The aware3 brand dissolved into FACTS (Nelnet) on March 1, 2024, and churches that ran their app, online giving, and text messaging on aware3 are being migrated onto the FACTS stack. The standalone product is gone: aware3's legacy text-to-give plan was $109/mo before the migration (per factsmgt.com, verified June 2026), and the decision in front of every aware3 church now is whether to follow the vendor's migration or choose the next platform itself.
Givebear is worth putting on the replacement shortlist when the need involves in-person giving, donation kiosks, event registration, fund-level routing, or managing online and physical gifts under the same donor record. This page covers what happened, what to preserve from the old system, and how to test replacements without wasting weeks on demos that don't match the real workflow.
Feature Comparison
| Capability | Givebear | aware3 |
|---|---|---|
| Vendor Status | Active and independently sold | Dissolved into FACTS (Nelnet), March 2024 |
| Who Picks the Migration Destination | You do | Assigned to the FACTS stack |
| Text-to-Give | QR codes and tap to give instead | Legacy plan was $109/mo |
| Hardware Donation Kiosks | ||
| Setup Time | Minutes | Vendor-scheduled migration |
Who this is for
- A church operations director whose aware3 platform dissolved into FACTS and who must decide whether to follow the forced migration or choose the next vendor who have hit a specific workflow ceiling with their current setup.
- Teams whose biggest post-campaign cost is reconciling data from separate donation, event, receipt, and reporting systems.
- Organizations that want to reduce platform sprawl without losing donor trust or disrupting active recurring gifts and donation links.
What happened to aware3
The aware3 brand dissolved into FACTS (Nelnet) on March 1, 2024, and churches that ran their app, online giving, and text messaging on aware3 are being migrated onto the FACTS stack. The standalone product is gone: aware3's legacy text-to-give plan was $109/mo before the migration (per factsmgt.com, verified June 2026), and the decision in front of every aware3 church now is whether to follow the vendor's migration or choose the next platform itself.
When a giving platform shuts down, the urgent work is preservation: export donor records and giving history while the dashboard is still reachable, write down every active recurring gift (donor, amount, fund, billing day), and inventory the public giving links and QR codes that will go dark so each one gets a destination on the replacement platform.
Where Givebear fits in the shortlist
Givebear is a stronger fit when the church treats the shutdown as a chance to pick its own platform rather than inherit one: a giving page live this week, a tap-to-donate kiosk in the lobby, recurring gifts and event registration writing to the same donor record, and month-to-month plans with pricing published on the website instead of arriving by sales call.
Givebear belongs on the shortlist when the team wants donation pages, lobby kiosks, event registration, fund routing, and donor records to share the same data. That matters most for community organizations where donors may give online, at an event, through a kiosk, and later through a recurring gift, and the treasurer expects one clean view of each donor's history.
If you're still running aware3 today
Following the migration onto the FACTS stack can make sense for churches that also operate a school already running FACTS for tuition management or student information, since FACTS (Nelnet) is best known for school administration and the giving tools land inside a system the office staff signs into anyway. It can also be the path of least resistance for congregations attached to the aware3 app habit, provided FACTS confirms in writing which app features, giving funds, and text keywords actually survive the move.
Hardware from a discontinued vendor keeps working only as long as the payment backend behind it does, and support, security patches, and replacement parts are already gone. Treat the replacement as time-sensitive: every week of delay is in-person giving collected on equipment nobody stands behind.
How to evaluate alternatives without wasting weeks
Pick one complete donor workflow and run it through each platform you're seriously considering. A useful test scenario: a donor gives to a specific restricted fund at a live event using a card, receives an instant receipt, comes back later to set up a monthly gift, and attends a registration event where the platform should recognize them as an existing donor.
Running this scenario in two or three systems takes a day and reveals where each platform creates friction. Comparing feature lists and marketing pages takes weeks and reveals nothing about how the system handles your actual data.
What to preserve when you migrate
Export donor records and giving history from the aware3 dashboard while access still works, and write down every active recurring gift: donor, amount, fund, and billing day. Then inventory what the shutdown breaks: the text-to-give number and keywords donors have saved in their phones, app deep links in old emails and bulletins, and QR codes printed on pew cards. Each one needs a new destination before the old one goes dark.
