Using TeamRaiser for P2P fundraising?

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JD Piland
JD Piland ✭
Ninth Anniversary Facilitator 1 Photogenic
in Blackbaud Luminate Online® & Blackbaud TeamRaiser® Discussions
Hello there,


For quite some time now, we have been building out P2P fundraising into TeamRaiser. I have found some community posts about people other orgs doing the same. They just happen to be several years old.


So, I'm wondering if there is still anyone doing this? And, perhaps more importantly, how do you handle registrants who want to do multiple fundraisers? We currently have our program built out in one TeamRaiser, with the event types (birthday, wedding, etc.) represented by Participation Types. Our concern now is for those who want to do a birthday and then a wedding later in the year, for example -- after all, the user can only register once per TR. Anyone run into the same conern, and how do you address it?


Thanks in advance!
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  • Brian Mucha
    Brian Mucha ✭
    Ancient Membership Facilitator 4 Name Dropper Photogenic
    We do have a Do It Yourself teamraiser, which is structured just like that. (http://luriechildrens.org/cofonline)


    The problem with joining more than once is duplicate email addresses which are generally not allowed.


    Usually they aren't actually doing two fundraisers at once, so we just disable the old one so they can register again.


    If they are concurrent, then it's a little harder. Some email services like gmail allow you to easily make an alias for your address. MyName@gmail.com is the same as MyName+Anything@gmail.com. Otherwise they usually just use different email accounts.


    The key for us seems to be having an event cordinator that stays in touch with everyone and helps them navigate problems like that.


    It's a bit clunky, for sure. If it's really a problem, I think you can have Luminate set to allow duplicate email use in Teamraiser. You can definitely have it allow duplicates during registration, so parents can register their minor kids with the same address.
  • Patti Posey
    Patti Posey ✭
    Ancient Membership Facilitator 2 Name Dropper Photogenic

    Brian Mucha:

    We do have a Do It Yourself teamraiser, which is structured just like that. (http://luriechildrens.org/cofonline)


    The problem with joining more than once is duplicate email addresses which are generally not allowed.


    Usually they aren't actually doing two fundraisers at once, so we just disable the old one so they can register again.


    If they are concurrent, then it's a little harder. Some email services like gmail allow you to easily make an alias for your address. MyName@gmail.com is the same as MyName+Anything@gmail.com. Otherwise they usually just use different email accounts.


    The key for us seems to be having an event cordinator that stays in touch with everyone and helps them navigate problems like that.


    It's a bit clunky, for sure. If it's really a problem, I think you can have Luminate set to allow duplicate email use in Teamraiser. You can definitely have it allow duplicates during registration, so parents can register their minor kids with the same address.

    Hi Brian,


    We are looking to do something like this but dont know where to begin.  We have our Hope in Motion Walk & Run Teamraiser which is our primary event.  Our participants hold mini events but they do them on their own and then just add the money to their personal/team pages after the event.  I think we could raise more money by offering something like this.  Do you create a teamraiser for each one of your initiatives?  If our participants that signed up for our walk & run decide to raise money through one of these initiatives, can the money show up on their walk & run page or do they have to create another personal page?  I know our participants in the Walk & Run would want all the money raised through different initiatives show on one personal/team page.  Would love to hear more.  Thank you.


    Patti Posey

    Stamford Hospital Foundation

  • Brian Mucha
    Brian Mucha ✭
    Ancient Membership Facilitator 4 Name Dropper Photogenic
    Our DIY is a completely separate Teamraiser from our normal annual events. These DIYs are generally honor/memorials, in lue of gifts for some life event like a birthday or wedding, or participation in some other marathon/event that we don't directly support with a Teamraiser. So we don't move any of that fundraising to personal pages in other events. I can't think of any way to do that, aside from periodic offline gift imports.


