MULTI DEPARTMENT

Liberty University — one of the largest private universities in the United States — needed a unified fundraising and event platform that could serve multiple departments under a single institutional contract. There was no standard platform across the university. The Flames Club (athletics booster organization) had been using GiveButter because it was free, but “free” came with significant limitations for in-person events.

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The problems were operational:

• No efficient guest check-in process at events
• No way to securely capture payment information using dedicated card readers
• No ability to keep attendees engaged with the auction throughout the event
• No multi-department structure — each school or club operated independently with no institutional coordination

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GiveButter was designed for online giving, not for running a live in-person fundraising gala. Liberty needed a platform built for the room, not just the browser.

Handbid structured a single institutional contract that allowed Liberty to create sub-organizations underneath it — each department operating its own events independently while the university maintained centralized oversight.

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Three departments are now live on the platform:‍

• Flames Club — athletics booster fundraising galas
• Club Sports — jersey auctions and athletic fundraising (previously on Sidearm, which was taking 10–20% of transactions)
• Office of Alumni Relations — alumni engagement events

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The configuration wasn’t exotic — no white-label, no custom development. The value was structural: one contract, one vendor relationship, multiple independent operations. Handbid’s existing multi-organization architecture made this possible out of the box.

What did require attention was the in-person experience. Handbid deployed secure Stripe credit card readers for payment capture at the door, integrated ticketing and check-in, and delivered the mobile bidding experience that kept guests connected to the auction from their seats — not just from a registration table.

Liberty’s IT Project Manager, Luke Wildermuth, served as the institutional liaison across all three departments. From an IT perspective, Handbid needed to meet the university’s security and compliance requirements — a non-negotiable for any enterprise education institution.

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The support experience became a defining factor:

• When Caroline, Liberty’s primary Handbid representative, went on maternity leave mid-engagement, the handoff was seamless. Luke specifically called this out as something his team values.
• The Handbid support team was described as “super readily available leading up to it and helping kind of lead that charge.”
• From Luke’s IT perspective, the “in-between IT liaison was kind of pain-free.”

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The Flames Club’s success directly drove organic expansion. Club Sports had been on Sidearm, dealing with 10–20% transaction fees, constant IT support tickets for refunds, and users deliberately entering wrong credit cards to avoid auto-charges. After seeing the Flames Club results, Club Sports adopted Handbid for their fall jersey auctions.

The headline number speaks for itself.

The Flames Club went from approximately $45,000 on GiveButter to $190,000 on Handbid in year one — a 322% revenue increase, or roughly 4x growth.

When $186 million flows through your platform, that’s not auction software. That’s infrastructure.

When results speak, the rest of the university listens.