Platform overview
Fifty-plus features in eight categories — from QR check-in and live auctions to AI prospect research, a free grant directory with AI grant writing, gift-officer portfolios, and automated year-end tax statements. Skim the headings below or jump to the section that matters most.
11
Payment methods
8,800+
Auctioneers indexed
AI
Donor capacity scoring
1-click
Year-end tax statements
Live Event Day
Everything you need to run a high-energy benefit gala with zero chaos at the door, real-time bidding on screen, and a settled tab before guests leave.
Email QRs to prepaid guests, a printed self-register QR for walk-ups, and a paddle-scan flow for the door. Guests are admitted in under 3 seconds.
Public wallet page (/event/:id/ticket/:paddle) shows the QR, paddle #, and assigned table with sponsor — guests just pull up the link. Volunteers scan it straight off the phone screen to ring up purchases.
Drop a tablet in the lobby. Guest types first name → table highlights instantly. Auto-refreshes as you reseat. Privacy-redacted.
Guests bid from their phone (anti-snipe, max-bid, proxy) AND from printed bid sheets on the table — each sheet has a QR that deep-links to THAT lot's bid page. Outbid SMS + 5-min closing warning go to everyone.
One-click PDF: one letter-size sheet per lot with photo, description, pricing strip (start · increment · buy-now · FMV), QR to the item, and the printed-fallback URL. Bulk download all sheets or reprint a single sheet for a late-added lot.
Stage auctioneer calls lots; volunteer enters the winning paddle on a tablet → guest's tab is charged at end of night via card-on-file. Live thermometer + paddle ticker projected on the big screen.
Donors heart-tap their favorite lots. Cards glow GREEN when winning, FLASH RED the moment they're outbid (CSS-pulse every 0.9s — impossible to ignore), pulse gold during anti-snipe extension. Polls every 6 seconds. Drives 18–25% lift in re-engagement vs. plain watchlists because urgency is visual, not just an email notification.
Big gold 'Quick Bid +$50' button on every item card. No keyboard, no number entry — increments by the lot's configured bid_increment. Cuts time-to-place-bid from 8 seconds to 1.2 seconds. The difference between a placed bid and an abandoned tab.
Pre-set amounts ($500, $1k, $5k…). Volunteer assistants tap the room on a tablet. Live thermometer on the big screen.
Tabs run all night for raffle, mulligans, bar items. Single auto-charge at end of night via card-on-file.
Volunteer-controlled run-of-show. Donor names, paddle raises, thermometer animations, sponsor reels. Looks like Pixar.
AV team opens a single URL — auto-rotates between the live scoreboard (thermometer + totals) and the silent-auction leaderboard (just-closed + closing-soon lots). Arrow keys jump between views; works in any browser, no install.
Live-updated donor feed shown on a screen or projector. New gifts trigger animations and sponsor mentions.
Plug any lavalier mic (Rode, DJI, USB lapel) into the laptop running the event. Every paddle capture auto-bookmarks the audio timeline. End of night: scroll the captured charges, click 'Paddle 127 - $5,000' and the audio jumps straight to that moment of the room. Bulletproof for bid disputes.
Any $30 USB or Bluetooth QR scanner (Tera, Eyoyo, NADAMOO) plugs straight into the check-in laptop — no apps, no drivers, no phone juggling. Auto-focused scan field, audible beep on success, instant paddle lookup. Volunteers process 200+ guests in 20 minutes.
Each table gets a printable QR card. Guests scan to join their table's live thread — message the coordinator, or tap quick-request buttons (need drinks, question for the auctioneer, ready to check out). Staff reply from a console and broadcast announcements ('dinner is served') to one table or all tables. New requests trigger a sound + browser alert so the floor team never misses one. The only platform in the industry with this.
Capture exactly what each event needs at ticket checkout — meal choice, dietary restrictions, t-shirt size, guest names & emails per seat, or any custom question. Ask once per order (buyer) or once per attendee (guest). All responses land in an admin view + caterer-ready counts.
Set a minimum to sell a full table of 8 in one click, or cap VIP at 2 per order. Enforced on Stripe and PayPal checkout.
Donor & Donation
OneCause and Givebutter offer 3-4 payment methods and a generic checkout. We offer 11 payment methods, employer-match auto-lookup, multi-fund split, and per-amount impact copy.
Card · Apple Pay · Google Pay · PayPal · Venmo · ACH · DAF · Stock · Crypto · Text-to-give · Check-by-mail. Set-and-forget config.
One-time, monthly, quarterly, annual. We're the only platform that does quarterly — a sweet-spot for major-donor stewardship.
