November 9, 2026
Read Before You Switch!
Don't move a decade of donor data. Keep your CRM and upgrade your event fundraising instead.
If you use a CRM like Little Green Light, you've probably noticed other platforms asking you to leave. Givebutter now offers a free migration service, and Little Green Light is one of the CRMs it lists as a source to move people off of. The pitch is that you can put everything in one place and it costs nothing. But is it really free?
Most of the nonprofits we work with are running lean, and fewer logins sounds good (so does having something for nothing). But we've been in event fundraising for 24 years, and ask you to look closely at two things before you move a decade of donor history: what "free" actually costs, and who pays for it.
While you consider those two questions, stay where you are and upgrade your fundraising game. Keep the CRM your team already knows and likes, and put a solid event platform beside it that sends everything back where it belongs.
Free usually means your donors pay at every checkout screen
Software costs money to build and run. We know because we've seen the bills. When a platform says it's free to the nonprofit, the cost doesn't disappear. It means that costs move to the end of the checkout, where your donors and guests see a "tip" for the platform or a processing fee they're asked to cover.
On Givebutter, tips are turned on by default. One review puts the suggested tip at about 15% of the gift on donations. If you turn tips off, Givebutter charges the nonprofit a platform fee instead, 3% under its current pricing (on top of processing).
That model has started to get attention. Donors have filed two proposed class action lawsuits against Givebutter in 2026, in Pennsylvania in April and in California in August. Both argue that tips and processing fees were added without donors clearly agreeing to them. To be clear, these are allegations and haven't been decided, but Truth in Advertising reviewed the checkout independently and raised the same concern.
We don't think it's fair to call something free when the cost has been moved onto the people you most need to keep. A guest who feels tricked at checkout doesn't blame the software. They blame the charity whose name is on the page.
At ClickBid, we've always quoted our price to the nonprofit up front, with no tip line for us at checkout. We'd rather you know exactly what you're paying than have your donors find out for you.
Your gala guests are the most at risk
The Fundraising Effectiveness Project's Q2 2026 report found that only 11.3% of people who gave for the first time in 2025 had given again by the middle of this year. Giving dollars are up, but the number of donors keeps shrinking.
Events are where a lot of those first-time donors come from. Someone comes because a friend bought a table, bids on a weekend away, and has a great night. If that person never makes it into your CRM, or shows up in March as a row in a spreadsheet, the second gift almost never happens.
The more useful question is whether everything from the night ends up in Little Green Light quickly and cleanly, and whether those guests had a good experience at checkout.
ClickBid works with Little Green Light
ClickBid has a direct Little Green Light integration. Connect your LGL account in the event's integration settings, and your event sales go to LGL as gifts.
- What is transferred: auction purchases, tickets and donations from the event.
- Who it syncs with: guests are matched to the constituents you already have, so you don't end up cleaning up duplicates.
- How it's tagged in LGL: you map ClickBid sale types to your own LGL gift types once, and they land the way your bookkeeper expects.
- When doea all this happen: you can export after the event, or turn on automatic sync so it keeps up as the night goes on.
Your team keeps working in the CRM they know. Your guests get a checkout built for a ballroom, with our team on hand if you want us there. Nobody has to retype a bid sheet in January.
The week after your event
- Before the event, give $25 on your own donation and ticket pages from your phone. If the total is more than $25, find out why.
- Within two days, get every bidder, buyer and donor into Little Green Light, matched to existing records.
- Tag first-time guests so you can find them later.
- Thank guests for coming before you thank them for giving. Most of them think of themselves as guests.
- Within 60 days, ask first-time guests for something small: a tour, a volunteer shift, or a modest gift.