As we come to the end of 2022, we’re hitting “pause” on publishing new content. Before we do, let’s take a fun look back at the things we accomplished and what we’re setting our sights on for 2023.
Your success with online donations is our top priority, and always will be. Everything we do – from product releases to new hires to attending conferences – we do because we want GiveWP to be the absolute best solution for your fundraising needs. The milestones below reflect that.
In many ways, 2022 was our best year yet and 2023 is already on target to be even better.
We Began Working on NextGen Donation Forms
We are building the next generation of donation form building in WordPress. It’s a visually powerful, intuitive, and flexible form builder using the WordPress block editor as its base.
But why did we need to rebuild the way GiveWP creates donation forms? Great question.
- To more closely match your visual expectations
- To make form fields easier to modify
- To create easy to use and customizable form templates
So, we began working on the visual form builder! We wanted users to be able to see their entire form when building it and use simple drag-and-drop actions to build and modify the form to their liking.
Not only that, but we also wanted every piece of the form to be modifiable, so it is structured exactly as the user wants it without any felt effort.
Finally, we wanted to make the experience familiar to WordPress, so the user didn’t have to learn something completely new. You can follow along as we build NextGen.
We Hired a lot of New People!
It’s been a really great year for Team Give as we have hired several new folks across several categories. Here’s a bit about the new team members who help make GiveWP a stellar product and a stellar place to work.
Joshua Dinh, Front-End Developer
Joshua joined earlier this year and is our first junior developer, hired because of his raw enthusiasm and eagerness to grow. He is a true San Diego native and frequent beach goer. Joshua does the bulk of our front-end development, working directly with Jeffrey, our designer, to build product interfaces that are intuitive and pleasing to the eye. True to his word, he keeps getting better.
Paulo Iankoski, WordPress Product Developer
Paulo is the most recent to join the dev team. He hails from southern Brazil, loves sports, cross-fit, and relaxing with his wife. Paulo is a full-stack developer, working both in the front and back-end, and has been especially helpful in recent database work. He just finished his first cycle where he helped make the GiveWP admin lists work even better and faster. He’s contagiously friendly and a great teammate.
Jeffrey De-Graft Hinson, Product UI/UX Developer
Jeffrey joined the team a few months ago as GiveWP’s very first full-time UI/UX Designer. He lives in Ghana, helps run a podcast, and volunteers his time coming up with creative ways to make Ghana a better place to live. Jeffrey has blown us all away on his quest to make GiveWP even better, having completely designed NextGen GiveWP himself, as well as the upcoming new detail screens. He’s chill, loves to laugh, and is full of surprises.
Glauber Silva, WordPress Product Developer
Glauber joined the team a few months ago. He’s the quiet, friendly type that just gets things done and does amazing work. He lives on the southeast coast of Brazil and enjoys traveling and going to concerts with his girlfriend. Glauber has done tremendous work taking years-old GiveWP gateways and giving them a much needed upgrade. His ability to jump into a new gateway and integrate it is excellent and timely! He’s an awesome teammate with extraordinary diligence.
Stephanie Liy, Support Technician
Informally known as the Queen of Docs, Stephanie is a mega-fun, energetic, and capable support technician. When she’s not wordsmithing a reply to a customer (joining her team members in obsessing over how to communicate most effectively with users), she’s likely asking insightful questions internally or coming up with a plan to streamline some aspect of our online documentation. She’s from that part of New York State where it’s bitterly cold and snowy, and doesn’t particularly want to talk about that. She’s been a fantastic addition to TeamGive this year.
Delka Merchant, Customer Success Manager
Delka joined the Customer Success team in February this year and has since grown to become an invaluable member of the team. Delka’s work as a Customer Success Manager includes showcasing the power of GiveWP to prospect organizations and helping current customers to get the most of their plan. Delka loves to travel and embrace other cultures, especially their food. Delka considers herself a foodie at heart (not that she judges food, more so she just likes to eat food) so she attends a different food festival every year. Originally from New York, Delka decided to move to Georgia because it was just too cold. Funnily enough, this winter, she’s not sure why the temperature feels like home!
Noah D’Arcy, Marketing Web Developer
Noah is a self-taught web designer and developer living in Ypsilanti, MI with his partner and five (yes, five) cats. Noah will be joining Josh Cummings in our efforts to develop, debug, deploy, and maintain various StellarWP websites and building out new landing pages (as well as the setup of page analytics). For fun, Noah likes to play with/wrangle his cats – Toothless, Meona, Koala, Mushu, and Boo – and play video games like Tekken 7.
