Blackbaud Luminate Online
DFCI Philanthropy uses Blackbaud Luminate Online for our online fundraising efforts, including but not limited to directed and …
Overview
What is Blackbaud Luminate Online?
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:Better understand online supportersMake the right ask at…
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What is Blackbaud Luminate Online?
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: Better understand online…
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What is Blackbaud Luminate Online?
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.
Blackbaud Luminate Online Features
- Supported: Dynamic Email Campaigns
- Supported: Online Fundraising with Smart Donation Forms
- Supported: Donation Processing
- Supported: Fundraising Analytics & Reporting
- Supported: Calendar Events
- Supported: eCommerce Capabiltiies
- Supported: Engagement Factors
- Supported: Luminate Advocacy
- Supported: Peer to Peer Fundraising with Luminate TeamRaiser
Blackbaud Luminate Online Screenshots
Blackbaud Luminate Online Video
National Center for Lesbian Rights has Love for Luminate Online™ and Raiser’s Edge NXT™
Blackbaud Luminate Online Integrations
Blackbaud Luminate Online Competitors
- Salsa Engage
- Classy
- Bonterra Development + Digital
- Engaging Networks
Blackbaud Luminate Online Technical Details
| Deployment Types | Software as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based |
|---|---|
| Operating Systems | Unspecified |
| Mobile Application | No |
| Supported Countries | Canada, United States, Some European Countries |
| Supported Languages | English |
Frequently Asked Questions
Salsa Engage, Classy, and Bonterra Development + Digital are common alternatives for Blackbaud Luminate Online.
Reviewers rate Availability highest, with a score of 10.
The most common users of Blackbaud Luminate Online are from Mid-sized Companies (51-1,000 employees).
Blackbaud Luminate Online Customer Size Distribution
| Consumers | 0% |
|---|---|
| Small Businesses (1-50 employees) | 30% |
| Mid-Size Companies (51-500 employees) | 50% |
| Enterprises (more than 500 employees) | 20% |
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Reviews and Ratings
(154)Attribute Ratings
Reviews
(76-85 of 85)Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
September 06, 2016
Luminate Online does what Blackbaud said it would
Luminate Online is being used by several departments in our organization. Administration uses it for the online store, Development uses it for donation forms and online constituent management, Community Outreach uses it for online event registration and Marketing uses it for surveys and newsletter emails.
- Constituents are able to view giving history online.
- Integrates with our Raiser's Edge database.
- Tiered response driven emails are sent to new and existing constituents.
- We need to create email lists based on geographic location (e.g. 3 hours drive time from an address). It would be great if Luminate could perform this. Currently we have to create those lists using the map feature in Raiser's Edge.
August 16, 2016
7 years with Luminate!
How we use it:
- We collect online donations through it.
- We have fundraising events. Some of the ticket sales are done online and processed through Luminate Online.
- We process donations through it as is works with Blackbaud Raiser's Edge, which we use to record donations.
Who uses it:
- Our donations services team uses it to record online donations/event ticket sales.
- Our Associate Manager, Communications & Online uses is to setup the webpage we use for online donations and event ticket sales.
What business problems:
- It collects donations and event ticket payments for us.
- It formats donation/event ticket sales data in way that is easily recorded in Blackbaud Raisers Edge, thus reducing our worklaod.
- Great front end usability.
- Decent support for back-end users.
- Easy to use WYSIWYG
- The email campaign module is easy to use, efficient, and cost-effective.
- Connector from Luminate to Raiser's Edge could be reviewed in order to enhance features and options.
- Duplicate management, handling users with multiple emails i.e. when a user logs in with three separate emails, we would like Luminate to recognize this instead of creating a duplicate.
- Ability to associate more than one donation form to the same TeamRaiser campaign doesn't exist.
- The level of customization for existing template and modules i.e. in an event module, we are unable to easily change the word "ticket" to "table".
August 15, 2016
Shedding Some Light on Luminate Online
Raiser's Edge has long been the standard-bearer for non-profit fundraising world, but is certainly shows its age when it comes to the online world. Luminate Online addresses the online half of the equation, offering an all-in-one place for donation collection, peer-to-peer fundraising, GA/advocacy, and email communications. ZERO uses the platform for all of these, but our most significant area of use is fundraising: DIY pages, Run/Walk and Endurance Race series, individual fundraising events (such as our November "Grow & Give" campaign), and EOY giving.
