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SmarterSelect vs Givebutter: Which is a better fit?

Updated on February 9th, 2025
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Summary
Key features rated by users
Features selected based on 4,352 reviews from Nonprofit users.
% Fit
Missing features
Not enough reviews
Feature ratings
For Nonprofits
--
Credit Card Processing
NA
Electronic Payments
--
Donor Management
NA
Fundraising Management
NA
% Fit
High performer
Feature ratings
For Nonprofits
4.8
Credit Card Processing
4.8
Electronic Payments
4.7
Donor Management
4.5
Fundraising Management
4.6
User satisfaction
4.4
User reviews233
Ease of use
4.1
Functionality
4.2
Value for money
4.5
Customer support
4.5
4.8
User reviews838
Ease of use
4.7
Functionality
4.5
Value for money
4.8
Customer support
4.8
Price starts from
Yearly subscription
Free version
Free trial
--
Not provided by vendor
Free version
Free trial
Best for

Community foundations, private foundations, education foundations, associations, higher education organizations, corporations, etc.

Small and medium-sized nonprofits love Givebutter, including charities, service organizations, faith-based, schools, universities, sports teams, companies and hopefully your group too!

User reviews
pros & cons
1 / 4
View Reviews
1 / 4
View Reviews
Video reviews
video-817d730d-c581-4a34-7570-08d87f8b69ee
Darla S
Executive Director
4.0

Darla: Hi, I'm Darla. I'm the Executive Director of a nonprofit and I give SmarterSelect a four out of five. We were using online papers for our scholarship application process, and we wanted to go online. So we had also reviewed Academic Works when I was also reviewing SmarterSelect, and Academic Works was more expensive and didn't quite have everything I was looking for. We are a small staff of two, so that means we wear many hats on a daily basis. And as you can imagine, saving time and efficiency is very important for small non-profits, so SmarterSelect offers the Scholarship Matching Questionnaire feature. This 20 question feature allows our applicants to be matched to more than 80 scholarships that we offer. So this was a very valuable tool that really attracted me to SmarterSelect. As you can imagine, matching those students manually was very time consuming. So that was one problem that SmarterSelect helped solve. Another problem that we have is, reaching our college students consistently. They're not very good about replying to emails, so SmarterSelect has the messaging feature. Not only does it offer the email messaging, it has the option for us to text message our students and reach them more quickly. So that's huge for us to make sure we're able to stay in communication with them. And another problem that SmarterSelect solved was, as we were wanting to go online with our application process, and especially during COVID-19 pandemic, we were able to have the students apply online for the scholarships. And as our staff was working remotely, we were able to review and process and communicate with the students. One thing I liked about SmarterSelect was, they offered a free trial. So I enrolled for that and was immediately connected with a technician, I believe his name was Roger. Roger was so helpful. He talked with us. He helped us with the online preparation of our unique programs, helped answer our questions, and the integration of taking our application from paper to online was very customizable. And their customer support really helped us in the initial stages and even throughout. This is year four for us using it and each year it seems like we have different questions and they're always able to help us through that. So the integration has been wonderful. Most scholarship programs are very unique in their own programming and the nice thing about SmarterSelect is that it's very customizable and you can develop the application however you need it to be. You can ask whatever questions that you need to ask and having the Matching Questionnaire as an option to help in the process of matching the student to specific scholarships was a huge selling point for me. And I would highly recommend that if you are in a scholarship program and you have several different scholarships to award with all different types of criteria, SmarterSelect is very workable, very customizable and very affordable.

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Melanie M
CEO
4.0

Melanie: Hi, I'm Melanie. I am one of the founders of Hearts for Honduras, and I would give Givebutter a four star rating. We used PayPal previously before using Givebutter, and what we found is it just really the cost of the fees was one of the big factors for us to look to change because we were going to get charged for every transaction. And so that was a big factor for us in finding something that passed on the fees, but a reasonable fee at that. Givebutter really is a platform that really supports nonprofits and does not charge us anything. So everything they do, we get to have a complete, basically a landing page where our participants can set up fundraising pages, we can fundraise for our upcoming trips, and also for our nonprofit in general. So just their overall support of nonprofits was a huge factor in being able to establish that, especially when you don't have very little budget to work with. So there is a little bit of a learning curve with Givebutter and just terms of playing around, how to set up your platform and set up your landing page. But once you get into the rhythm of it, it's pretty easy and it's easy to show others as well how to use. So that was a big... That's been kind of nice being able to teach our participants how to set up their own fundraising pages, but just a little bit of a learning curve when you're first starting off. So I would say that there's a lot of options out there. We did a lot of extensive research, compared the different platforms. Givebutter is right around the same in terms of the fees that they do charge for the processing of payments and fundraising dollars. They're relatively in that same ballpark of most. They're a little bit less. So that was a big factor. But really the big factor was the fact that there's no cost passed on to us to use the platform. So they raised their money completely through donations that donors make. So that was a huge factor for us in making that decision.

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User interface
140270 video thumbnail}
1 Video
172048 video thumbnail}
1 Video
140270
5 screenshots
172048
5 screenshots

SmarterSelect

15/45
  • Access Controls/Permissions
  • Accounting
  • Accounting Integration
  • Activity Dashboard
  • API
  • Attendance Management
  • Budgeting/Forecasting
  • Calendar Management
  • Campaign Management
  • Committee Management
  • Contact Management
  • Credit Card Processing
  • CRM
  • Customizable Branding
  • Document Storage
  • Donor Management
  • Dues Management
  • Event Management
  • Event Scheduling
  • Fund Accounting
  • Fundraising Management
  • Membership Management
  • Mobile Access
  • Real-Time Analytics
  • Real-Time Reporting
  • Recurring/Subscription Billing
  • Registration Management
  • Social Marketing
  • Volunteer Management
  • Website Management
  • Activity Tracking
  • Alerts/Notifications
  • Communication Management
  • Customizable Fields
  • Customizable Forms
  • Customizable Reports
  • Customizable Templates
  • Data Import/Export
  • Electronic Payments
  • Forms Management
  • For Nonprofits
  • Grant Management
  • Member Database
  • Reporting & Statistics
  • Third-Party Integrations
See All features
Hide Nonprofit Software Features -

Givebutter

Top Features
35/45
Show Nonprofit Software Features +
SmarterSelect
Deployment
  • Cloud, SaaS, Web-Based
  • Desktop - Mac
  • Desktop - Windows
  • Desktop - Linux
  • Desktop - Chromebook
  • On-Premise - Windows
  • On-Premise - Linux
  • Mobile - Android
  • Mobile - iPhone
  • Mobile - iPad
Support
  • Email/Help Desk
  • FAQs/Forum
  • Knowledge Base
  • Phone Support
  • 24/7 (Live rep)
  • Chat
Training
  • In Person
  • Live Online
  • Webinars
  • Documentation
  • Videos
Givebutter
Deployment
  • Cloud, SaaS, Web-Based
  • Desktop - Mac
  • Desktop - Windows
  • Desktop - Linux
  • Desktop - Chromebook
  • On-Premise - Windows
  • On-Premise - Linux
  • Mobile - Android
  • Mobile - iPhone
  • Mobile - iPad
Support
  • Email/Help Desk
  • FAQs/Forum
  • Knowledge Base
  • Phone Support
  • 24/7 (Live rep)
  • Chat
Training
  • In Person
  • Live Online
  • Webinars
  • Documentation
  • Videos
SmarterSelect
  • By SmarterSelect
  • Located in United States
  • Founded in 2007
Givebutter
  • By Givebutter
  • Located in United States
  • Founded in 2016
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