A day after Give to the Max Day shattered records, raking in $20.1 million for schools and nonprofits despite seven hours of website woes, its executive director promised to hold its technology partner "fully accountable" for the online glitches.
"Our technology partner Kimbia is doing a deep dive on what went wrong on our platform," said GiveMN Executive Director Jake Blumberg. "We have a high expectation that Kimbia will be very transparent telling us what went wrong so we can share with our community what went wrong."
That said, Blumberg said, they were "excited to have another record-breaking year of generosity. More organizations than ever before received a gift on Give to the Max Day."
The GiveMN.org website crashed around 8:15 a.m. and was down until 3:15 p.m. during the 24-hour online giving event. A bare-bones backup site processed $3.5 million in donations during that time but provided none of the information that encourages donations and makes the event fun to follow.
GiveMN, which oversees Give to the Max Day, contracted with Kimbia in 2014 to build and oversee the website. It faltered some that year, but confidence was restored last year when it ran smoothly, Blumberg said.
Kimbia, an online fundraising software provider based in Austin, Texas, experienced another high-profile blunder earlier this year. Its web platform crashed in May during Give Local America, a national online crowdfunding event with thousands of nonprofits.
In response, Kimbia CEO Daniel Gillett transferred three months of his salary to affected organizations and the company waived $370,000 in fees for its clients, according to news reports.
Officials with Kimbia did not respond to a request for comment.