Blackbaud Luminate Online: A Full Guide for Nonprofits

What is Blackbaud Luminate Online?

Blackbaud Luminate Online (typically referred to as Luminate Online) is a comprehensive fundraising and communications platform. Blackbaud acquired the platform from Convio in 2012 and has since rebranded and upgraded it.

Today, Luminate Online contains a host of features that make it one of the most powerful marketing, fundraising, communication, and event management solutions available to nonprofits. It is also highly customizable to help meet every organization’s unique needs.

What is the difference between Luminate Online and other Blackbaud products?

Blackbaud is a leading name in nonprofit software, and it can be tricky to keep all of its offerings straight, especially since the provider is well-known for its multiple CRM solutions. Here is a short rundown of some of its most popular tools:

Blackbaud Constituent Relationship Management (CRM) Solutions

• eTapestry: An easy-to-implement, user-friendly CRM solution for small and growing nonprofit organizations that offers the following features:
  • Data management
  • Fundraising
  • Engagement tools

• Raiser’s Edge NXT (RE NXT): A CRM that is perfect for mid-sized to large organizations and offers the following features:
  • Donor management
  • Fundraising
  • Marketing
  • Reporting and analytics

• Blackbaud CRM (BBCRM): A robust and highly customizable CRM that is perfect for enterprise-sized nonprofits and offers the following features:
  • Relationship cultivation
  • Fundraising
  • Multichannel marketing
  • Data analytics

Additional Blackbaud Solutions

• Luminate Online: A fundraising and marketing tool for organizations of all sizes

• TeamRaiser: A peer-to-peer (P2P) fundraising solution for mid-sized and large organizations

As you consider whether Luminate Online would be a valuable addition to your technology stack, note that it integrates with all other products listed above. For example, if your organization uses RE NXT as its CRM, Luminate Online can easily integrate with it to provide a seamless flow of data between the two tools.

Is Luminate Online free?

No, Luminate Online is not free.

Blackbaud does not specify pricing for any of its tools, so interested organizations need to contact the Blackbaud team to request a quote.

In general, you can expect to pay a monthly or annual subscription fee for the platform, which will be based on the size of your nonprofit, your needs, and the features you choose.

Additionally, you may need to budget for other start-up costs when launching the Luminate Online platform, such as migrating your data, implementing your solution, customizing the tool, and leveraging custom integrations. Many nonprofits work with a technology consultant to make these processes more manageable.

Online Fundraising

With Luminate Online, you can leverage Blackbaud Checkout to create custom online donation forms that accept various gift types, including recurring donations, pledges, designated giving, and more. Blackbaud Checkout works with Blackbaud Merchant Services (BBMS), a PCI-compliant platform, to allow supporters to donate through a variety of payment methods, including credit and debit cards, ACH payments, Venmo, digital wallets, and other online payment services. Plus, Blackbaud Checkout is designed to help nonprofits securely capture donors’ information during the donation process, allowing you to contact them easily.

Additionally, you can personalize dynamic donation forms with known supporters’ contact information and past donations, making the giving process easier than ever. Since 60% of potential donors leave donation pages before completing their gifts, it’s essential to offer a quick and simple online fundraising experience that inspires support from donors and prospects alike.

Peer-to-Peer Fundraising

Blackbaud’s peer-to-peer fundraising solution, TeamRaiser, gives your nonprofit the tools to launch a successful peer-to-peer campaign within Luminate Online. With TeamRaiser, you can build personalized fundraising pages, manage campaign emails and marketing efforts, and track campaign success.

E-commerce

If your nonprofit sells merchandise, Luminate Online can help you set up virtual catalogs on a user-friendly interface and facilitate sales with tools such as automated inventory counts and tax calculations. You’ll also have plenty of flexibility with shipping options, discount and promotional codes, and the option to accept additional donations.

Events

With Luminate Online’s Calendar Events module, it’s easy to organize ticketed events and accept RSVPs. You can also engage supporters on a smaller scale via a hosted setting like a gala or sporting event. By enabling integrations, you can copy information hosted in other Blackbaud platforms and vice versa.

Advocacy

Luminate Online empowers nonprofits to conduct grassroots advocacy campaigns more effectively than ever before. It has tools to discover and steward advocates, recommend and carry out advocacy efforts with precision, and even create comprehensive reports with data from awareness efforts. With these tools, you can effect true change with efficiency. Plus, with a tool like DNL OmniMedia’s MobileAction! mobile app, you can share awareness efforts with supporters where they’re most active—via their mobile phone.