    I wonder if you could use a team and secondary registrations with a special participant type for these mini-fundraisers within your main event fundraiser. You can set up TR to allow duplicate email addresses with main and secondary registrations. And both would contribute to the team total. Not sure if you could design that to not be confusing though. So you'd have Team Brian, with my regular registration and a secondary registration for a spagetti dinner fundraiser mini-event. Both would contribute to Team Brian and both are run by me. Edit: They would have to know they are doing a mini-event at time of registration tho. Not ideal.


    Using teamraiser for this rather than the LO Personal Fundraising module is pretty common, since Personal Fundraising is so ancient and clunky. BBCon usually has sessions about doing this.


    Using TR for DIY does come with it's own problems. The already-in-use email address problem in this thread is a biggie. You could add a registration question asking for a close date, so you can plan on when to manually deactivate the fundraiser's registration - which would allow that person to reregister at a later date.


    Another problem we ran into relates to Fair Market Value when the fundraisers are offering tickets or items in exchange for donations. That's a problem, since you can't change the FMV for individual fundraisers. We generally just keep an eye on the fundraisers and caution them to not use that arrangement. We also require approvals for the DIY before fundraiser pages go live, which we don't use elsewhere.


    Otherwise it's not really much different from any other Teamraiser, Feel free to register for Circle of Friends (http://luriechildrens.org/cofonline) to see how we built ours, there shouldn't be a registration fee. Shoot me a PM if you want me to remove you afterwards so you don't get all the coaching email. :)


    - BPM
  • Patti Posey
    Patti Posey ✭
    Ancient Membership Facilitator 2 Name Dropper Photogenic

    Brian Mucha:

    Our DIY is a completely separate Teamraiser from our normal annual events. These DIYs are generally honor/memorials, in lue of gifts for some life event like a birthday or wedding, or participation in some other marathon/event that we don't directly support with a Teamraiser. So we don't move any of that fundraising to personal pages in other events. I can't think of any way to do that, aside from periodic offline gift imports.


    I wonder if you could use a team and secondary registrations with a special participant type for these mini-fundraisers within your main event fundraiser. You can set up TR to allow duplicate email addresses with main and secondary registrations. And both would contribute to the team total. Not sure if you could design that to not be confusing though. So you'd have Team Brian, with my regular registration and a secondary registration for a spagetti dinner fundraiser mini-event. Both would contribute to Team Brian and both are run by me. Edit: They would have to know they are doing a mini-event at time of registration tho. Not ideal.


    Using teamraiser for this rather than the LO Personal Fundraising module is pretty common, since Personal Fundraising is so ancient and clunky. BBCon usually has sessions about doing this.


    Using TR for DIY does come with it's own problems. The already-in-use email address problem in this thread is a biggie. You could add a registration question asking for a close date, so you can plan on when to manually deactivate the fundraiser's registration - which would allow that person to reregister at a later date.


    Another problem we ran into relates to Fair Market Value when the fundraisers are offering tickets or items in exchange for donations. That's a problem, since you can't change the FMV for individual fundraisers. We generally just keep an eye on the fundraisers and caution them to not use that arrangement. We also require approvals for the DIY before fundraiser pages go live, which we don't use elsewhere.


    Otherwise it's not really much different from any other Teamraiser, Feel free to register for Circle of Friends (http://luriechildrens.org/cofonline) to see how we built ours, there shouldn't be a registration fee. Shoot me a PM if you want me to remove you afterwards so you don't get all the coaching email. :)


    - BPM

    Hi Brian,


    Thanks for the information.  I just registered as a virtual fundraiser on your site.  I look forward to see how it works.  I love your registration confirmation email.  How did you get the fundraising progress box in your email?  that's great!.


    Patti Posey

  • Jason Thomas
    Jason Thomas ✭
    Eighth Anniversary Facilitator 1 Photogenic
    JD - Thanks for starting this discussion. Our team is actually soon to embark on using TR for personal giving / p2p pages. Presently, we host that program in Kintera Sphere (an aquired BB product). Since that platform is being retired, we're looking to teamraiser. So far, we've only used it for 5k fundraising events. 


