2023 is coming to an end, and as we wrap up the end of the year, we’re taking a stroll down memory lane. Let’s look at all you accomplished, what the GiveWP team rolled out, and what we’re looking forward to in 2024.
2023: A Phenomenal Year for Fundraising
What a year it’s been for the GiveWP community. Your collective efforts have reached new heights and far exceeded expectations. The numbers speak volumes about the spirit of giving: it is alive and well, folks.
Your supporters gave a whopping $490 million through 2.85 million donations.
And let’s not forget the incredible impact of Giving Tuesday! Through 40,934 generous donations, your organizations received $5.8 million in support.
These figures are a testament to the dedication and hard work of your organizations, showcasing the power of your communities. Each donation represents a step towards building a better world, and we’re so grateful to play a supporting role.
Kudos to all of you – your unwavering commitment to your mission made for an exceptional year of fundraising. We’re so excited to watch you as you carry this momentum into 2024 and continue making a difference in the communities you serve.
A Spotlight on Give Customers
This year, we had the chance to build even better relationships with some of our Give customers. While we can’t highlight all the incredible work our team has done with yours, two cases found their way to our site.
Quiltlove: A “Patch” Made in Heaven
In March, we had the chance to speak with Liz Coyle, the founder of Quiltlove. What began as a compassionate endeavor by Liz and a group of parents to create a quilt for a classmate battling leukemia evolved into a thriving business.
With a desire to make personalized gifts more accessible, Liz discovered GiveWP, enabling her to use a crowdfunding approach. She customized the form through minor adjustments to allow individuals to purchase squares for quilts. After buying the squares, participants send in their designs for the quilt. Once all the squares have been purchased, Liz closes the form and gets to work. Her business, born out of love and creativity, ensures affordable and one-of-a-kind quilts for various occasions.
Notably, Quiltlove’s commitment to giving back also shines through – for every ten quilts sold, Liz donates a quilt to George Mark Children’s House. These quilts, crafted with love and fabric remnants, bring comfort and color to children in challenging times.
We were able to stitch a relationship together, crafting a heartwarming partnership that allowed us to empower her to turn her passion into a sustainable business that spreads love and support. Thanks for letting us share your story, Liz!
A Pig-ture Perfect Case Study with Piggins and Banks
Unlike traditional rescue organizations, Piggins and Banks goes beyond rehoming pigs; instead, they provide a forever home for their rescued pigs (and other creatures).
It all began when Aaron and Christie Riddle decided to bring a pet into their lives, specifically for their daughters. The idea of a puppy didn’t quite feel right, so the Riddles brought Rosie, an adorable pig, into their lives.
For the next few years, the family expanded by six piggies, and in 2019, they decided to raise a piglet to be a certified therapy animal. Ultimately, this journey led the family to create a pig sanctuary which houses over 60 rescued pigs.
Their mission extends beyond rescue and includes educating folks on how expressive and intelligent pigs are and raising awareness about pig welfare. As you can imagine, running a sanctuary takes significant financial support.
Through their sponsorship program, powered by Recurring Donations, Piggins and Banks can ensure sustainable support for their sanctuary while ‘sow’-ing seeds of connection and emphasizing engagement.
Piggins and Banks is meaningfully impacting a cause they care about, creating an ‘epig’ future for these beautiful creatures. Download the case study to discover the incredible difference the sponsorship program made for Piggins and Banks.
Call for Give Stories: We are always looking for more organizations whose stories we can share. If you are inspired to share with us, please submit your Give story.
A Major Year for Release
In last year’s recap, we mentioned that we had begun work on our NextGen donation forms, and in October of 2023, we released them in GiveWP 3.0.
After 665,253 changed lines of code, GiveWP brought some exciting new features, like:
- The Visual Donation Form Builder
- Design Mode
- Stripe Payment Element
And, of course, there were a bunch more exciting things to come out of 3.0. If you haven’t read the full announcement, you should. Beyond the introduced features, 3.0 laid the ground for future enhancements. Some include donation events for galas and other events, fundraising strategies that work similarly to Patreon or Kickstarter, and form presets that allow users to choose from a preconfigured form as a faster starting point.
Your feedback helped shape GiveWP 3.0 – the release would not have been as robust without your feedback.