Just as important as the tools, Luminate Online does an adequate job syncing its data with Raiser's Edge. It's certainly rough around the edges, but that direct integration is key for planning sophisticated campaigns and segmenting users intelligently. And, for orgs who have web developer resources, the system can access that database to personalize web content and capture additional user data.
Just as important as the tools, Luminate Online does an adequate job syncing its data with Raiser's Edge. It's certainly rough around the edges, but that direct integration is key for planning sophisticated campaigns and segmenting users intelligently. And, for orgs who have web developer resources, the system can access that database to personalize web content and capture additional user data.
- Integration with Raiser's Edge (RE). For those who use RE, it's tough to find a better way to push/pull data between your online and offline database.
- Advanced Customization. LO's REST API and Session Tag system can give advanced end users the flexibility to work around limitations of a CMS that is otherwise restrained to basic HTML/CSS/JS.
- Ongoing development. Product managers realize the need for ongoing improvement, as attested to by their internal development of the Sky CSS framework, jQuery API library, social media and email campaign improvements, and recent acquisition of Attentive.ly.
- LO fails on many search engine basics, such its title tags, server-side redirect codes, URL structure, and so on.
- Full data integration. While the system connects to Raiser's Edge as well as any other CMS/CRM combo I've used, it's still not all the way there. It'll sync demographic and contact info, donations, and so forth, but important data points still don't come across (e.g. group segmentation, organizational gifts, social media data). Much of this is because Raiser's Edge is just plain old and inflexible.
- eCommerce. It's startling just how many obvious features are missing from LO's online store capabilities. There's no order management, no single location to say which items have been purchased, or which orders have been filled, or what your inventory is, or any of your shipping information, or who has communicated with purchasers in any way.
- Modern email. It remains to be seen what will happen when LO's email beta goes live, but the current system does not do responsive, or do code sanitization, or have the ease of use that you'd see with the MailChimps and Constant Contacts of the world.
- Full websites. LO is good at creating a DIY site, but is not quite fit for a deep, content-driven website. Fortunately, there's some level of external integration with its REST API, but expect to build your main site on Wordpress or Drupal.
August 15, 2016
Luminate makes our job easier!
Our website is hosted by Blackbaud (formerly Convio,) therefore I could say it is used across the entire organization. Both our marketing and development departments are responsible for working directly in Luminate. It is one of our major communication tools for both fundraising, as well as marketing. We use it for the following:
- Monthly e-newsletter to all constituents
- Sustained Giving
- Event Ticket purchasing
- On-line fundraising
- Communication through email
- Sign-up for various programs we offer
- Provides an easy to use platform to send dynamic emails to specified groups. When communicating to individuals it is important to speak to them in a manner that will be noticed by as many people as possible. Luminate let's us customize materials with color, photos, links, etc., to get our point across with as few words as possible.
- Allows event attendees and/or donors an simple way to make reservations or contributions to our organization. We use the event module for both our fundraising events as well as concert ticketing. With the same flexibility as email, we are able to customize our message to our audience. Plus, reports can be pulled very easy to determine who has responded to our request.
- Captures contact information from users to help grow our audience. Our list is continually growing with new people. Whether they came to us signing their child up for an audition, or a workshop, or maybe to make a contribution - this is all captured for us to continue to communicate with them regarding all our programming.
- We have always wanted the ability to place video that would play directly in the email. We have been using a link to YouTube for years. As this is something we normally do at the holidays, it may be a feature that has been added (I've not checked yet this year).
- I've been unhappy with formatting in email, as well. It seems to have a mind of its own and looks very different across different accounts. I'm not sure this can be fixed. However, when working in the WYSIWYG, I sometimes have trouble keeping formatting, inserting links, removing bold copy, etc. Because of this I've been getting better at the HTML.
August 12, 2016
Even with some hiccups I'd still choose Luminate again!
We use Luminate Online to handle all our online donations from our supporters, advocacy, event management, and reporting for our development and finance departments. It is being used all the time for all programs in our organization.
- The "idea" behind what Luminate is supposed to do is really great! Providing a platform for easy online donation access is a real plus.
- Having the capacity to have all of modules that we need in one platform is really terrific.
- There's a lot of room for improvement. Things can be a little clunky sometimes and not so intuitive. Wishing that when Luminate integrates with its sibling platforms like CMS and CRM... I wish there was more smoothness to those transitions.
- I wish that advocacy was smoother and faster. It seems like when we need to get an action done we know we can't be nimble and that's gonna take some time because there are so many moving parts. Sometimes changing legislative police needs faster action and we have to abandon using our advocacy tool and only use social media because there's not a stripped down fast way to get actions out.
