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February 04, 2020
Luminate Online (LO) is primarily used for email marketing/communications, both in national e-blasts and localized e-vites and announcements. LO is also used for Calendar of Events updates, Surveys/forms, online donation campaign management in both Communications/Marketing and Development but also to promote and facilitate any of our programs and services that have an online component.
- Effectively monitor the engagement stats for email campaigns
- Responsive & mobile-friendly donation and survey forms
- Run reports on a variety of online metrics
- Out-of-the-box reports are not robust enough for many national nonprofits' needs
- Customization is needed for many campaign components; not everything is point-and-click / drag-and-drop for a novice user
- Auto-notifications are good, but don't always perform as expected
October 23, 2019
Our organization does about three dozen walks during the year, and a number of ticket events, and Luminate was the platform used for all of them. We used Luminate to manage these events, create donation forms, and send emails to our event registrants and constituents. We also used Luminate to create segmented lists for our marketing efforts.
- Luminate has what I think is an excellent email marketing component, with analytics and tracking capabilities equal to or better than the product our organization chose to replace it.
- Event creation is easy, once past the learning curve.
- Luminate is a comprehensive platform that covers many bases.
- Luminate is a deep platform, and requires a very skilled administrator conversant with a number of areas: design, coding, finance, etc., in order to give a professional-looking appearance. There are many expensive consultants that provide this service.
- When we last used Luminate, the "Participant Center," used by event registrants, was pretty clunky.
- Lack of accessibility was a problem.
May 22, 2018
The most recent organization I helped implement Luminate Online has used it for their entire organization. The whole point of turning to LO was to have all communications/interactions-type data in one place, which is exactly what LO provided. All constituent information is housed in LO, where information is collected about donations, registrations, fundraising, survey responses and email communications. Having all information in one place allows all departments to better report and communicate with constituents.
- LO is a great one-stop-shop for registration/fundraising events. Allowing users to register and then fundraise using the same tool (i.e. the same login) is a great way to enhance fundraising results. Also having this information be a part of the main database is incredibly helpful for an organization.
- LO is great for email campaigns - the system allows you to create different groups and queries of your database and then target constituents with messages that are appropriate to them.
- LO's donation forms are pretty simple to set up and are an easy way to track both online and offline donations.
- LO's TeamRaiser can be a bit tricky to use. It's a great tool, but to make it look really nice and be user friendly, it needs someone with some coding expertise to set it up.
- Parts of the LO system are still not mobile responsive (the participant center in particular). I know LO is working on this, but until it's done, this is going to be a frustration for some users.
- While Blackbaud has really invested in tutorials and help/support areas, LO can still be incredibly overwhelming for an organization that is new to the system and doesn't have the money to pay someone to help set it up, or doesn't have someone on staff who has used it before.
- Online training
- Self-taught
We use Luminate for all our foundation fundraising. From donation forms to TeamRaiser to eCommerce, we are using Luminate across our foundation and the hospital we support. Luminate makes it easy for us to accept donations and is starting to accept more payment methods. We just implemented PayPal in the last year and will be implementing Apple Pay and Visa Checkout this year. We use the eCommerce module to handle all of our event registrations and ticket purchases. We use TeamRaiser for our 5Ks and peer-to-peer always up fundraising events. Additionally, we use the Email module extensively. It is easy to setup an e-mail to send, note, we hand-code 95% of our e-mails. The statistics you get are the main ones that you would need to make decisions going forward. It is easy to setup an A/B test or a 10/10/80 test.
- The donation forms are easy to set up to start collecting donations instantly.
- Getting an e-mail out the door is fairly straightforward.
- The TeamRaiser module is great for fundraising for big events with multiple registration levels and allowing participants to fundraise on your behalf.
- Constituent management is fairly easy.
- Reporting needs some work, this is being worked on in their new BETA program.
- The eCommerce module needs some work. It would be great to have more ability to customize parts of it without having to rewrite the code.
- The Events module could use some improvements as well.
- The Personal Fundraising module needs a lot of work. It really cannot work as needed right now. We started using TeamRaiser to handle this, but it could be great.
April 16, 2018
Luminate is used as a donor interface within our development department. We are currently the only department with direct involvement with the program. We currently use Luminate to manage our email lists, send e-blasts, set up online donation forms as well as events and surveys. Luminate acts as an intermediary between our donors and our Raiser's Edge database.
- Donation form creation is easy and user-friendly. They are also easily organizable within the system.
