Advance from Gravyty vs. GiveCampus: Which is the best fundraising platform for schools?
Today’s Advancement and Annual Giving teams are asked to do more with less.
From exceeding donor expectations to delivering detailed reporting, every aspect of online giving demands agility, insight, and impact.
Choosing the right online fundraising platform is one of the most important decisions your institution can make to maximize resources and donor engagement.
In this blog, we’ll compare two popular choices — Advance from Gravyty and GiveCampus — and show why more higher education institutions are turning to Advance for a modern, all-in-one fundraising platform that drives donations and simplifies operations.
- What is Advance from Gravyty?
- What is GiveCampus?
- Differences between Advance and GiveCampus
- Innovative functionality for modern Advancement teams
- Why schools are choosing Advance for year-round giving
What is Advance from Gravyty?
Advance from Gravyty is a comprehensive online giving platform designed specifically for higher education, K-12 and nonprofit organizations.
It combines powerful, flexible giving forms, embedded payment processing, real-time analytics, and deep integration capabilities to help institutions raise more while doing less administrative work.
Advance empowers advancement teams to build seamless donor experiences, drive year-round giving, and gain actionable insights — all without needing a major website overhaul.
What is GiveCampus?
GiveCampus is a digital fundraising platform that primarily supports Giving Day campaigns, volunteer management, and some peer-to-peer fundraising initiatives.
While it offers helpful tools for short-term campaigns, many institutions find GiveCampus more limiting for year-round engagement needs and more reliant on external payment processors — creating extra work for finance and advancement teams behind the scenes.
Differences between Advance and GiveCampus
1. Everyday giving, not just giving days
Advance: Built for year-round fundraising. With Advance, you can create unlimited, embeddable donation forms, customize donor journeys, and drive ongoing engagement across campaigns, well beyond your annual day of giving. You can even embed giving forms inside of Graduway, Gravyty’s alumni platform, to rally your alumni community around the campaign.
GiveCampus: Strong for short-term giving days, but less suited for ongoing, daily fundraising needs. Flexibility to manage everyday donations can feel limited compared to Advance.
Why it matters
Sustained giving and engagement are crucial to building a strong donor pipeline, especially in today’s tumultuous funding climate. Advance gives you the tools to keep donors involved year-round.
2. Integrated payment processing for simpler operations
Advance: Payment processing is embedded directly into the platform via GravytyPay. No external gateways. No complex reconciliation. Teams can view donations and payment activity in real time, all within Advance.
GiveCampus: Requires a separate payment processor (e.g., Stripe), introducing extra steps, vendor management, and reconciliation challenges.
Why it matters
Integrated payments ensure a smoother donor experience, faster reporting, and less risk of manual errors.
3. Actionable data & analytics
Advance: Offers robust real-time analytics on form performance, donor behavior, and campaign results — all accessible without needing to export to spreadsheets.
GiveCampus: Provides standard reporting tools, but deeper analysis often requires manual data manipulation outside the platform.
Why it matters
Fast, actionable insights enable advancement teams to optimize campaigns on the fly and confidently report back to leadership.
4. Flexibility and control over the donor experience
Advance:
- Fully customizable forms to match your institution’s brand identity.
- Dynamic ask ladders, conditional fields, embedded videos, and customized thank-you experiences.
- Built mobile-first to minimize friction — gifts can be completed in as little as three clicks.
GiveCampus:
- More rigid form templates.
- Branding and experience customization are more limited compared to Advance.
Why it matters
A frictionless, branded experience dramatically improves conversion rates, especially among mobile-first alumni audiences and younger donors.
Christine Dahlheimer
Sr. Director, Alumni Engagement, Boston College High School
Innovative functionality for modern Advancement teams
GravytyPay: Embedded payment processing for Advancement teams
GravytyPay is Gravyty’s all-in-one digital giving and payment processing solution, now fully integrated into Advance.
With GravytyPay, institutions eliminate the need for third-party vendors, simplify reconciliation, and gain centralized insights into both donations and payments. This streamlined approach reduces administrative lift and empowers advancement teams to spend more time on strategy and stewardship, not paperwork.
Key benefits for fundraising teams:
- Centralized donor and payment insights
- Faster, simplified reporting
- Real-time, actionable data for optimization
- Secure, frictionless donor experiences
Everyday Giving Forms: Year-round donor engagement made easy
Advance’s new Everyday Giving Forms make it easier than ever to engage donors beyond Giving Day.
Fully customizable, mobile-friendly, and embeddable on any webpage, these forms deliver a seamless donation experience tailored to each donor.
Michelle Pryor
Director, Alumni Giving & Engagement, Salisbury University
With advanced tracking, dynamic ask amounts, and conditional logic fields, Everyday Giving Forms help institutions:
- Maximize giving opportunities across the entire calendar year
- Personalize giving experiences by audience or campaign
- Gain detailed insights to inform fundraising strategy
The best fundraising platform for schools: Why educational institutions are choosing Advance vs. GiveCampus
When you’re investing in a giving platform, you need a dedicated partner that evolves with your advancement goals.
Advance from Gravyty delivers:
- Everyday giving readiness
- Embedded payment processing
- Flexible donor-first form experiences
- Real-time, actionable insights
- Simplified operations across finance and advancement
- White-glove implementation and support when you need it most
Whether you’re planning your next giving day or scaling your everyday fundraising efforts, Advance helps your institution raise more — and spend less time doing it.
Ready to see how Advance can transform your donor experience and streamline your operations? Book a demo to talk to our sales team today.