And Others GiveWP Team Members Got Promoted!
There were pivotal changes within our parent company this year, specifically at iThemes. With that change, came new responsibilities and roles for many on the GiveWP team.
Devin Walker, General Manager for StellarWP – iThemes
Matt Cromwell, Senior Director of Ops and Marketing at StellarWP
Devin and Matt were asked to add KadenceWP, iThemes, and Iconic to their portfolio of brands they oversee and provide leadership for. Over the past several months, they have been getting to know the teams and products. Additionally, they have begun laying a foundation upon which new ideas and innovative solutions will be built. And, of course, their work with GiveWP will continue, just in a different capacity.
Their new roles paved the way for other exciting changes, specifically for the marketing department at GiveWP.
Taylor Waldon, Director of Marketing for StellarWP – GiveWP and IconicWP
Taylor has been instrumental in the marketing of GiveWP for over four years now. Her expertise in strategy and project management will now also help enhance and elevate IconicWP. She’s so great that we even wrote a whole blog about her!
We Shipped 60-ish Product Releases!
At GiveWP, we are constantly iterating and improving our product – churning out new releases and feature updates. 2022 was no different – our dev team shipped over 60 product releases in total. Many of these releases and updates come directly from Canny, where GiveWP users can share product feedback and requests with our dev team.
Venmo Donation Support
The GiveWP 2.20.0 update included a variety of new features, not least of which was Venmo Donations.
Venmo payments are offered through the PayPal payment gateway. Once you’ve connected GiveWP to PayPal, it’s as simple as enabling Venmo. Venmo donations make the mobile giving experience even easier.
PayFast Recurring Donations
Our PayFast add-on got a facelift – a major one at that! PayFast now supports recurring donations. Accepting recurring donations with PayFast can help your organization’s fundraising efforts in many ways, including: increasing total donor funds, reducing donor churn, and lowering operational costs.
Google Analytics 4
GiveWP 2.22.0 featured a variety of exciting updates, including support for Google Analytics 4. As many of you know, Google will sunset Universal Analytics on July 1st, 2023 and 360 Universal Analytics on October 1st, 2023.
Google Analytics 4 is now supported in GiveWP, empowering users to make the move away from Universal Analytics sooner rather than later. While managing change and learning something new isn’t always fun, Google Analytics 4 has more flexibility and is able to measure different types of data while delivering an analytics experience that helps your organization succeed.
Peer-to-Peer
Our Peer-to-Peer add-on got a lot of love in 2022. When we released v1.0, we knew we could count on our customers to help us shape its future. The updates we made to P2P this year came directly from you. Here’s a brief overview of what we pushed
Team and Fundraiser Control
As our customers began to launch Peer-to-Peer campaigns, some were looking for more in terms of creating and managing teams. Given the variety of feedback we received, we made the following updates and enhancements in P2P v1.4:
- Admins now have the ability to disable teams. Teams can then be entirely disabled, or the admin can create a fixed set of teams.
- Admins can now create and manage Fundraisers and Teams from the admin-side
- Admins can now move Fundraisers between Teams, remove them from Teams, and change Team Captains
- Folks with an existing User can now log in when creating a new Team or Fundraiser to be connected to multiple campaigns under a single login
P2P Email Notifications
Prior to P2P v1.5.0, the only email notifications you received were about fundraiser and team approval. Much of the feedback from you related to encouraging fundraisers to actively engage with their fundraising goals over the course of the campaign. That’s where the new Peer-to-Peer email notifications came in.
Overall, the improvements to Peer-to-Peer email notifications help keep campaign organizers and fundraisers feel more connected and on-track with their goals.
Peer-to-Peer Emails for Fundraisers
The goal with the email notification update was to increase communication across team captains, fundraisers, and the organizations they are fundraising for.
These emails are intended to communicate information to the Team Captain, Team Fundraisers, and Individual Fundraisers.
Peer-to-Peer Emails For Admin
These emails are intended to inform website admin of tasks, such as approving a new fundraiser and are a direct result of feedback we received from users who wanted better day-to-day feel for the fundraisers and team activity.
Organizers can now engage in more meaningful conversations with campaign participants and can lead to a more successful fundraising campaign.