- It's great for creating surveys when forms don't necessarily have the flexibility we desire.
- Content is easily created and uploaded to our website.
- Email management is limited. Constituents are only able to have a primary email address and a secondary address which is only mailed to when using the CC function. Sending to the correct and preferred email address is difficult to discern and effective use in Luminate requires extensive data cleanup.
- Reports are not as user-friendly as in other programs. It has occurred multiple times where users are unsure how to get specific fields to pull in reports.
- TeamRaiser is a challenging addition to Luminate. Campaigns within it require extensive work and management.
June 04, 2018
We currently use Luminate for our annual fundraising walk (peer to peer fundraising).
- Clean and fresh look
- Mobile friendly
- Great support team when questions arise
- Copying an event from year to year you have to go into multiple areas to make all the changes - having a more streamlined process would be helpful.
- It doesn't fully integrate with our database (Raiser's Edge) which is also a Blackbaud product.
Luminate Online is our main fundraising platform used for sending email communications, donation forms and campaign landing pages, as well as event registrations.
- Luminate Online is great at keeping forms simple. You are able to make email sign-ups really easy for constituents. They can also manage their email preferences very easily.
- Segmentation is also a strength. Luminate Online allows organizations to segment their constituents into groups or interests, making it easier to send targeted communications.
- Raiser's Edge integration is also a big plus. Luminate Online is able to "talk" to Raiser's Edge to ensure that constituent records are up to date with their online giving. Raiser's Edge is also able to send information back to Luminate Online to make sure that any changes that are made in Raisers Edge are reflected on the record in Luminate Online.
- Luminate Online's Raiser's Edge integration can still use further development. Specifically, allowing donation form comment/notes to be mapped into fields in Raiser's Edge for donors to add any notes regarding such gifts.
May 29, 2018
Luminate is such a big machine that different departments are using it across our organization. From advocacy to direct response to prevention we all benefit from its vast choices and offerings. It helps us to better serve our supporters and to manage our fundraising events as well as to set parameters to allow supporters to host their own events and use the platform. It is a great platform to host our events, handle registration fees, upsells, discounts, e-commerce, TeamRaiser and team creation within TeamRaiser, and donation forms for TeamRaiser, etc.
One of the main factors is that you can start small and as you grow the platform will grow with your organization.
One of the main factors is that you can start small and as you grow the platform will grow with your organization.
- Team raisers: If your organization has team raisers, Luminate is the one you should be using. The whole arsenal of tools to use arond TeamRaisers is really unmatchable. You can even set the Event Manager Center to grant your event managers to some or all of the management options of the system. You decide the degree of delegation you give to your event managers.
- Email. Do you need to communicate with your supporters? Email will be your tool of choice, do it with the rich text editor or go old school with the plain editor and add your HTML directly. Do A/B testing to pick your best design and measure message performance. Pick your target and see a detailed report of your target audience before sending the email. Once the email is sent, keep track of the results with the information on the panel and the performance report of your email together with a bounce email report, etc.
- Need to recruit volunteers? The survey module will help you create your form for them to fill. What the system may not offer you can achieve with its flexibility and the great support for custom Java scripts.
- Personal events, ticketed events, and the Ecommerce module could use some updating. But they are workable.
- Multi-locale is sometimes a hit and miss but for the most part works pretty well.
- Online training
May 29, 2018
Luminate Online is being used by both the development and the marketing departments of our organization. We also use it for special events, property news and events, and a host of other things. It makes online giving and ticket sales easy and integrated. Gift entry and customer entry are easy and accurate.
- Email marketing
- Suppression of opt-outs
- Online giving
- The support could use some improvement. It is getting much, much better now that they are owned by Blackbaud, but there are still some areas that need work.
- The integration with Raiser's Edge is fantastic, but has been unstable as of late. This is adding a lot of down time to gift entry, where gifts can not come down through the connector. But the RE/LO integration feature is a huge improvement!
- Querying and reporting within Luminate is a little clunky.
Luminate online has helped my organization for years to get our message out there. We have been able to reach our donors with many emails that have led to major donations or turned a sale on our site to a total win. It has been a big help for me since joining MV to have Luminate.
- Many coding options
- Allows for creative displays
- Easy to schedule appeals
- Not adaptive to mobile
- Adds phantom coding on occasion
We have been using TeamRaiser for the last 3 + years. All departments of the organization use it. It is used for peer-to-peer fundraising, sending coaching emails, generating reports.
