Blackbaud Luminate Online Reviews and Ratings

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We recently left Blackbaud Luminate Online but had been using it for most online giving, sustaining donor management and processing, a large P2P event, and all digital marketing. We used the RELO connector to manage data flow mostly from Blackbaud Luminate Online into Raiser's Edge, but also could build email lists in Raiser's Edge that would easily upload into Blackbaud Luminate Online as the audience.

Likelihood to Recommend

It's really robust for all the things it was designed to do (online donation forms, email marketing, peer to peer event management, sustainer donations). But it's complexity and interface made it too challenging for our organization to continue using it and to continue justifying the cost.

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

In my job role we used Blackbaud Luminate primarily for credit cards processing and although it is a Blackbaud product it didn't talk to Raisers Edge. We had to pull separate reports and batch the donations into Raisers Edge. We also did not use this platform for email campaigns, it was not the easiest thing to use and we opted to use Give lively for all of our campaigns.

Likelihood to Recommend

Not suited well for what we needed.

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

DFCI Philanthropy uses Blackbaud Luminate Online for our online fundraising efforts, including but not limited to directed and unrestricted giving, event registration, and peer-to-peer fundraising via the TeamRaiser module. We are also able to utilize features such as the Survey module to gather information regarding our current and potential supporters. Blackbaud Luminate Online also allows us to provide web-based content for many of the DFCI initiatives.

Likelihood to Recommend

Blackbaud Luminate Online is an excellent solution for online giving, providing a wealth of tools for producing donation forms. It also is outstanding for peer-to-peer fundraising, such as event-based efforts like walks, cycling tours, and so forth. The Email module is outstanding if you need an internal solution for communicating with your donors and supporters. It provides a wealth of tools for crafting emails, and for reporting on the results.

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Blackbaud Luminate Online for email blasts, online giving, email suppressions, list management for communications, donation form creation, email templates, and more. This product allows us to manage our large communication e -blasts as well as allows us to manage the online donation page creation pretty smoothly. It also allows us to see some of the analytics behind page performance as well as online donation performance.

Likelihood to Recommend

If your nonprofit organization is already using Blackbaud products this is an easy integrated add on that will seamlessly manage your E-blasts and online donation forms. The analytics piece is a nice benefit for the functionality. However, it is a pretty expensive add on and for small organizations thus may not make sense to add this product into your bundle.

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We currently use Blackbaud Luminate Online as our online giving platform, as well as for eNews emails and marketing emails. We have a healthy sustainer program, and Blackbaud Luminate Online handle our sustaining gifts with ease.

Likelihood to Recommend

Well suited for: Healthy sustainer program, with a need to grow. Heavy email senders. Heavy online donation form usage. (many forms, complex forms)

Not great for: Very small shops, it takes a lot of training to set it up well, and may be too much for some.

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Blackbaud Luminate Online is an all inclusive platform and essential for a lot of non-profits. If you want a system that not only manages donors and donor relations, but also keeps track of analytics, frequency of donations and all major gifts in one place, then this is the right application to use. We have used other services in the past and none compare to everything Blackbaud Luminate Online has to offer.

Likelihood to Recommend

Blackbaud Luminate Online is essential for non-profits who want to streamline the donor management process. Instead of manually keeping track of donors, significant donors and other things we need to manage, Blackbaud Luminate Online puts everything in one place so it is easy to keep track and see the information as soon as its input. If you are looking for an automatic type of mailing system or a way to automate your campaigns to donors or something like that, this is not that application.

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Luminate online for peer-to-peer fundraising, direct digital marketing and fundraising, and eCommerce. We do not use Luminate for gift processing and reconciliation [but] instead rely on a one-way data flow to Raiser's Edge via Omatic's Importomatic.

Likelihood to Recommend

Luminate online is no longer a product I could recommend, as [in my opinion] it has been wholly surpassed by competitors and is missing key features that would be expected for any purchase decision.

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

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.

Likelihood to Recommend

Luminate is well suited to those organizations looking for a single platform to handle event management, event website creation, constituent management, email marketing, and the entire spectrum on non-profit fundraising. Luminate is a Blackbaud product, and there are a number of support products that integrate seamlessly with the Luminate platform.

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

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.

Likelihood to Recommend

Luminate is well suited for companies that have a mass audience to send out information as well as targeted groups. However, Luminate does require a decent amount of training, so if a company does not have the capacity to learn how to fully use Luminate, it would not be ideal to sign up for this technology.

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We are using Luminate specifically for the TeamRaiser peer-to-peer product. We run two large run/walk events through it and have an instance of TeamRaiser where people can set up in honor/in memoriam fundraising pages. We have been on the product for about 4 years with decent success. The product is managed by the department of development and promoting our fundraising materials. The business problem is addresses is the need to increase peer-to-peer fundraising at our institution and capitalize on the revenue generated from our fundraising events through the additional of peer-to-peer fundraising.

Likelihood to Recommend

We use Luminate as it is one of few peer-to-peer platforms out in the market and has Blackbaud support behind it. Outside of that, I would have difficulty referring this product but often do because competing platforms are not as robust or are more costly. While we have access to the events module and email modules, we do not use them as the back-end user experience is very difficult and does not produce a product worthy of sharing with our constituents.