Customer Success Launched our 30-Minute Website Audits
Our Customer Success team has seen thousands of fundraising websites and interacted with their nonprofit leaders in a variety of ways over the years. So, in 2022, we took their expertise and began providing fundraising website audits.
These audits are for our Plus, Pro, and Agency plan holders and they provide actionable steps you can take to get the most of your fundraising website and GiveWP.
When scheduling your fundraising website audit, you’ll be able to select up to five topics to cover during your audit, including:
- Connecting to a payment gateway
- Donation reporting and/or connecting to a third-party tool
- Optimizing the donor experience
- Customizing donation receipts
- Customizing multiple donation campaigns
- And more
Prior to your audit, our customer success team reviews your fundraising website in detail. When reviewing your site, our team takes several factors into account. These factors include site navigation, organization of campaigns/forms, storytelling, form use, etc.
After review, we compile actionable steps you can take to improve your fundraising website and present them during the audit.
When you upgrade to or purchase a Plus, Pro, or Agency plan, you’ll receive an email where you can book a time for your fundraising website audit. If you already hold such a plan, you can book your audit here.
We Launched the GiveWP Fundraising Academy
In 2022, we began undertaking a longtime goal of Taylor’s: to launch a fundraising academy. The Give Fundraising Academy is a place where we can take the collective knowledge and information that not only Team Give possesses, but also that of partners such as Double the Donation and give it to you FOR FREE.
Academy members are able to take courses, earn certifications, participate in online forums (coming soon!), earn swag, and gain valuable and actionable insights into various aspects of fundraising.
We are committed to continuing to grow the Give Fundraising Academy through new courses and new features in 2023.
Our Technical Support Team Shone Brightly
In 2022 our technical support team fielded 7,059 new technical support tickets from 4,763 GiveWP customers. On average, these tickets:
- Had an average first response time of 3 business hours and 15 minutes
- Were resolved in an average of 3.2 responses
- Resulted in 530 “Great” ratings of a support technician
- Received 53 5-Star reviews on wordpress.org
As always, our team prioritizes your organization’s online donation efforts by quickly identifying issues, pointing you directly to resolving problems, and doing it with a smile!
We Went to Some In-Person Conferences
After a couple of years of virtual conferences, or no conferences, our team was so excited to get back to some in-person conferences. For some of our team, this was the first time they were able to meet in person as well!
AFP Icon in Las Vegas
For anyone who does fundraising of any kind, AFP Icon is the preeminent conference to attend. Whether you’re looking for new tools, partnership with other organizations, or just want to learn more about your craft, this conference is focused 100% on that.
This was our first year exhibiting and we’re looking forward to more! Devin Walker, Matt Cromwell, and Drew Griswold all attended. We made connections with folks like the Nonprofit Leadership Alliance, tiptap, or Feathr, we learned more about online payments, nonprofit leadership and more.
We’re looking forward to seeing you in 2023 in New Orleans!
Nonprofit Innovation and Optimization Summit in Kansas City
If you’re looking to connect with other fundraisers, and learn more about cutting edge fundraising strategies, the NIO Summit is for you. This year it took place in Kansas City, and GiveWP was a sponsor – and Drew and Camber from our team had an amazing time. We had the chance to connect with dozens of wonderful nonprofit organizations working hard to make the world a better place, along with other like minded companies like Paya and The Giving Block.
We already signed up to sponsor the 2023 summit in Dallas!
WordCamp US in San Diego
WordCamp US is the flagship WordPress event in the western hemisphere. The location changes annually but you know what doesn’t? A couple of days that are chock full of informative sessions, workshops, and a day of contribution. WordCamp also gives so many of us that work with and use WordPress across the country – and the globe – the opportunity to meet, talk, learn, and share.
Our very own Director of Support, Ben Meredith, had the opportunity to speak to attendees at WCUS and, of course, his session was on technical support, titled “Your Technical Support Philosophy is Losing Money and Angering Customers.” Ben believes that our philosophy for tech support is fun for technicians, empowers our customers, and leads our support team to big wins. Give it a watch, if you’re so inclined!
Here’s to 2023
It’s so rewarding to look back on the year gone by and reflect on everything that was accomplished. We take pride in our work and we are so grateful to all of our users who provide valuable insight and feedback to our team year-round.
Without you, we wouldn’t be the team or the solution we are today. Thank you for trusting us with your fundraising needs. We look forward to our continued partnership with you and watching your successes from the sidelines.
Here’s to 2023!
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