Benevity, Inc.

Fantastic organization! Thank Benevity!

This is not a review of the company but of the software itself. I use both the Grants by Benevity and the Benevity software and they are terrible. The Grants program is so slow, I feel like it's 1998 and I'm using dial up internet. My funding requests constantly disappear and reappear. Right now, I can't open any of my funding requests, which prompted me to write a review. This happens a lot. It's literally the worst database CRM type tool I have ever used. Benevity is constantly buggy. During my company's volunteer program last September, I think I emailed DAILY issues with the software. The maps don't link to the correct location; if you disable emails, it still spams you with a ton of emails; it magically adds or removes volunteer shifts, etc. I honestly don't recommend the programs and I struggle with why my company chose them. The functionality is totally lacking and the user experience is nothing but frustrating.

I feel that Benevity defrauded our non-profit elementary school. We received muliple donations from parents their employers, which Benevity handled. Benevity has a policy of charging $100 per donation if a paper check is issued instead of using direct deposit. Being a tiny non-profit school, we immediately tried to set up direct deposit. Every dollar counts for us! Every time we would send in our direct deposit request, Benevity would sit on it for two months, then reject the request with a short message saying "address does not match." Benevity customer service couldn't explain why. Our cancelled check and school address absolutely matched. After three attempts, 6 months, and losing $400 in much needed donations (because Benevity had to collect their $100 for each paper check they issued to us), we finally found a customer service rep who took the time to ask why our direct deposit request kept being rejected. It turned out that when we sent in our cancelled check with our direct deposit request, a little bit of the "cancel" stamp was over the address. Not enough to obfuscate it, but enough that Benevity felt justified in turning down our direct deposit request. "Address does not match" certainly did not describe the issue. We feel defrauded. At any point in this process, our direct deposit request could easily have been handled. I personally set up direct deposit for our teachers, and it takes me less than 24 hours. For Benevity to sit our on request for two months, then turn us down for an erroneous and misleading reason seems like outright fraud. Despite multiple emails and calls to customer service, our school was never given the funds that were taken from our donations. Benevity should be ashamed of themselves.