- Peer to peer fundraising
- Coaching emails
- Tax receipting
- Organizational records
- Organizational gifts
- Integration with RE - not all LO information gets recorded in RE
October 12, 2017
We use Luminate Online to host and manage our website, for all our online fundraising and correspondence with donors and readers. The system is used mainly by our media department, which includes content and communications with our readers and donors.
It provides everything we need to communicate with donors and get them from the process of getting information about our ministry and presenting them with our projects and opportunities to donate.
It provides everything we need to communicate with donors and get them from the process of getting information about our ministry and presenting them with our projects and opportunities to donate.
- Managing email campaigns is something we really appreciate about Luminate. Though people who do this at our organization have technical knowledge, it really is not required with an easy WYSIWYG tool and sending out mass targeted emails is something we do on a regular basis.
- All our donation forms are hosted in Luminate, and they, too, are easy to manage and set up for various projects. It's also easy to get the needed data and reports in order to analyze our progress.
- Today most websites are built in open code and provide easy access to clients in case changes are needed in the CSS etc. Luminate somewhat limits this access as not all the files are accessible through the online management areas. This can be improved upon.
- As far as we know, Luminate Online does not support blogs, and so when we did have a blog, we had to host it outside Luminate.
Luminate is used by our Marketing, Operations, and Development team. Through Luminate Online, we are able to send out mass emails to targeted groups, track the analytics surrounding the emails, and see donations that come through our online portal. We are also able to add and subtract groups or individual users on an as needed basis.
- Luminate does a great job of giving detailed information of online donors and sending them automated emails in return for their donation.
- Luminate also has easy step-by-step guidelines for the email creation.
- Luminate provides multiple ways to analyze and track data.
- I would like to be able to customize more of the font and word placement in the email creations.
- As of now, you can not insert a video into the email, only a photo with a hyperlink to the online video. I would like to be able to embed the video into the actual email.
- I would like to be able to see the last time that I ran queries for my online donors so that I am not overlapping donors or missing donors because of dates.
January 11, 2018
We use LO for e-commerce (we have 3 stores using it), as well as for surveys, and some donations/fundraising pages. We are learning the product and hoping to use it for email blasts in the future, as well as for peer to peer fundraising via TeamRaiser. We also want to set up events and use the LO calendar in the future.
- E-commerce. Our stores are easy to navigate, mobile friendly and it is fairly easy to manage products in the stores.
- Donation pages. We can modify the look and feel of the pages and have different donation campaigns that we can send out.
- The single sign-on functionality works decently well for us, between LO and our web developer. We use it for our member network/portal.
- Reporting. It is cumbersome to pull or assemble reports out of LO. It doesn't seem user-friendly and should be updated to more current functionality.
- Surveys. Survey are ok, but if we want to customize beyond the approx 15 survey question template, we are stuck.
- Integration with Raiser's Edge. There is limitations on the integration, and this could improve immensely so that clients don't have to do an export/import process as a workaround.
- API integration. This is complex and has its limits as well. The API integration seems hard to use.
We are using Luminate Online for our advocacy action alerts sent to our constituents on legislative issues impacting the cystic fibrosis community.
- The system is exceptionally easy to use once you've been trained by the Luminate staff.
- The ability to allow the constituent to personalize our letter to their legislator is quite important, and also easy for them to do.
- It is essential that the system automatically sends the action alert letter responses from the constituent to their correct legislator, and it does. There is no need for the constituent to find their legislators' email addresses -- the system does it for them.
- I would like to see easier access to metrics analyzing the delivery and follow through by respondents to our email action alerts.
We use Luminate Online to send mass emails utilizing dynamic and static groups and opt-in audiences. Luminate Online is used across the whole organization for events, solicitations, newsletters, informational emails, recognition and other miscellaneous correspondence.
- Dynamic and static group creation. Luminate Online allows for the building, addition and removal of records in groups.
- Email campaign management.
- Online donation form creation and management.
- Constituent profile management, especially related to the capability of deleting erroneous or non-valid records.
- Creation and modification of customized acknowledgement and receipts.
- The capability of having organization records that are tied with RE7 records, currently the system does not include an email, MemberId or ConstituentId field.
December 21, 2017
It is currently being used by the whole organization to manage our contacts, send emails, put events on the web calendar, track email campaigns, build surveys and donation forms, and utilize ticketing for the institution. Some business problems it covers is not having a compatible CRM and CMS - we also use the Luminate CMS for our website and can connect the two easily.