Donor types employer → instant 'will be matched to $X' badge. Auto-emails HR. ~30% of US donors qualify; most platforms ignore this.
Donor can split one gift across 4 programs. Rare in the space. Used by orgs with multiple program areas (e.g., scholarship + general).
$25 = 1 child's art supplies. $250 = 1 month sponsorship. We compute it; you fill it in once per fund.
Donor commits at the event, gets an invoice by month-end. Captures intent at peak emotion, settles at lower-friction moment.
Donor opts to absorb Stripe's 2.9% — most do. Lifts net-to-org by ~3.5%. Default ON.
Branded PDF with the org's EIN, mission statement, and donor name. Sent within 30 seconds of the charge clearing.
Tribute dedications captured at checkout. Auto-emails the honoree's family with the donor's optional message.
Card saved at ticket purchase → all night's purchases (bar, raffle, paddle wins) auto-settled. Default ON with per-org opt-out.
Enterprise CRM & Donor Intelligence
Most platforms stop at a donor list. We ship a full enterprise CRM — AI prospect research, moves management, gift-officer portfolios, householding, and IRS-grade tax statements — the stuff nonprofits otherwise buy iWave, Bloomerang, and DonorPerfect for. All included, no add-on tier.
iWave-style wealth & affinity screening built in. AI scores every donor's giving capacity and affinity, drafts a one-paragraph cultivation brief, segments your major-gift prospects, and screens an entire event guest list in one pass. Find the $25k gift hiding in your $250 list.
Each donor gets a computed capacity band (estimated ability to give) and an affinity score (likelihood to give to YOU), so gift officers prioritize the right 30 conversations instead of all 3,000 contacts.
Track every prospect through cultivation stages — Identify → Qualify → Cultivate → Solicit → Steward. A drag-friendly follow-up board surfaces what's due today so no major-gift conversation goes cold.
Assign call/meeting/email tasks to specific gift officers with due dates. Overdue and upcoming tasks roll up onto a single board (/admin/tasks) — your development team's daily command center.
Log every call, visit, and email against the donor record. A chronological moves timeline gives anyone on the team the full relationship history in five seconds.
Assign donors to a specific staff 'owner' and each officer gets a dedicated portfolio dashboard (/admin/portfolio) — their prospects, their tasks, their pipeline, their numbers.
Link spouses, family members, and related entities into one household. Soft-credit a gift to the influencer behind it so the credit shows up on the right donor's record — and the right year-end statement.
Record checks, wires, stock, DAF, and pledge payments that never touched the platform. They flow into the same donor profiles, reports, and tax statements as online gifts.
Reassign hundreds of donors to a new gift officer in one action. Re-balance portfolios after a hire, a departure, or a territory change without touching records one at a time.
One-click consolidated PDF statements per donor — including soft-credits — with your letterhead, EIN, and itemized gift table. A built-in scheduler auto-emails the whole campaign every late January so your finance team never manually assembles 1,500 letters again.
Tickets and auction wins track fair-market-value automatically, so each receipt shows the correct tax-deductible amount (gift minus goods received). True IRS-compliant acknowledgments, generated per transaction.
Auctioneer Directory
8,800+ verified auctioneers across every U.S. state. Nonprofits find the right talent in minutes — free, transparent, no middleman.
Searchable by state, city, specialty (gala, golf, capital campaign). State + city pages with programmatic SEO.
Only verified nonprofit event coordinators can leave reviews. Reviewers must have run a paid event together — no buy-able 5-stars, no anonymous spam.
Every auctioneer publishes their fee structure upfront (flat, %, hybrid). Nonprofits compare quotes in seconds — industry first.
Filter by event type, geographic radius, experience tier (5+ galas/yr, $1M+ raised), and language. Find the auctioneer who's actually run YOUR kind of event.
Send a brief to your shortlisted auctioneers without leaving the platform. Responses thread inside CharityFundraiser — never lose a quote in a 30-email chain.
Continuous background verification keeps every profile current. Dead phone numbers and stale emails are flagged so you never waste a call on a closed practice.
Marketing & SEO
We don't just rank — we built the platform LLM crawlers (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude) cite. Every state + city + sector has its own indexable landing page.
Every state, every city with auctioneers gets its own SEO-optimized landing page. Includes JSON-LD, breadcrumbs, FAQ schema.
Machine-readable index for ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude. We rank in AI answer-search where competitors don't even appear.
Route-change tracking, sign_up / purchase / begin_checkout events firing automatically. Plug & play with your Ads accounts.
