Switch to Givebear without losing your donor history.
Bring your contacts and past donations over by CSV. Here is exactly what moves, what does not, and the order to do it in.
What you can bring over.
Both importers live in the dashboard and take a CSV file.
- Contacts
- Upload a CSV of your donors. Givebear matches columns for email, name, phone, mailing address and notes, and you confirm the match before anything is saved. A contact whose email is already in your account is updated, not duplicated.
- Past donations
- Upload a donations CSV with an amount and a donor email or name on each row, plus the date and fund where you have them. Each gift is added to that donor's giving history, and donors who are not in your contacts yet are created for you.
- Text message consent
- An opt-in column is honored only when you confirm in the importer that those people agreed to receive texts. Without that confirmation the column is ignored.
- Exports Givebear recognizes
- Donation exports from Givebutter, Donorbox, Neon CRM and Blackbaud Raiser's Edge are detected by their column names. Any other CSV works too: you pick which column is which.
What starts fresh.
Knowing this up front makes the switch a short project instead of a surprise.
- Recurring gifts and saved cards
- There is no import for recurring gifts or card details. Each recurring donor starts a new recurring gift on your Givebear page, so plan a short note asking them to do that.
- Receipts for past gifts
- Imported donations are history, not payments. They cannot be refunded or receipted from Givebear, so keep the receipts and statements your previous platform issued.
- Fundraising totals
- Imported history counts toward each donor's giving record and is kept separate from money raised on Givebear, so your reports show only gifts that Givebear processed.
- Funds and pages
- Funds, campaigns and your donation page are set up fresh in Givebear. A fund name on an imported donation is kept as a label on that gift.
The switch, in order.
- 1
Export from your current platform
Download two CSV files: your donors, and your donation history. Keep the files your old platform gives you; nothing needs reformatting first.
- 2
Create your Givebear account
Sign up, name your organization, and verify with Stripe. Gifts settle in a Stripe account your organization owns.
- 3
Import contacts, then donations
In the dashboard, open People and choose Import. Bring in contacts first, then donation history. Each import ends with a summary of what was imported, updated or skipped, with the reason for any row that had a problem.
- 4
Set up funds and your page
Add the funds donors give to and check your donation page. Then point the donate button on your website at the new page.
- 5
Ask recurring donors to restart
Send recurring donors your new page and ask them to set up their gift again. Cancel the old schedules once they have moved, so nobody gives twice.