Looking for imodules (Encompass) alternatives available for advancement and alumni relations teams? We've picked out some of the popular options that you can consider.
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• Ditch the manual data entry grind: If your team is spending too much time wrestling with disconnected tools for CRM, email, and events, exploring an all-in-one solution could free up significant staff time and effort.
• Improve alumni engagement and donor participation: A modern platform can transform clunky directories and event pages into intuitive, engaging experiences, making it easier for alumni to connect and participate in giving days and other initiatives.
• Discover purpose-built alternatives for your specific needs: Beyond Almabase, the post explores other excellent all-in-one options like Givecampus for social fundraising or ToucanTech for unified data management, each designed with unique strengths for advancement.
• Consider specialized CRM powerhouses: If your core need is a robust CRM, you’ll find insights into major players like Blackbaud, Ellucian, and Salesforce, and how they integrate to support your broader advancement goals.
• Learn from a real-world transition: See how New England College moved from iModules to a more streamlined system, overcoming challenges with confusing interfaces and manual tasks to better connect with their alumni.
• Get a quick overview of key differences: The post breaks down how each alternative compares to iModules, highlighting features like AI-powered outreach or advanced community management, to help you pinpoint the best fit.
With the end of the calendar year approaching as well as the recent news regarding Anthology, this might be a good time for advancement teams to explore some of the best Encompass (or iModules) alternatives available today.
In this blog, we’ll do just that but also take a look at what a transition from Encompass to Almabase might look like for teams. Let’s get started.
Almabase is an all-in-one alumni engagement and fundraising software for educational institutions and nonprofits. It provides tools for building alumni communities, managing events, facilitating donations, and tracking engagement metrics.
Key differences include a strong focus on alumni engagement and digital fundraising automation compared to iModules, which has a broader suite for advancement offices. Almabase emphasizes personalized outreach, integrations, hassle-free events and giving. It also boasts comparatively easier set up and active support.
Take a quick product tour →
Givecampus is a fundraising platform focused on higher education, known for its social fundraising tools such as peer-to-peer giving, crowdfunding, and giving days.
Unlike iModules, Givecampus specializes primarily in modern fundraising strategies and donor engagement, offering robust social sharing features, video integrations, and campaign management dashboards. Givecampus works best for institutions primarily aiming to run engaging fundraising campaigns and leverage networks for peer-driven giving, including colleges, universities, and K-12 schools.
Hivebrite is an advanced community management platform supporting private networks for organizations, universities, and nonprofits. It enables networking, event management, content sharing, and job boards, all within a branded portal.
Compared to iModules, Hivebrite excels in building versatile online communities and streamlining member interactions. Where iModules centers on advancement and alumni relations, Hivebrite is more customizable and suitable for professional associations, universities with global alumni, and organizations needing diverse community features for members.
ToucanTech is a community and database software enabling schools, universities, and clubs to connect members, manage relationships, and drive fundraising and engagement. It combines CRM capabilities with community engagement tools.
Key differences from iModules include a heavy emphasis on unified data management, private portals, communications, and event features in a modern interface. ToucanTech stands out for integrated CRM and engagement tracking, whereas iModules has deeper legacy advancement functionalities.
Gravyty offers AI-powered engagement and fundraising tools for nonprofits and educational institutions, enabling personalized outreach and predictive analytics to increase donor participation.
Gravyty focuses on artificial intelligence to automate donor outreach, steward relationships, and prioritize fundraising tasks. Its proactive AI nudges and email management are not central features of iModules, which is more event and campaign-focused.
Blackbaud is perhaps one of the most well-known CRM systems for advancement teams in both institutional and nonprofit spaces. Their CRM services are centered largely around Raiser’s Edge NXT (also known as RE NXT) and Blackbaud CRM, both of which have become household names in the advancement industry.
Ellucian exclusively focuses on educational institutions through a variety of tools specialized for different teams and tasks. For advancement in particular, you have their CRM Advance which integrates natively with their student lifecycle and ERP-related products.
💡Ellucian has also successfully bid to acquire Anthology's Student Information Systems (SIS) and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) since the chapter 11 announcement.
When talking about CRMs, it’s pretty much impossible not to mention Salesforce. For educational institutions, you have the Salesforce Education Cloud while nonprofits may find the Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud more relevant.