- Email campaigns
- Donation forms
- Filterable event calendar
- Image library
- Tech help
- Clunky system can be tricky for new admins
- Difficult to create responsive site pages without technical help
August 25, 2017
It is being using by the Development Department to handle all of our online needs. We use it to send emails, build webpages, handle donor transactions and run reports.
- House Donor Information. Easy report pulling. Queries and lists.
- I like how everything is housed on one platform. Webpages, emails and donor profiles. User friendly.
- It works nicely with other blackbaud products such as Raiser's Edge. Easy importing and exporting options.
- I would say the layout of emails [is an area for improvement]. It isn't awful but I feel it could be upgraded and more user friendly. Making text and picture boxes as well as formatting text can be a bit of a pain.
We are using Luminate in the following ways:
- Online Constituent Mgmt
- Email Communications
- Online Fundraising Campaigns
- Monthly Giving
- Event Calendar - manage organization wide events
- Light use of E-Commerce
- Teamraiser for our Walks and Peer 2 Peer Fundraising
We are potentially going [to be]migrating our website back to Luminate over the next year and we are looking at using the Advocacy Module.
- Online Constituent Mgmt
- Email Communications
- Online Fundraising Campaigns
- Monthly Giving
- Event Calendar - manage organization wide events
- Light use of E-Commerce
- Teamraiser for our Walks and Peer 2 Peer Fundraising
We are potentially going [to be]migrating our website back to Luminate over the next year and we are looking at using the Advocacy Module.
- Solid email platform. Fairly easy to use.
- Great place to manage online donations and monthly giving.
- Survey function is clunky and needs to be modernized.
- Calendar function is clunky. Wish you could edit the look and feel of it.
- TeamRaiser needs to be modernized. The participant center is being used less and less by constituents because it is not that user-friendly. More people are turning to mobile.
Luminate is used by the fundraising (aka development/advancement) department only. We started using it solely for the ability to manage the online registrations and donations for a large "Run/Walk" we have each year. Now, it is our platform for all online gifts. It eliminates a lot of manual or duplicate entries by the run/walk manager and the gift administrator (me).
- Syncing to Raiser's Edge database
- Could be better at not allowing duplicate records for the same person. Cynthia Smith registers but the next year she registers as Cindy Smith. Same email, same address. Luminate should have a "pop-up" that says (e.g.) We have found a similar record. Is this you?
- Need to be able to sort gifts by the Batch number.
November 02, 2017
Our advancement team made the switch this summer to TeamRaiser to replace Sphere for peer-to-peer fundraising. We are utilizing it to fundraise for our athletics teams as well as other student clubs.
- Provides highly customizable pages
- Easy import of constituents and gifts into Raiser's Edge (RE)
- There is a VERY steep learning curve. Because the product is so customizable, there are few "how-to" documents easily available. I have been told that it takes about a year to really learn the system.
- The training is extremely high-level; it was like a calculus class when all we needed was basic long division.
- Although TR promises you don't need to know coding to use the site, you do need to have someone who is confident enough to make some changes in the coding.
We use Luminate in a TeamRaiser environment. We also use the shopping cart feature. It is used in our organization and in some of our ministries. We would like to explore more of the email system and the other features. Luminate is in the process of rolling out new features.
- Able to integrate with Raiser's Edge
- Shopping Cart features
- 5K TeamRaisers are able to be designed and implemented
- Not as intuitive ore easy to use as other Blackbaud products
- Not updated as often still being labeled as Convivo in some areas
- Not as much knowledge base support
- Seems like coding skills are necessary
Luminate Online is used primarily by the marketing and development departments at my mid-sized nonprofit. We use it to take online donations, manage event registrations, and allow individuals to fundraise for our annual run/walk through TeamRaiser.
- It is an online platform
- It accurately processes donations
- TeamRaiser was especially difficult for us to use for our run/walk. It does not have a very intuitive or updated user interface, and we had many problems with it this year.
We use Luminate Online to send emails to our constituents, run queries and create groups, create donation forms, action alerts, surveys, among other things. I personally am on the production side of things, so I build all our emails, action alerts, emails, and pages using Convio (Luminate Online). Through Convio, we are able to reach out to our donors and members.
- The layout and organization is pretty good. It's easy for me to find what I'm looking for.
