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TeamRaiser is a Porche - we just wanted a bike
Updated November 03, 2017

TeamRaiser is a Porche - we just wanted a bike

Amy Dana, bCRE | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Modules Used

  • Luminate Online

Overall Satisfaction with Luminate

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 looked at everydayhero but were advised it was a poor fit for us. We are reexamining this product and may look into other options.
If you have someone already on staff who understands coding and is willing to take the time to use TeamRaiser (TR) correctly, I recommend it.

For those who need a very simple site to raise funds on behalf of other individuals (instead of having those individuals raise the funds themselves), TR may not be it. We were clear that we would be handling the individual pages for each student athlete, and this turned out to be extremely difficult and time-consuming. When we asked later if there was a better way, we were told this was not how TR was meant to be used.

Using Luminate

5 - Annual fund, athletic fundraising, database admin, executive assistant, and alumni director. LO is used for both P2P fundraisers and online event registration.

Configuring Luminate

Luminate Support

Luminate Online is an absolutely amazing constituent management tool. The only issue we have with support is they assume that we are well-versed in things like HTML and web page construction. So sometimes we have to ask them to back up four steps to get us where we want to be.

Luminate Reliability

We've only used a small portion of Luminate but I can see we are using a Formula 1 race car for picking up groceries. I hope we can expand our use in the future.