About contacts 👤
Contacts are records of individuals or companies. Contacts are automatically added to your contact database when they interact with your organization's Givebutter account. These actions can include:
Making a donation
Purchasing event tickets
Registering as a bidder in your auction
Signing up for peer-to-peer/team fundraising
Subscribing to your email or text communications
In addition, you can manually add individual or company contacts to your Givebutter account one by one, or import contact data in bulk. This may include prospective donors, past supporters, or data exported from other CRM platforms. Once a contact is added to your Givebutter account, their future activity will be saved in the Overview tab of their contact profile. Learn more about contact activities →
Learn the ropes with Givebutter Academy! 🎥 Our free educational video courses are designed to help you succeed on our platform and make the most of our features. Build and manage your contact database →
Contact insights ✨
The Summary section at the top of every contact profile gives you a quick snapshot of a supporter's giving history and current engagement, so you can prepare for outreach without digging through their activity feed. It's created automatically and includes a summary of their recent giving trends. If a contact doesn't have enough history yet, the written summary is hidden, but their stats and badges still show.
Contact profiles can also be viewed and edited in the Givebutter mobile app.
Creating individual contacts ✏️
To create a new individual contact, click the New Contact button on your Contacts page.
Under Contact Type, select Individual.
Fill out the information for this contact.
Prefix
First name
Preferred name (Replaces the first name everywhere, except tax documents and other legal name uses.)
Middle name
Last name
Suffix
Birthdate – if entered, month and day are required, birth year is optional
Gender
Pronouns
Employer
Company – Select an existing company contact, or create a new one
Title
External ID
Email – Personal or Work
Phone number – Home, Work, or Cell
Address
Contact image
Note
Bio (max 2000 characters)
Tags
Custom Fields – as applicable
Contact owner
Engage Subscriptions
Click Create.
💡 Want to group contacts who give together, like family members or a shared household? You can create households and track relationships between individual contacts from the Relationships tab. Learn more about contact households and relationships →
Partial contacts 👤
Givebutter allows you to create contacts with limited information, even if you don't yet have their full name, email address, or phone number! We support the creation of contacts (either manually or via contact import) with:
Only a first and last name
Only an email address
Only a phone number
Contacts without an email or phone number
If you only have first and last names, you can log contacts without additional contact information. You can also import contacts without contact information, as long as a first and last name are included.
Example uses for name-only contacts include:
Logging offline transactions to contacts without a phone number or email
Linking them as company points of contact
Adding additional contact information at a later date
Logging contact activities (such as volunteer activities or meetings)
Internal organizational notes or relationship tracking
Contacts without names
If you only have email addresses or phone numbers, you can log contacts without names. You can also import contacts without names, as long as at least one email address or phone number is included.
These contacts can still receive emails and texts via Engage, be merged with other contact records, and appear in your contact list, but they cannot be used for logging transactions until they include both a first and last name. Merge tags (like first name) will use the fallback values you've set if names are missing.
⚠️ You cannot log a transaction to a contact without a first and last name. Transaction imports will fail if attempted with an unnamed contact.
Creating company contacts 🏢
Company contacts can be linked to multiple associated individual contacts and include a designated contact person.
Pledges can be logged for company contacts. Payments made through a company pledge's payment link are credited to the company. Learn more about pledges →
To create a new company contact, click the New Contact button on your Contacts page.
Under Contact Type, select Company.
In the sidebar, fill out the information for this contact.
Company name – required
Address
Email
Phone number
Point of contact – Select an existing contact, or create a new individual contact
Website
Social media information – LinkedIn, X, Facebook, Tiktok, Instagram
Contact Image
Note
Bio
Tags
Custom Fields – as applicable
Engage Subscriptions
Click Create.
If you create a company contact and add a new individual as your point of contact, two contacts will be created: the company contact and the individual point of contact. The point of contact will be linked to the company on your Contacts page.
Link individual contacts 👪
You can link multiple individual contacts to the same company, but you can only have one primary point of contact at a company.
To add associated contacts to a company contact, go to the company's contact page and on the Relationships tab, click Add contact next to the Contacts section.
A pop-up window will appear. You can search for an existing contact in your database, and enter their position at the company under Role.
If you'd like to make this contact the main point of contact for this company, check the Make point of contact box.