- It's easy to build HTML emails, donation forms and action alerts that are pretty customizable. Takes you through the steps so it's not that difficult to learn.
- Reliable sends - since the debacle a couple years ago at year end where all our emails went out super late, they have updated things and we haven't had any issues with send times.
- WYSIWYG editor breaks everything.
- Wish there was a batch image uploader - makes uploading multiple images at a time cumbersome and time consuming.
- The survey is not very customizable. Hard to get formatting and options beyond the 15 or so they provide.
- Reports are located in different places and are cumbersome to pull - should be more user-friendly.
June 21, 2017
We use Luminate Online for email marketing, event, donation and content management. We also use their RELO product which transfers the data collected in Luminate over to our offline database, Raiser's Edge. Luminate is used across the whole organization. It allows us to communicate with donors and prospective donors (communications/marketing), manage transactions (fundraising/marketing), and cultivation/stewardship (fundraising). Luminate is a good tool to help manage mulit-channel fundraising/marketing campaigns.
- I'm really enjoying the dashboards in the new Luminate Beta.
- I think Luminate does an excellent job in the data/metrics collected around email marketing that have helped us to identify messaging that has worked, what hasn't, etc.
- Somewhat easy process of setting up donation forms.
- Events module is clunky and not the best as far as user experience [goes].
- The query tool is also not intuitive or user friendly. Neither is the Report Writer tool.
- Too much coding required to get emails to look good. I'm looking forward to the new tool in the next gen release.
Luminate Scorecard Summary
What is Luminate?
Luminate Online aims to help non-profits engage more effectively with supporters and raise more money by enabling integrated campaigns for digital, social and mobile channels.
According to the vendor, Luminate Online helps non-profits:
Passions, preferences and giving history trigger additional campaigns building stewardship through more relevant interactions and opportunities to engage. The company also aims to offer top notch support and numerous free resources. All clients receive a personal Customer Success Manager to offer best practices and resources to succeed.
According to the vendor, Luminate Online helps non-profits:
- Better understand online supporters
- Make the right ask at the right time
- Launch creative fundraising campaigns
Passions, preferences and giving history trigger additional campaigns building stewardship through more relevant interactions and opportunities to engage. The company also aims to offer top notch support and numerous free resources. All clients receive a personal Customer Success Manager to offer best practices and resources to succeed.
Categories: Nonprofit Advocacy, Nonprofit Fundraising
Luminate Screenshots
Luminate Videos (4)
Luminate Integrations
Luminate Competitors
Luminate Pricing
- Does not have featureFree Trial Available?No
- Does not have featureFree or Freemium Version Available?No
- Has featurePremium Consulting/Integration Services Available?Yes
- Entry-level set up fee?Required
| Edition | Pricing Details | Terms |
|---|---|---|
| Marketing Workshops - 1/2 Day | 3,500 | |
| Marketing Workshops - Full Day | 7,000 | |
| Research + Discovery - 5 Audits Package | 8,000 | |
| Research + Discovery - Individual Audit Price | 2,500 | |
| Branding + Design | 5,000 | |
| Social Media Management | 2,000 | per month |
| SEO + Google Ads | 1,500 | per month |
| Monthly Retainers | 1,500 | per month |
Luminate Online is priced based on the number of email addresses on file, modules used and service plan. Our peer to peer offering, TeamRaiser, has a transactional, shared success pricing model.
Luminate Customer Size Distribution
| Consumers | 0% | |
| Small Businesses (1-50 employees) | 30% | |
| Mid-Size Companies (51-500 employees) | 50% | |
| Enterprises (> 500 employees) | 20% |
Luminate Support Options
| Paid Version | |
|---|---|
| Phone | |
| Live Chat | |
| Forum/Community | |
| FAQ/Knowledgebase | |
| Social Media | |
| Video Tutorials / Webinar |
Luminate Technical Details
| Deployment Types: | SaaS |
|---|---|
| Operating Systems: | Unspecified |
| Mobile Application: | No |
| Supported Countries: | Canada, United States, Some European Countries |
| Supported Languages: | English |
Frequently Asked Questions
What are Luminate's top competitors?
Salsa Engage, Salesforce Marketing Cloud Email Studio, and Classy are common alternatives for Luminate.
What is Luminate's best feature?
Reviewers rate Availability highest, with a score of 10.
Who uses Luminate?
The most common users of Luminate are from Mid-size Companies and the Non-profit Organization Management industry.