Givebutter was named in 5 of the 6 buyer questions we put to ChatGPT and Gemini about donor management software, more than any other product. On 2026-08-03 we asked both assistants six versions of the same shopping question, gave each one live web search, and logged every product named and every source domain behind the answers. Givebutter's 5 of 6 (83%) was the only score above half.
DonorPerfect was the most persistent brand, but the assistants split it across two labels: "DonorPerfect Fundraising Software" in 3 of 6 answers and plain "DonorPerfect" in the other 3. Counted as one brand it appears in all six answers, yet neither label scored higher than 3 of 6 (50%), so we keep the two as separate rows below rather than report a 6 the raw counts never show. Donorbox got the same treatment, named twice as "Donorbox" and twice as "Donorbox CRM," which together cover 4 of the 6 questions.
Bloomerang was named in 3 of 6 answers (50%), matching DonorPerfect's per-label score. It came up for "what should I use," "most affordable," and the open "recommendations" question, but not for the bare "best" query or either the "small teams" or "free" version. Six products tied one rung down at 2 of 6 (33%): Donorbox, Donorbox CRM, GiveCentral, NeonCRM, Zeffy and Zoho CRM. Every other name in the study appeared just once.
The same question, six ways, six different shortlists
The six questions are near-synonyms, but their shortlists barely overlap, and that is the most useful thing in this data. The bare "best donor management software" returned five names: DonorPerfect Fundraising Software, Givebutter, Donorbox CRM, Signal and Agentforce for Education. Two of those, Signal and Agentforce for Education, appeared in no other question, in 1 of 6 answers each.
"Best free" and "most affordable" ought to be the same intent, yet they shared only two names. "Best free donor management software" returned seven tools: Givebutter, Donorbox CRM, Zeffy, TechSoup, DonorPerfect, Zoho CRM and Springly. "Most affordable donor management software" returned just four: Bloomerang, DonorPerfect, GiveCentral and Givebutter. The only products on both lists were Givebutter and DonorPerfect. A vendor that optimized only for the word "affordable" would have been invisible to the buyer who typed "free," and the reverse.
The "free" phrasing was the only place TechSoup and Springly showed up, each in 1 of 6 answers. The "affordable" phrasing introduced no product that wasn't already named somewhere else. The open-ended "donor management software recommendations" produced the longest and strangest list, 8 names, five of them unique to that question: Salesforce.org, Blackbaud eTapestry, Kindful, Network for Good and DonorDock. And "best for small teams" was the other source of one-offs: Little Green Light and DonorSnap each appeared only there, in 1 of 6 answers. Across all six questions, only Givebutter (5 of 6) and the DonorPerfect brand (all 6, split by label) held steady. Everything else moved with the wording.
Where the answers came from
Behind the 6 answers sat 14 source domains, and the top of that list is mostly vendors writing about themselves. DonorPerfect's own site, donorperfect.com, was the most-cited source at 6 of 6 answers, and DonorPerfect was named in every one of the six. Givebutter shows the same from the other side: givebutter.com fed 3 of 6 answers, and Givebutter was the most-named product at 5 of 6.
Being the source is not the same as being named, though. kindful.com fed 5 of 6 answers, yet the product Kindful was named in only 1. The rest of the vendor domains: bloomerang.com (4 of 6), donorbox.org (4), blog.givecentral.org (3), zeffy.com (1) and springly.org (1). Owning pages that rank for these queries clearly helps, but the assistant still chooses which names inside those pages to read out.
The non-vendor sources leaned toward a nonprofit-tech resource and a university blog rather than classic software roundups. techsoup.org fed 6 of 6 answers, onlinedegrees.sandiego.edu fed 4, growthforce.com fed 2, and bonterratech.com and evertrue.com fed 1 each. Community discussion entered through reddit.com, cited in 4 of 6 answers. Quora did not appear at all.
Not one software review directory was cited. G2, Capterra, GetApp, TrustRadius and Software Advice are absent from all 6 answers. For this category, on this day, a polished Capterra listing earned nothing. Vendor blogs, TechSoup, a .edu roundup and Reddit did the work.
What we'd do if we sold donor management software
Get into those exact pages, because the source list, not market share, decided who got named. donorperfect.com and techsoup.org each fed 6 of 6 answers, so a mention in TechSoup's donor-software content and your own well-ranked comparison pages are worth more here than any ad. Givebutter is the proof an owned domain works: 3 citations of givebutter.com lined up with the top result of 5 of 6 answers naming the product.
Reddit did real work too, cited in 4 of 6 answers, so being talked about honestly in the nonprofit and fundraising subreddits is a lever, not a nice-to-have. We would not spend a dollar on G2 or Capterra for this category yet, since neither was cited once. And we would re-run it monthly, because this list moved hard between six near-identical questions and it will move again as those pages change.
Where Glotier fits
We don't sell donor management software, so Glotier is correctly absent from all 6 answers. We wouldn't want our name here and we didn't fake it. But the run above is exactly what we do for the category you do sell in: put your buyers' real questions to ChatGPT and Gemini, then hand you every product named and every page behind the answer. The check is free, needs no account, and takes about a minute.
The full list, counted
| Product | Named in | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Givebutter | 5 of 6 | 83% |
| Bloomerang | 3 of 6 | 50% |
| DonorPerfect | 3 of 6 | 50% |
| DonorPerfect Fundraising Software | 3 of 6 | 50% |
| Donorbox | 2 of 6 | 33% |
| Donorbox CRM | 2 of 6 | 33% |
| GiveCentral | 2 of 6 | 33% |
| NeonCRM | 2 of 6 | 33% |
| Zeffy | 2 of 6 | 33% |
| Zoho CRM | 2 of 6 | 33% |