Click Add to link this contact.
Point of contact ☎️
To add or change the primary point of contact for a company, click the star icon next to the contact you'd like to choose. Any previous primary contact (as applicable) will remain linked to this company, but will no longer be indicated as the point of contact.
To remove the primary contact label, click on the star icon a second time.
Designated primary contacts are helpful for organizational purposes and outreach, but they are not required.
Remove linked contacts ❌
To remove an associated individual contact from a company contact, click the exit/leave icon next to the contact. This will not delete the contact from your account, it will just remove the link to the company. If you wish to remove the contact from your Givebutter account completely, you can archive or delete the contact.
Convert contact types 🔁
If you have individual contacts that need to be converted to company contacts (or vice versa), you can do this directly on your Contacts page.
Select the contact you'd like to convert using the checkbox on the left side of your contact data table.
Please note that you can only convert one contact at a time. If you select multiple contacts, the option to convert them won't be available. If you'd like to see this option in the future, please add a vote to the feature request! →
Click the Actions button at the top of the page, and select Convert.
If you've selected an Individual contact, this will say Convert to company.
If you've selected a Company contact, this will say Convert to individual.
You can also convert contact types from a contact profile! From a contact profile, click on the three dots [...] in the upper right corner and select Convert.
A sidebar will appear where you can confirm or edit additional information about this contact. Click Save at the bottom of the sidebar to confirm the conversion.
Edit contacts ✏️
Contact information can be edited at any time. Click a contact to open their profile.
Contact details 📓
All details are in the sidebar on the Overview tab, where you can add or edit information for individual and company contacts by clicking.
On the Details sidebar, you can make changes to a contact's:
Tags
Relationships – contact owner and company information
Email addresses
Phone numbers
Addresses
Communication (Engage) preferences – email, text, and direct mail
Name – prefix, first, middle, last, suffix, and preferred name
Personal – title, gender, pronouns, birthday, employer, bio, and note
Social profiles – including website, LinkedIn, Facebook, TikTok, X (Twitter), and Instagram
Identifiers – contact ID (view only) and external ID (editable)
Name and image 👤
Contact images display as a circular avatar to the left of a contact's name at the top of their profile, and anywhere that contact's avatar appears in your dashboard, like contact previews and the merge flow.
To add or change a contact's image, hover over their avatar and click the camera icon, then upload a new image. Images must be under 5MB and in JPG or PNG format. Since images are cropped to a circle, square images display best. To edit a contact's name, click on their name.
Custom field responses 🧩
Custom field information can be viewed and edited under the Custom fields tab on a contact's profile.
FAQ 🤔
Can company contacts be created from a campaign's checkout flow, the same way individual contacts are?
Not currently – all contacts created as the result of a processed transaction in a campaign's checkout flow will be created as individual contacts. It is possible to convert a contact after it's been created. If you'd like the option to create company contacts automatically from the checkout flow, please add a vote to the feature request! →
Do company contacts function differently from individual contacts?
For the most part, both individual and company contacts are treated the same in Givebutter, however a company contact can include (or be linked to) multiple individual contacts. Some of the information that can be logged in a contact differs between contact types, for example, a company contact doesn't include the option to enter a birthdate.
What size should contact images be?
Contact images must be under 5MB and in JPG or PNG format. Images are displayed as a circle, so we recommend a square image (1:1 ratio) with the subject centered to avoid cropping.
Can I turn off the contact insights AI summary?
Yes! You can turn off individual AI-powered features from Settings > AI. Switch off the toggle for contact insights. Your contact Summary area will look like this without the contact insights summary:
What is a contact owner?
A contact owner is a team member at your organization assigned as the point of responsibility for a specific contact. You can assign an owner from from the Details sidebar on any contact profile, filter your Contacts page by owner, and use the built-in My Contacts segment to quickly view contacts assigned to you. Owners can also be assigned or removed in bulk via the Actions menu on your Contacts page.
How do I merge duplicate contacts? Can I merge both contact types?
You can merge duplicate individual contacts, but you cannot currently merge duplicate company contacts. Please merge duplicates before converting individual contacts to companies. Otherwise, you must convert them back to individuals to complete a merge. Please see our full guide on merging duplicate contacts!