Also inventory every location where donors find your giving links: website navigation, email footers, social media bios, printed flyers, QR codes at your location, and partner websites. Each link is a donor touchpoint that needs a redirect plan before the new platform goes live.
What the FACTS migration changes about your giving costs
aware3 priced its tools as church software with a recurring bill: the legacy text-to-give plan alone was $109/mo before the brand dissolved into FACTS (Nelnet) on March 1, 2024 (per factsmgt.com, verified June 2026). That is $1,308 a year for one giving channel, before card processing, and it bought an SMS keyword and a mobile giving flow most donors touched a few times a month. Churches being moved onto the FACTS stack should ask for the replacement pricing in writing before the next renewal, because a forced migration is also a repricing moment: do not assume the old plan's terms carry over to the new owner's catalog.
Givebear inverts that cost structure. The platform starts at $0/month with a 0% platform fee when donors tip (4.9% when a donor declines, one flat rate online, at kiosks, and on memberships), plus Stripe card processing at cost, and the tap-to-donate kiosk is a one-time hardware purchase ($699 to $899 depending on mount) with no monthly software subscription attached to the device. The job aware3's text-to-give did, letting a donor give from the phone in their pocket, is handled by a QR code pointing at the church's giving page, which costs nothing per month to keep running. One model bills every month it exists; the other stops billing once the hardware is paid for.
Questions to settle before following aware3 into FACTS
Get five answers in writing before the migration date: what the giving stack costs under FACTS pricing after the first year, how long the new contract runs, whether your text-to-give number and keywords transfer or retire, whether donors must re-enter card and bank details on the new system, and where your years of aware3 giving history land. The vendor running the migration has every incentive to make the move feel automatic; the church carries the fallout if recurring givers silently lapse because a saved payment method did not survive the cutover.
A forced migration is the cheapest moment a church will ever have to switch platforms, because the switching costs get paid either way: donors see a new giving interface, staff learn new admin screens, and printed QR codes need replacing whether the destination is FACTS or a platform the church picked itself. Givebear's plans are month to month, pricing starts at $0/month with a 0% platform fee when donors tip (4.9% when a donor declines, one flat rate online, at kiosks, and on memberships), plus Stripe card processing at cost, and the team runs a free concierge migration that maps funds, imports donor history, and sequences the recurring-gift handover so no donor is charged twice or dropped. The cost of evaluating the alternative is a week of testing, not a contract.
Practical use cases
Replace aware3 hardware and workflows with a platform that is actively maintained and supported.
Consolidate donation portals, campaign pages, event registrations, kiosk gifts, and receipts into one system.
Recover what you can from the old system (donor exports, recurring gift lists, giving history) before access disappears entirely.
Common questions
What is the best aware3 alternative?
The best alternative depends on which workflow is breaking. Givebear is worth evaluating when you need donation kiosks, fund routing, event registration, and donor records connected in one system. If the problem is purely online donation conversion and you don't need in-person giving, other platforms may fit better. Start by naming the specific operational gap before comparing options.
How long does it take to switch from aware3 to Givebear?
The technical setup for Givebear can be completed in hours. The migration work, including exporting donor records, mapping fund names, transitioning recurring gifts, and redirecting active donation links, typically takes one to three weeks depending on data volume and the number of active campaigns.
Will my donors lose their giving history when I switch from aware3?
Donor giving history can be imported from a aware3 CSV export. Recurring gift setups need careful handling: donors should be notified before their existing recurring charges stop and the new platform takes over. The Givebear team can advise on the migration sequence to minimize disruption.
What happened to aware3?
The aware3 brand dissolved into FACTS (Nelnet) on March 1, 2024, and churches running aware3's app, giving, and text-to-give tools are being migrated onto the FACTS stack (per factsmgt.com, verified June 2026). aware3 no longer exists as a standalone product to buy or renew, so churches mid-migration either follow the vendor onto FACTS or treat the shutdown as the moment to choose their next giving platform on their own terms.
How much did aware3 text-to-give cost?
aware3's legacy text-to-give plan was $109/mo before the FACTS migration (per factsmgt.com, verified June 2026), which works out to $1,308 a year for the SMS giving channel alone. A QR code pointing at a Givebear giving page covers the same phone-in-the-pew use case on a platform that starts at $0/month with a 0% platform fee when donors tip (4.9% when a donor declines, one flat rate online, at kiosks, and on memberships), plus Stripe card processing at cost.