Overall Satisfaction with Blackbaud Luminate Online
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.
- provided an easy way to collect online donations, event participants and all online interactions
I've worked with products that address only portions of what Luminate Online offers - products such as Classy, mail chimp, Constant Contact.
Using Blackbaud Luminate Online
5 - Database administration, accounting, fundraising, marketing
1 - Knowledge of LO as well as some general development and IT skills are useful.
- Managing constituents
- Accepting and tracking online donations
- Event registration
- Peer-to-peer fundraising
- Email communication
- Creating surveys to poll/engage constituents
- Provide fundraising pages for individual, non-event fundraisers to raise money on behalf of the organization
- More email communication
- Collect additional data on constituents and segment/conditionalize content appropriately
Blackbaud Luminate Online Training
- Online training
- Self-taught
It depends on what you're trying to do. Certain aspects like browsing constituent records and pulling reports are pretty easy to figure out on your own, and also hard to "break" and mess anything up. Other aspects like creating emails or TeamRaiser events are much more complicated and would not be worthwhile to do without training.
Configuring Blackbaud Luminate Online
Blackbaud Luminate Online Support
Using Blackbaud Luminate Online
Pros | Cons |
---|---|
Like to use Relatively simple Easy to use Well integrated Consistent Convenient Feel confident using | Lots to learn |