Paste a prospect's website URL → auto-fetch logo + brand color → personalized donation page in 20 seconds. Salesperson superpower.
Auto-injected on directory pages when slots are open. Shows live 'X of Y cities still available' for urgency.
AI-written, human-reviewed blog posts on event-planning topics. Drives organic + nudges domain authority.
Volunteers & Comms
Email, SMS, push, and in-app messaging — all from a single inbox. Volunteer scheduling with auto-reminders. No third-party Mailchimp setup.
Recruit, schedule, remind, no-show track. Volunteer self-service signup links per shift.
T-30, T-7, T-1, T-1hr reminders for attendees, volunteers, staff — all configurable, all auto-sent.
Drag-drop builder, segmentation by donor history / event attendance / amount given. Unsubscribe + preferences.
Org-branded SMS. MMS with QR codes attached. Bulk + targeted send. Compliance-built-in (opt-in / opt-out tracking).
Every donor reply, SMS, contact-form submission lands in one tabbed inbox. Threaded by donor.
7-day automated email asking the coordinator to review their auctioneer. Drives 5-10× organic review volume.
Reports & Admin Ops
Live revenue dashboards, manual revenue ledger for off-platform gifts, Stripe Connect direct payouts (no 14-day hold), and a superadmin platform-of-platforms view.
Real-time donations, ticket sales, live charges, fees absorbed, net to org. Updated every 5 seconds during events.
Log off-platform gifts (checks, wires, grants, sponsorships, comp). Year-to-date totals + per-source breakdown.
Money flows direct to the nonprofit's Stripe account, not pooled. No 14-day hold. No platform skimming.
Single login, every nonprofit org. Bulk operations, audit trail, support tickets, transaction lookup across all tenants.
Auto-generated screenshots of every page from a demo org. Sales team copies straight into pitch decks.
Top donors, top volunteers, top events. Used in stewardship + recognition emails.
Grants & AI Grant Writing
Most fundraising platforms stop at donations. We maintain one of the largest free grant libraries anywhere — 25+ corporate, foundation, and federal funders, kept current — PLUS a free AI grant-writing studio that drafts a complete, funder-ready proposal section by section. Sourcing and writing, in one place.
One of the largest free directories of nonprofit grants anywhere — corporate, foundation, and federal funders with focus area, deadline type, amount, eligibility and a direct link to apply. Includes SC Johnson, Walmart, Home Depot, Target, Coca-Cola, Verizon, T-Mobile, Costco, Wells Fargo, Kroger, Albertsons, General Mills, 4imprint, TechSoup, Microsoft, NEH, RWJF, the Awesome Foundation, Google Ad Grants and many more — kept current by our team.
Search by keyword and filter by focus area, geography (US / Canada / International), and deadline type (rolling, annual, fixed). Find the grants that actually fit your mission in seconds.
Pull currently-posted federal opportunities straight from the official Grants.gov API into your dashboard — thousands of government grants, always current, no separate login.
Draft a complete proposal — cover letter, executive summary, statement of need, SMART goals, methods, evaluation, sustainability, org background, and budget narrative — each generated by AI from your real mission and the target funder. Edit inline, save drafts, iterate as a team, copy the finished proposal in one click.
Every draft follows a proven winning-proposal structure, with built-in grant-writing best practices, a pre-submission checklist, and the common mistakes to avoid — the kind of guidance nonprofits normally pay a consultant for.
Your nonprofit profile and drafts are saved per org, so you build a reusable library of proposals you can tailor to the next funder instead of starting from a blank page every time.
Free Website Included
Every nonprofit on CharityFundraiser gets a free auto-generated Public Profile — a beautiful one-page website at /site/your-name with hero, mission, board, featured cause, upcoming events, and donate button. Pulled live from your gala data. Zero CMS to learn.
Hero, mission, board, featured cause, upcoming events, donate button. Pulled live from your CharityFundraiser data. No content management to maintain — when you update your gala, the site updates.
Share it on LinkedIn, in newsletters, in your email signature. SEO + LLM-crawler optimized (JSON-LD, NGO schema, canonical tags) the moment it goes live.
Our sister team Web-Techservices.com builds full CMS websites with SEO, LLM, geo-targeted optimization — and CharityFundraiser nonprofits get steep discounts on every service they offer.
Domain, hosting, email, custom branding, and migration assistance — all available at significant nonprofit-only pricing through our partner network.
Ready?
Paste your website URL in our demo builder → 20 seconds later you're looking at a live donation page with your logo, brand color, and a working donor wall.
Web-TechServices AI