency and needed to upgrade from a database that had been created by a volunteer who no longer worked with us. We needed a fresh start. GiftWorks gave us that and more. We love its ease of use and the smartlists and reports we can generate so easily and quickly. Fundraising databases for small nonprofits need to be very user friendly since most agencies with less than a million dollar budget require employees to wear many hats. We see GiftWorks as a strong partner for us. Support has always been available when needed. We hope GiftWorks maintains what drew us to this company in the first place...trust in the software and reasonable pricing. Thank you.

Giftworks is pretty bad

Pros:

It was easy enough to cancel our subscription and it was easy enough to export our data out of the program.

Cons:

It's clunky, hard to navigate and use, expensive. The user interface looks and feels very dated. Very awkward on a Mac. Has made simple tasks such as mail merges quite difficult.

GiftWorks-- Good Donation Tool

Pros:

It is very good at tracking donations and providing a variety of reports about them.

Cons:

While the reporting capabilities are generally good, they can be improved.