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 their contact profile's Activity Feed. Learn more about contact timeline events →
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 – required
Middle name
Last name – required
Suffix
Birthdate
Gender
Company
Title
Email – Personal or Work
Phone number – Home, Work, or Cell
Address
Note
Tags
Custom Fields – as applicable
Engage Subscriptions
Click Create.
Creating company contacts 🏢
Company contacts can be linked to multiple associated individual contacts and include a person of contact.
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, and Facebook
Note
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 click Add contact.
A popup window will appear. Under Contact, you can search for an existing contact in your database or create a new one.
If you create a new contact, you'll be prompted to fill out the new contact information.
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 or create this contact.
Point of contact ☎️
To add a primary point of contact for a company, click the three dots [...] next to the contact you'd like to choose and select Make primary contact. The previous primary contact (as applicable) will remain linked to this company, but will no longer be indicated as the point of contact.
If you'd like to clear a primary contact, you can either assign that role to a different linked contact or clear the primary contact. To remove the primary contact label, click the three dots [...] and click Clear primary contact.
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 three dots [...] next to the contact to remove and select Remove from company.
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 within a contact profile, click on the Actions button, and select Convert.
A sidebar will appear where you can confirm or add additional information about this individual or company contact. Click Save at the bottom of the sidebar to confirm the conversion.
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.
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!