The pros and cons of copying a donation form

Kate Gollogly

I was hoping to get some feedback from everyone on the pros and cons of copying a donation form.



We have learnt that when copying a team raiser event, we can loose out on Blackbaud updates and I'm wondering if this would also be the case when copying a donation form?



If anyone has any further information on copying any and all of the Luminate Online product modules (surveys, events, ecommerce, team raiser, donation forms, etc.) and the pros and cons associated with each, any info would be very much appreciated.



Thanks in advance!



 

Jody Johnson

I have found that if you copy anything in Luminate you don't get the new features, which can sometimes be a pain. But copying items can save you a lot of development time, which is a big plus.



What we have found helpful is having our TeamRaiser''s, donations, etc standardized, so that they all have similar functionality and look to them.



What we are starting to do, is have a meeting about 4 to 6 months prior to the beginning of the year and determine what sites and donation forms need to be created and any improvements that need to be done to the next years forms we take into account and develop them. Users are now aware that unless there is an issue with functionality, there will be no significant improvements during the year, we will implement them the following year.



By doing this, if there is a major improvement we can test it on a dev site and if it is a change that can be implemented without issues to the current year, then we do it. As the sites are the same, it is very easy to then implement as we can just repeat the steps on each active site. 



Hope this helps. 

Kate Gollogly

Hi Jody,



This is great, thank you.



I absolutely agree that copying items can save our clients a lot of time and this was a big selling feature for them. 



My biggest concern is the client loosing out on such features as responsive layouts, as Blackbaud continues to roll this feature out, when copying items over.



A yearly evaluation of the product I think is a great idea to gain a better understanding of what has changed and to stay up to date with how everything is working.