Anna Twombley’s team at New England College were iModules users before they adopted Almabase. They were facing a few persistent challenges such as:
Essentially, a lot of staff time was being spent managing the tool itself, which is not sustainable for many advancement teams like theirs. Moving to Almabase on the other hand, allowed them to:
Their alumni also felt better connected to their alma mater and their fellow alumni with the addition of a cleaner, more accessible platform for both the directory and event-related pages such as giving days and fundraising forms.
You can check out the full recording of our conversation with Anna as well as an overview of Almabase through the link below 👇
▶️Inside New England College’s Future-Ready Advancement Strategy (Plus a Live Tour of Almabase)
At the end of the day, it is up to you and your team’s unique needs that will determine your platform of choice for 2026 and beyond. But we hope we’ve been able to give you a good starting point to find the right fit for you.
If you’d like to learn more about Almabase and how we help institutions and organizations for advancement needs, feel free to book a personalized demo call with us below! ⬇️
Almabase provides dedicated personnel for your onboarding and training as you or your team gets used to Almabase. We also provide readily available live chat, email, and on-call support in case you run into any hiccups.
Almabase also supports K-12 schools and healthcare foundations managing donor and alumni communities.
Almabase comes with its own set of reporting and analytics tools for giving, engagement, and donor pipeline data.
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What started in 2012 as a small social media campaign has grown into a global giving phenomenon that now inspires millions across 90+ countries to support the causes they love, all in just 24 hours. This brings us to the point of this blog. The fundraising platform you choose to build your Giving Tuesday events and fundraisers on can make or break your annual experience drastically.
We’ve curated a handful of platforms designed for education-focused teams to do more with less, so you can spend time building relationships, not battling technology.
Here’s a closer look at some platforms that can help your institution raise more and engage better for this year’s Giving Tuesday and beyond. Let’s get started:
Almabase often comes up first when education teams want a platform that balances rich tools with actual ease. It is purpose-built for advancement, blending fundraising, alumni engagement, and events into one modular platform. It shines when teams want depth, data, and scalability with the support of a dedicated team. Here’s how it stacks up-
Advancement teams that want a long-term, comprehensive platform to integrate fundraising with a strategic alumni engagement and community-building effort.
Almabase offers pricing based on your needs and the size of your alumni and donor base that you want to engage with. You can book a personalized demo and get a quote here.
Givebutter is known for its modern, donor-friendly design and transparent pricing. It combines crowdfunding, peer-to-peer fundraising, and event ticketing in one platform. Here’s how it stacks up –
Schools, nonprofits, and small teams wanting an easy-to-launch Giving Tuesday campaign platform with built-in social tools and no upfront software cost.
It operates on a 100% transparent tip-or-fee model, meaning it's free to use with a voluntary tipping system. Organizations can choose to cover the platform fee themselves or let donors cover it with an optional tip.
Donorbox is a platform known for its focus on providing a secure, reliable, and conversion-optimized donation experience through its simple, yet powerful, features. It is designed for nonprofits of all sizes, including schools and universities with diverse fundraising needs.
Mid-sized to large schools and universities that need a reliable, cost-effective, and conversion-optimized tool to run a Giving Tuesday campaign, especially for direct online appeals and recurring giving.
Donorbox offers a free standard plan, a pro plan at $150/month, and a premium plan with custom pricing.
Givecampus is a fundraising platform for educational institutions, empowering fundraisers at every stage of the fundraising lifecycle. Its core value proposition is its deep understanding of and specialization in the unique needs of schools and universities, from online giving days to volunteer management.
Key Features
Large, established colleges and universities with a strategic focus on alumni engagement and a dedicated advancement team that can leverage its enterprise-grade features for a high-impact Giving Tuesday.
GIveCampus has three platform plans: Essentials, Professional and Enterprise. On top of this, your price will vary depending on the modules you need.
Bonterra, formerly a suite of tools including EveryAction, is a comprehensive, enterprise-grade solution that has garnered a reputation as a robust fundraising platform for larger nonprofit organizations with complex needs. It aims to provide a single, unified solution for fundraising and donor engagement.
Large universities and institutions that need a long-term, comprehensive CRM and fundraising solution, and for whom Giving Tuesday is a part of a larger, integrated annual giving strategy.
Tailored to the organization's unique needs, with pricing based on size, complexity, and features.
Onecause is a fundraising platform with a particular focus on events, auctions and peer-to-peer campaigns. It is designed to help organizations streamline the guest experience and run successful events.
Educational institutions with a Giving Tuesday strategy built around a live or virtual event, auction, or other high-energy initiative.
