DonorForge
Migration guideUpdated 2026-05-06

Migrate from Givebutter.

How to move from Givebutter to DonorForge without losing donor records, giving history, or recurring givers. Five steps. Most teams finish in under two weeks; we are happy to help on paid plans.

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Your starting point

Free fundraising platform monetized through optional donor tips.

Many DonorForge customers run Givebutter for one-off campaigns and DonorForge as the system of record. Givebutter exports CSVs; DonorForge's deduplication catches donors who appear in both.

The migration5 steps · ~14 days
  1. 01

    Export from Givebutter

    Pull a clean CSV of donor records, giving history, and pledge balances. Most platforms put this under Reports or Data Export. Keep the file names and column headers exactly as the export gives them; DonorForge maps them on import.

  2. 02

    Stand up your DonorForge org

    Sign up, name your organization, and connect your payment processor. Two-person dev teams typically finish initial config in an afternoon.

  3. 03

    Import donors and giving history

    Use DonorForge's CSV importer. The mapper auto-detects standard fields (name, email, address, gift date, amount, fund) and lets you align custom fields to tags or DonorForge custom fields.

  4. 04

    Reconnect recurring donors

    Recurring giving is the part that breaks during most migrations because card-on-file tokens are not portable between processors. DonorForge sends a one-tap re-authorization email to each existing recurring donor; over a typical 30-day window we see 80%+ reauthorize without manual outreach.

  5. 05

    Cut over and verify

    Update donation links and embedded forms to point at DonorForge. Run both systems in parallel for one fundraising cycle if it makes you nervous; switch primary thank-you flows to DonorForge once the parallel month closes clean.

What typically breaks
  • Recurring giving tokens. Card-on-file tokens stay with the original payment processor. Plan a re-authorization email and expect 70-90% reauth in the first 30 days; the rest needs a phone call.
  • Custom fields. Whatever you built in Givebutter's custom-field surface needs to map to a DonorForge field or a tag. We help with this on paid plans.
  • Old donation links. Update embedded donate buttons, email signature links, and printed-asset QR codes to point at DonorForge. Set up redirects from your old donation URLs if you cannot update them all in one pass.
  • Year-end statement timing. If you migrate mid-year, your year-end statements need to combine giving from both systems. DonorForge can produce a combined statement if you import the Givebutter historical data first.
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