Digital Marketing

Luminate Online empowers you to create web pages and campaign microsites to support your fundraising and advocacy efforts. You can create personalized content, members-only content, and even interactive quizzes.

Luminate Online’s responsive page design features allow all of your supporters to engage with your content, no matter what device they’re using. Access your Site Options to turn on responsive design, which will automatically adapt your pages to different screen sizes. Then, work with a consultant to fine-tune these designs to meet your vision.

Additionally, you can track social media engagement and ensure your messages are relevant and inspiring for supporters. Regardless of whether you’re working with a nonprofit marketing consultant, you’ll have a strong digital marketing presence.

Email Communications

Dynamic email communication is an essential part of any nonprofit’s marketing strategy. With Luminate Online, you can design personalized, targeted email campaigns, segment these communications so they reach the right audience, and automate the sending of drip campaigns. Plus, you can A/B test your campaigns to continue perfecting your efforts over time with detailed analytics.

Luminate Online’s email authoring tools are user-friendly and efficient. Use simple drag-and-drop tools to create custom email templates, designate where custom donor data will be added, and save them for future use.

MobileAction! Mobile App

Nonprofits using Luminate Online can supercharge their advocacy efforts with MobileAction!. Fully customized to meet your organization’s advocacy and peer-to-peer fundraising efforts, MobileAction! engages your supporters with advocacy alerts, survey questionnaires, donation requests, and peer-to-peer fundraising events.

Luminate Online Member Center Web App

This app combines multiple user account management pages into one easy-to-navigate web page. Users can view and manage ongoing recurring gifts, edit profile information, adjust personal email subscriptions, access information needed to engage with TeamRaiser events, and view their past donation transactions and advocacy engagements.

Luminate Online Donation Web App

Embed your Luminate Online donation forms directly on your website. Supporters can have a smooth donation experience without ever leaving the page!

Luminate Online Survey Web App

Embed your Luminate Online surveys directly onto your website. With this tool, your organization can conduct polls and register new constituents seamlessly through your website alone.

Comprehensive Integrations

To have an effective digital strategy, your nonprofit needs to be able to seamlessly transfer data across several platforms. In addition to Blackbaud solutions, Luminate Online integrates with a variety of other nonprofit CRMs. This allows for a smoother data transfer and a more centralized and comprehensive perspective of your constituent data. It’s recommended that you coordinate with a nonprofit technology consultant to build out these connections and ensure you can successfully manage all aspects of your organization in one place.

Capacity for Growth

While your organization may be able to use a more compact fundraising solution that meets its current needs, we know that growing nonprofits need a robust product able to scale with them. Not only can Luminate Online accommodate a large constituent pool, but its flexibility also allows growing organizations to continually expand, adapt, and customize the platform to meet their ever-changing needs. For organizations looking to invest in one platform that can meet their needs for years to come, Luminate Online is a good choice.

Unique Fundraising Solutions

Luminate Online provides a wide variety of unique fundraising solutions that can be customized to meet your organization’s exact needs. Whether website-based, peer-to-peer, or mobile-first, your organization has options for all types of fundraising campaigns, all powered by one comprehensive platform.

Robust Features and Tools

There are many fundraising and marketing platforms on the nonprofit technology market right now. But investing in dozens of overlapping solutions will result in a confusing, disparate lineup that causes more stress than it’s worth. With Luminate Online, you get access to a product that can meet all of your needs at once and offers a diverse range of features and add-on solutions.

You’re Working With Fragmented Solutions

Nonprofits using multiple software solutions to manage their marketing and fundraising efforts can expand to Luminate Online to tap into a comprehensive solution. An all-inclusive set of resources can streamline your efforts and enable more informed donor engagement practices. Note that you can also make good use of fragmented solutions by leveraging a data warehouse, which centralizes data from a variety of sources into one digital repository.

You’ve Outgrown Your Software

The solutions you initially invested in to handle fundraising and donor communications may simply be inadequate for your growing organization’s needs. Luminate Online is optimized to support larger organizations with extensive data sets, so you’ll never have to worry about overreaching or exceeding capacity as your organization gains more donors.

You’re Looking For a Customizable Platform

Established nonprofits already using comprehensive software may find their current solution isn’t as customizable as they would prefer. If your organization has a large budget to invest in customizations, Luminate Online may be adaptable to your needs.