- In Online with our donors, one thing we've always wished for was that 1 person could choose to have an email sent to 2 different email accounts. We have many many people who want to receive our news at home and at work. Keeping track of duplicate records that we have to keep vs. duplicate records we don't want is tedious. We also wish that when we have people totally unsubscribe and take themselves out of our system that we could add them back when they call us telling us they goofed and they don't receive our email anymore. This happens all the time.
August 12, 2016
Luminate Online - 3 years in
We implemented Luminate Online (LO) primarily b/c of the TeamRaiser function, but also because of the many promises of what it could do. First, I'll say that I love the idea of what it can do, but the honest truth is that we had a rushed implementation/integration with our Raiser's Edge CRM that went wrong somehow (Blackbaud and Cathexis both agree, but neither takes full blame) and sadly, we didn't realize how bad things were until it was too late to fix. Basically, the only fix we have is to wipe it clean and start over. The ONLY things we use LO for are TeamRaiser (works, but we have problems), recurring donors (only a portion, as we are afraid to move the rest from Net Community, as we are hoping that something better than LO will come along and we only want to ask donors to provide their credit card info once) and the donation pages, which (thank God) do work, but gosh they are ugly.
- Donation pages are easy to build with very minimal HTML background. If you DO have the HTML background, it's much easier to make the pages look so much nicer
- TeamRaiser allows for the delayed self pledge, which is great
- The integration with Raiser's Edge could be improved. We have SO many "removed" records in Luminate Online, and we do NOT have duplicates for these removed records in Raiser's Edge.
- Would be nice if Luminate Online synced to all important info from Raiser's Edge, such as giving. We batch gifts into RE, but those don't flow over to LO profiles, so LO profiles only show what people have donated through that online system - not the thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars that are in their Raiser's Edge profile. Very hard to use the e-mail function and base e-mails on giving when Luminate has maybe 5% of gifts.
August 09, 2016
Don't Do It
Luminate Online is being used across our whole organization. It is used for advocacy efforts, all emails, surveys, e-commerce stores, and donations.
- Aren't many things I like about this software. It's clunky, difficult to learn, and Blackbaud support is not very helpful.
- I find all features of this system difficult to use. There is a LARGE learning curve among our employees when using it.
- Settings for each feature are hidden in different places. It is not cut and dry to set up.
- They are SO behind the curve when it comes to adjusting for mobile. Now, in 2016, there are still some parts of Luminate online that aren't mobile friendly.
We purchased Convio Luminate Online and the Convio Go! Program about 2 years before it was acquired by Blackbaud. It is currently only used by the Philanthropy department to support fundraising, alumni relations and some donor and event communications, however it may potentially be used more broadly down the road. This was our first external online giving solution and it replaced Constant Contact for our email marketing. We have seen tremendous growth in online giving through the use of this product.
- The Go! Program was a big time commitment but definitely increased our bandwidth and expertise with the product. If you are going to being using Luminate Online and have no prior experience with it, I highly recommend the Go! program.
- The ability to set up custom URLs, pre-populated giving links, embed appeals codes and pre-select allocations has been really great for us, particularly with our tribute program.
- The email marketing tool is OK, but the ability to sync data between Luminate Online and our offline database has really expanded our ability to segment and use "fresh" data.
- The WYSIWYG designer and whole email set up is a bit lackluster. There are no set email templates where you can point and click to build your email. You really need some help or some HTML background to get anything that looks good.
- The whole interface is a bit clunky. Some aspects live in seemingly incongruous areas of the platform such as reports. There are multiple types of reports that can be run from various sections and they each have slightly different functionality.
December 16, 2014
Still New Luminate Advocacy User
Score 4 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Thresholds currently utilizes the Luminate Advocacy module to create action alerts relating to our advocacy actions. It's a great automated tool for our constituents to easily use pre-loaded information to contact their legislators.
- Automated search for legislators
- Contact your legislator web form
- Aesthetics/look of the module
- More streamlined action alerts/email messaging
August 18, 2014
Luminate Online Rocks
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Luminate Online is primarily used by the Communications department for PageBuilder, Email Campaigns, Teamraiser, Donation forms, etc. Development department also utilizes it to research donors, thank major donors, tribute pages, and development online appeals. It addresses our online constituents and ensuring that we are communicating with donors, volunteers, clients, and the general public that is interested in MSAA.
- TeamRaiser
- Donation Campaigns
- Emails
- Interests/ Group Categories
- Pagebuilder pages
- Sustainers
- Import/Export
- Merging