Onecause has different pricing plans based on which features you need to use between fundraising and text-to-give, auction and events, and peer-to-peer fundraising.
Maybe you just need a simple crowdfunding platform this year to complement an event you are already planning with another tool, or you just want to use an easy-to-set-up fundraising page with names that have become synonymous with raising money for causes. If that’s what you’re looking for, here are some of the popular ones to choose from:
…and more depending on your institution’s geographic location.
Not every platform is built with education teams in mind, and choosing wrong can cost you both time and momentum. With so many options, the right fit depends on what your team actually needs, not just flashy features. So, while deciding, keep these factors in mind:
Want a deeper breakdown of these essentials? Take a look at our guide on giving day platform features every institution should consider.
The right Giving Tuesday platform should lighten your team’s load while helping you hit ambitious goals. The platforms we’ve covered are built with education teams in mind; it’s just a matter of matching your goals, team size, and budget to the right solution. Once done, you’ll set yourself up for more than just a one-day win.
6 Great Giving Tuesday Platforms for Schools & Universities (2026)
Find the best Giving Tuesday platform for your school or university. Compare top fundraising tools to boost donations and engage your community.
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August 26, 2025
12 minutes
Giving Days are one of the most important fundraising events today for institutions and nonprofits alike. According to EAB, 12.7% of private institution alumni and 19.8% of public institution alumni make their first gift on a giving day. In turn, powerful Giving Day platforms have cropped up to help teams get the most out of these events.
With so many excellent giving platforms available today, we’d like to zoom out and let you know which features you should consider essential and how you can make the most of your eventual choice. Let’s get started:
A good giving platform should ideally be:
Test your dashboards, giving pages, forms, and all other touchpoints to make sure all the people involved in your Giving Day have a smooth and memorable experience across all devices.
For social media, your team should be looking for features such as:
💡 Consider which social media your donors and supporters are most active in. You’ll want a platform that integrates to the same level of depth on those specific platforms.
Giving Days, due to the nature of being a focused fundraiser within a short window, will naturally need a platform that can handle many transactions at the same time. You will have bursts of transactions, such as when the campaign launches and after a successful promotion. A good Giving Day platform also needs to incorporate SSL/PCI-compliant payment processing as well as any other compliance requirements depending on the national or state laws applicable to your fundraiser.
You need to be able to engage donors and potential donors before, during, and after your Giving Day. Automated and personalized engagement through email, text, and social media may be crucial, especially if communicating with a larger pool of donors.
💡 Depending on your overall engagement strategy, you may want a fundraising platform that has a few donor engagement features on top or a dedicated engagement platform that works in tandem with your fundraising tool.
With a relatively short burst of high activity, you should be looking for platforms that support:
💡 Keep the above features as well as your needs in mind as different might CRMs interact with different tools in varying capacities.
Engaging and enabling donations from mobile device users are no longer something novel. Today, you’ll want a giving platform that not only engages mobile users but also optimizes their experience so that they don’t end up with an inferior experience.
Some platforms provide an app-based approach, while others go for mobile-optimized browser experiences.
💡Surveys and donor device metrics should help you get a sense of how much of a priority mobile features are for you as well as which method your donors prefer.
The cornerstone of any modern-day Giving Day campaign is a well-designed, customizable fundraising page that captures your organization's unique brand and mission. Customization is especially important for peer-to-peer fundraisers, where you’ll want to find the right mix between flexible templates and recognizable branding.
If you are regularly hosting Giving Day fundraisers, chances are that you have a long-term fundraising plan. This is where you’ll want a giving platform that is viable for both long-term and short-term fundraising efforts. Depending on your needs, look for platforms that include:
to make sure that your Giving Days produce an effective ripple effect.
It’s easy to get lost in all the fancy and innovative features that fundraising platforms offer today. Instead of trying to use a feature simply for the sake of trying something new, keep your mission and the people involved at the heart of your Giving Day campaign by enabling your storytelling and vision through the features available.
Whether it’s connected to an existing CRM or comes with its own, you will most likely get a good amount of data about your supporters, donors, and prospects throughout your campaign. Make detailed segments to optimize your outreach and communication efforts and enrich these segments after your campaign to make your engagement better with each fundraiser.
Always test your forms, pages, and communication efforts on mobile devices to check how they would feel for a donor trying to donate. Your CTAs might be a couple of scrolls away and on the side of your giving page when it’s front and center on other devices.