Luminate Online can help you accomplish almost any fundraising goal. To make the most of the platform, you’ll need to know what your nonprofit is hoping to achieve before getting started.

Put together a list of your needs and devise a plan for how this platform can help your nonprofit reach them. But remember—if you’re not quite sure how Luminate Online fits into your plans, you can always seek the help of a nonprofit technology consultant. A consultant can pinpoint areas where Luminate Online can contribute toward your goals.

Ask yourself:

• What are our most important fundraising goals?
• What fundraising and marketing features will we need to reach that goal?
• What aspects of our current fundraising and overarching digital strategy do we want to retain What do we want to improve?

Luminate Online is an incredibly powerful solution, and it’s priced accordingly to reflect its robust nature and your organization’s needs. With this in mind, evaluate your budget to ensure you can cover the full cost of the investment.

When doing so, remember that the initial investment isn’t the only cost involved. You’ll also want to account for training, ongoing support and customization, and any add-ons to the platform. These additional costs will help you truly make the most of Luminate Online.

Ask yourself:

• Can we afford the initial cost of the platform?
• Can we afford to train our staff to use it?
• Can we afford to hire a consultant for data migration, platform customization, and implementation?

Luminate Online is user-friendly enough for your team to use it on an everyday basis. However, this is only true after your team has been trained to navigate the platform effectively.

This training can be achieved in a few different ways, but the best way is to work with an expert Blackbaud consultant who can tailor the training to your team’s needs.

Beyond initial training, ensure you create documentation team members can refer to and use to train future team members.

For one-off questions, you can also rely on Blackbaud’s general support resources to find answers to any questions that arise:

• Blackbaud Customer Support
• Blackbaud Knowledgebase
• Blackbaud Community
• How-To Documentation

Luminate Online is customizable, but your team will likely need a developer to configure it to meet your exact needs. Unless your organization has an extensive internal web development department, you’ll want to consult a nonprofit web consulting firm to build out Luminate Online.

This developer can help you design and implement fundraising methods personalized to your nonprofit’s current strategy. When working with a robust platform such as Luminate Online, consider investing in consulting services that specialize in Blackbaud. Team DNL is a certified Blackbaud Technology Partner, making our firm a reliable source for all of your Luminate Online needs.

Ask yourself:

• What types of fundraising do we want to explore? What functionality do we need to customize our Luminate Online instance to make that possible?
• Will we need to invest in other custom platforms, such as a CRM, in addition to Luminate Online?
• Which nonprofit tech consultants will we contact for assistance in customizing Luminate Online?

Whenever you invest in a new platform, you’ll need a plan for transferring existing data from your old system to the new one. That’s true for Luminate Online as well. Data migration can be complicated and a common pain point, but it’s critical to execute successfully.

You need a thorough plan for cleaning and migrating your data to Luminate Online. This is another area where a nonprofit tech consultant can be helpful, especially when it comes to making sure the process is effective and stress-free.

Ask yourself:

• Will we need outside assistance with cleaning our data before the migration?
• What is the timeline for our migration?
• Who is in charge of ensuring that the data transfer is completed?

Interlochen Center for the Arts

DNL OmniMedia worked with Interlochen Center for the Arts to build out custom donation forms that are responsive and specific to their website.

To make these donation forms a reality, we created a custom Luminate Online skin (i.e., wrapper) based on the existing website themes and styled the forms to fit the nonprofit’s site.

The result was a custom-made donation form that was useful for the organization and engaging for donors.

North Shore Animal League

For North Shore Animal League, DNL OmniMedia set out to improve their donation forms and create unique TeamRaiser configurations that would creatively appeal to supporters

For the organization’s donation forms, we ensured that their forms mirror their latest branding and work well across all browsers. We also configured the forms to sell dedication plaques and small gifts.

Additionally, we worked with North Shore Animal League to develop a unique peer-to-peer fundraising option, allowing supporters to create fundraisers for their birthdays, bar or bat mitzvahs, and weddings. Instead of gifts, supporters can accept donations in honor of these special occasions. This created a unique donation experience while boosting peer-to-peer engagement and funds.

Mustard Seed Communities

Mustard Seed Communities partnered with Team DNL to ensure it was harnessing the full power of Luminate Online to create a positive donation experience for its supporters.

Our team helped the organization duplicate its website design in Luminate Online, providing a seamless, branded experience across both platforms. Donors can also now see information about the direct impact of each donation before they contribute and have the option of covering their credit card transaction fee to minimize Mustard Seed Communities’ costs.