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Good "starter pack", but needs customization to keep up with organization wants
Updated September 11, 2017

Good "starter pack", but needs customization to keep up with organization wants

Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Modules Used

  • Luminate Online
  • Luminate TeamRaiser

Overall Satisfaction with Luminate

Luminate Online is not meant to be the only database for an organization, but we have used it that way for 4 years. It is focused on providing an email marketing solution for non-profits to be able to segment their data and conditionalize their email messages. TeamRaiser is specifically for peer-to-peer fundraising associated with real or virtual events.
  • Luminate can "slice and dice" the constituent database to allow for maximum conditionalizing of online and email content.
  • Luminate (Pagebuilder/TeamRaiser) allows for real-time website updates without too much effort.
  • Luminate (TeamRaiser) allows users to create their own pages for fundraising with minimal effort from the organization.
  • Autoresponder and recurring emails are powerful ways to keep in touch with groups of constituents even as the groups grow.
  • There are plans for enhanced connection between email marketing and social media, but these are not implemented yet.
  • There are no "out of the box" templates for email, you can have Blackbaud set some up for your organization. (There are upcoming plans for these.).
  • A measure of customization is almost always needed and some knowledge of coding and HTML helps.
  • Organizational records are now available, but are not simple to integrate from previous years of Luminate.
I have used CrowdRise with other clients, and though these are easy to set up and maintain, they are not as easily customizable. I have worked with MailChimp on email marketing, but there is a limit on the number of fields in the database (using MailChimp).
Small organizations that don't need a lot of customization, and that understand peer-to-peer fundraising. If an organization is already doing peer-to-peer and just needs a platform, then Luminate TeamRaiser, may be well suited. If you are mostly keeping up with major donors and needing to have a CMS, Luminate can do a small amount of that, but it is not meant to be a CMS.

Using Luminate

3 - Operations / Database management / email marketing

Luminate Training

Good overview for typical uses of the product.

Using Luminate

Luminate Reliability

Pages load quickly and reports are reasonably fast. I've never had any problem with scheduling reports or running them on the spot. During certain times when many other clients might be running reports, there may be a short lag, but not unreasonable.