Your recent first-time donor might just be your next superstar supporter. Make sure your donors feel good about their contribution by keeping them informed on goals reached throughout the day. Keep them looped in on how the funds are being used and inform them about future initiatives coming up.
Giving Days are so integral to your long-term fundraising plan that you might feel like the choice of platform might make or break your strategy entirely. However, a lot of work goes into making these platforms work optimally for a specific institution or organization.
If you’re looking for a platform that syncs effortlessly with CRMs with a team committed to ensuring your giving day success, get in touch with us, and we’d be glad to show you how we can help. 🫡
Giving Day Platforms: Essential Software Features
With many excellent giving platforms available, learn which features to consider essential and how to make the most of your choice of fundraising platform
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If you’ve looked at fundraising and alumni engagement platforms for educational institutions, you’ve probably seen Almabase and GiveCampus get mentioned frequently.
With two great options, it might seem a difficult choice at first. However, depending on your needs for a peer-to-peer fundraising platform, an all-around digital engagement solution, or other needs, your choice can vary greatly. With this blog, we’d like to provide a buyer’s guide to help you make an informed choice to see what each platform does well and which of the two might fit your team better. Let’s get started:
Almabase is a SaaS platform designed to empower alumni teams across schools, colleges, and universities. It integrates with existing CRM systems to enhance digital engagement, event management, and online giving campaigns. Almabase is effective for small teams looking to amplify their impact without expanding resources.
GiveCampus is a fundraising platform specifically built for educational institutions. It streamlines the fundraising lifecycle by identifying, engaging, soliciting, and stewarding donors. GiveCampus is known for its user-friendly interface and robust volunteer management features.
1. Integration and Efficiency: Almabase seamlessly integrates into most educational institution CRM systems, especially those based on Raiser’s Edge NXT thanks to a long-standing partnership, which ensures:
2. Digital Engagement Tools: Almabase offers advanced digital engagement tools that help institutions build lifelong relationships with alumni through a comprehensive alumni directory, personalized emails, text communication, etc. to reach out to alumni more effectively.
3. Excellent Customer Support: Almabase offers both email and chat-based support that can be reached at any time, with a focus on quick response and resolution time.
1. User-Friendly Interface: GiveCampus is praised for its intuitive design, making it easy for both fundraisers and donors to use. It simplifies the donation process, leading to higher conversion rates.
2. Volunteer Management: GiveCampus offers a robust volunteer management system that empowers volunteers to track their outreach efforts effectively. This feature is great for successful peer-to-peer fundraising campaigns.
3. Extensive support for mobile payment: GiveCampus supports most popular mobile/digital wallets and a large number of cryptocurrencies, allowing more flexibility for donors.
If you are an educational institution that already has a digital engagement platform and only needs a fundraising module, both solutions will provide with you a robust fundraising and event solution. However, if you are looking for all-around alumni engagement on top of fundraising, Almabase might suit your needs better.
If your institution already uses a CRM like Raiser’s Edge NXT, Almabase might be more suitable due to its seamless integration capabilities. While GiveCampus also has several amazing integrations, it incurs additional charges for third-party integrations.
If volunteer management and peer-to-peer fundraising are key priorities, GiveCampus offers more robust features in this area.
Almabase supports several payment platforms and is a great choice due to its integration with Blackbaud Merchant Services (BBMS). However, if you are looking to support as many platforms as possible including cryptocurrency, GiveCampus does give you more choices.
Both platforms have slightly different pricing structures. Almabase’s pricing primarily depends on the size of your institution, the number of records, and how many modules you need. On the other hand, GiveCampus has different plans depending on the number of features you need, and may also charge fees for exceeding goals on top of integration charges. You should ideally consider both options to get a quote that fits your needs and your budget.
If yours or a related nonprofit wants to make use of either option, it is certainly possible. However, Almabase has more experience working with nonprofits while GiveCampus exclusively caters to educational institutions.
What we advise when picking any platform is that you consider the budget, skillset, and time available to your team above all else (even if that means you choose a platform that’s not ours). What works really well for a similarly sized school might not work for you due to nuanced aspects like state regulations, donor experiences, extra fee scaling, etc.
Once everything seems aligned, make sure to pursue a demo or free trial (ideally one that’s personalized for your needs) to confirm. That being said, we hope you are able to make a decision you, your team, and your alumni are comfortable with.
Almabase vs GiveCampus: What is the right tool for you?
We're comparing Almabase vs GiveCampus to provide you with all the angles you need to figure out which solution fits your team the best.
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