TeamRaiser - advice before purchasing?

Amanda Johnson

Our organization is looking into TeamRaiser - does anyone out there have advice or feedback on the following:

• Integration with Raiser's Edge? 
• Initial design process?
• Comparisons to Sphere and CrowdRise? 

Thanks for any feedback you can share!

Ryan Hyde

We just switched from Sphere's Friends-Asking-Friends to Luminate's TeamRaiser. Luminate's platform is much nicer than Sphere's on a lot of levels. However, unless you set up your entire site with Luminate, you won't have direct integration with RE. You don't get a connector if all you're using is the TeamRaiser portion of Luminate. That's sort of where we're at right now. That said, I find pulling data from TeamRaiser and the BBMS site (Blackbaud Merchant Services, which processes credit card donations for Luminate) and importing it into RE a lot easier than using the Sphere connector.



We did an accelerated setup process, which involved a lot of conference calling. Unfortunately, we didn't get our site up in the timeframe we were hoping for, but our demands were a bit on the extreme side - we wanted something up and ready for the public in 2 weeks (they usually aim for 4-6 at the fastest). However, the experience was mostly pretty great, if a little tedious at times. And the actual site is worlds better than Friends-Asking-Friends.



So that's my limited experience. I'm tentatively optimistic about this product - I think it's going to be a lot more usable than FAF.

Amanda Johnson

 However, unless you set up your entire site with Luminate, you won't have direct integration with RE. You don't get a connector if all you're using is the TeamRaiser portion of Luminate. That's sort of where we're at right now. That said, I find pulling data from TeamRaiser and the BBMS site (Blackbaud Merchant Services, which processes credit card donations for Luminate) and importing it into RE a lot easier than using the Sphere connector.



 

Thanks, Ryan. Appreciate the feedback. We are looking at the same set-up: TeamRaiser only. So in this situation TeamRaiser and RE don't connect at all?  Does this mean you download the donor data from TR and then enter or import it into into RE as two separate steps?



What was your design process like, other than rushed?  Were you able to go back and forth with drafts to get everything looking the way you wanted it to? (I am having a flashback to when we set up NetCommunity Spark a few years ago and were given what I would consider a first draft of pages/templates - except that Blackbaud considered these final. We had to pay extra for minor tweaks.) Just trying to get a sense for what lies ahead. Thanks!