Additional Notable Releases
Our dev team churned out a lot of great stuff this year, but let’s highlight some of the most asked-for new features:
- Webhooks Add-On: Provide real-time updates, seamless integrations with third-party applications, and advanced automation. Webhooks allow you to streamline processes, improve efficiency, and focus on what you do best – connecting with your community and changing the world.
- PDF Receipts: In version 2.4, we made PDF receipts even better with bulk downloads available through the PDF export tool and added new template tags for flexibility when customizing your receipts. The Bulk Download feature alleviates pain points for international users and provides a quick and easy way to download chronological receipts. The new template tags enable you to offer a more personalized and informative experience for donors.
- Square Recurring Donations: This update made Square a compatible payment gateway, allowing a seamless experience for one-time and recurring donors.
Your feedback is invaluable as we strive to make Give an even better platform. We sincerely appreciate your insights and suggestions – they play a pivotal role in shaping the future of GiveWP. Whether we’re refining existing tools or introducing new ones, your input directly influences our decisions. We encourage you to share your thoughts, ideas, and suggestions on Canny.
Lots of Folks Got Hired or Promoted
As you may know, GiveWP joined Liquid Web a few years back and became part of the StellarWP team. It’s done wonderful things for Give as a product and team. This year, you’ll notice that a few GiveWP folks got bumped up to StellarWP – don’t fret! That doesn’t mean they are no longer working with Give – it just means they get to spread their special brand of goodness to some other StellarWP brands. Alright – let’s get into it.
- Drew Griswold, Director of Outbound Marketing: Drew’s role and scope expanded this year, taking on all outbound marketing efforts for major Stellar Brands. Drew oversees outbound marketing efforts, including paid media, community events, automation, and reporting.
- Taylor Waldon, Director of Product Marketing: One of the early employees at GiveWP, Taylor has been with the team from the beginning. She began as a content writer in 2018 and, over time, grew into the role of Marketing Director. This year, she was promoted to Product Marketing Director at StellarWP, overseeing GiveWP, KadenceWP, IconicWP, Orderable, and WP Business Reviews.
- Ben Meredith, Director of Customer Service and Support: Like Amanda, Ben has been tasked with bringing the excellence that has characterized GiveWP’s technical support to other StellarWP brands. He’ll still be overseeing the GiveWP team as well. However, thanks to Ben’s many years dedicated to GiveWP and building the technical support team, everything continues to run smoothly.
- Jason Adam, Director of Development: Jason has been elevated to StellarWP to help lead engineering, provide coaching across all teams, and aid with product direction.
- Amanda Gorman, Director of Customer Success: In her time with GiveWP, Amanda guided the Customer Success team to ensure customer success before and after their purchase. She has taken her expertise to StellarWP, sprinkling her CS magic across all our brands. Amanda believes in listening closely and forging real connections, ensuring that’s at the core of Customer Success. They’re the heart of our growing teams.
- David Johnson, Product Owner: Previously, David sat on the Support Team at GiveWP. In his new role as Product Owner at SolidWP, David will use his experience to help refine Solid’s suite of products.
- Angela Blake, Product Owner: GiveWP brought Angela on board this year – she plays a pivotal role in planning product development by blending your valuable customer feedback with company objectives.
- Camber Clemence, Product Marketing Manager: Moving out of social and community, Camber now works in product marketing. She is responsible for steering positioning, messaging, and go-to-market strategies to ensure a cohesive approach to launching and promoting products.
Congratulations to all of these folks!
Technical Support and Customer Success Highlights
We wouldn’t be where we are today without our Technical Support and Customer Success teams – and you probably wouldn’t be either. They are the heartbeat of our company, and their sole focus is to ensure that you, our customers, are supported. Here are some quick stats to help pad our resume:
Customer Success
- Conducted 40+ fundraising audits
- Produced the squeal-y good Piggins and Banks case study
- Contributed to 9 blog posts
- Appeared on multiple Give LIVE! Events
- Helped 4,152 customers
- Received 320 ‘Great’ ratings
Technical Support
- Had 6700-ish conversations with customers
- Helped 4,448 customers with their issues
- Received 490 ‘Great’ ratings and 29 5-star ratings
- Had a first-response time of 3h and 3m
Looking Forward to 2024
Phew – that was a lot to cover, and that’s probably only… half the things that happened in 2023. We are so excited to move into 2024 and grateful that we get to spend our days working with folks who care deeply about injustices across the globe and who are doing something about it. You’re making good happen. Again, thank you for letting us play a small part in your missions.
Here’s to 2024!
About the Author