    Brian, thanks a lot for sharing of that information and with your workflow! Currently, we set up different Kintera events per unit of our organizations (i.e. the cancer center, the broad healthcare center, etc.). They're marketed separately, and folks can create their personal fundraising pages under whatever disease area they're passionate about (our org is healtcare focused). We too have run into the snag of returning participants, and how to handle them. We haven't found the ideal solution yet. In Kintera, a quick workaround was to clone the event.


    In teamraiser, it would be helpful if we when participants to these DIY event sign up, they have to specify the duration of the event. When the event expires, their page is automatically taken down, and their LO record is no longer an active participant. Free to sign back up to the same DIY event at a later time. I wonder if there's custom programming around this area. 


    Thanks again for bringing this question up. It's been food for thought.


    Jason 
  • Brian Mucha
    Brian Mucha ✭
    Ancient Membership Facilitator 4 Name Dropper Photogenic

    Jason Thomas:

    In teamraiser, it would be helpful if we when participants to these DIY event sign up, they have to specify the duration of the event. When the event expires, their page is automatically taken down, and their LO record is no longer an active participant. Free to sign back up to the same DIY event at a later time. I wonder if there's custom programming around this area. 


    I can't think of a way to code this to happen automatically on our own. I suppose anything can be done if you contract BB for custom changes, though.


    I would probably just make it a standard practice to stick an appointment in the event manager's Outlook calendar (or maybe a shared calendar) for that expiration date whenever a participant registers. Then it would be a simple routine to manually inactivate fundraisers each morning. Pasting the url to the fundraisers profile in that appointment would make it even easier. We have to approve new registrant's personal pages before they go live, so we're right there anyhow.


    This might be a good one for the IDEAS board.
  • Jason Thomas
    Jason Thomas ✭
    Eighth Anniversary Facilitator 1 Photogenic

    Brian Mucha:

    Jason Thomas:

    In teamraiser, it would be helpful if we when participants to these DIY event sign up, they have to specify the duration of the event. When the event expires, their page is automatically taken down, and their LO record is no longer an active participant. Free to sign back up to the same DIY event at a later time. I wonder if there's custom programming around this area. 


    I can't think of a way to code this to happen automatically on our own. I suppose anything can be done if you contract BB for custom changes, though.


    I would probably just make it a standard practice to stick an appointment in the event manager's Outlook calendar (or maybe a shared calendar) for that expiration date whenever a participant registers. Then it would be a simple routine to manually inactivate fundraisers each morning. Pasting the url to the fundraisers profile in that appointment would make it even easier. We have to approve new registrant's personal pages before they go live, so we're right there anyhow.


    This might be a good one for the IDEAS board.

     

    Ah, got it. Our process is a little different. We do not approve new pages, and encourage DIY participants to do their micro fundraising freely. So the Outlook method would not work for our case. Good idea though, I'll definitely include in the ideas board. Doesn't hurt! 

    -Jason

  • Brian Mucha
    Brian Mucha ✭
    Ancient Membership Facilitator 4 Name Dropper Photogenic
    > So the Outlook method would not work for our case.


    You could just pull a Registration Details report that shows that question and handle them once a week or so. 
  • Kerrie Goughnour
    Kerrie Goughnour ✭
    Ancient Membership Facilitator 1 Photogenic

    J.D. Piland:

    Hello there,


    For quite some time now, we have been building out P2P fundraising into TeamRaiser. I have found some community posts about people other orgs doing the same. They just happen to be several years old.


    So, I'm wondering if there is still anyone doing this? And, perhaps more importantly, how do you handle registrants who want to do multiple fundraisers? We currently have our program built out in one TeamRaiser, with the event types (birthday, wedding, etc.) represented by Participation Types. Our concern now is for those who want to do a birthday and then a wedding later in the year, for example -- after all, the user can only register once per TR. Anyone run into the same conern, and how do you address it?


    Thanks in advance!



    Our team has been running a DIY program for a 2+ years. We use six different TeamRaisers to make this happen --TeamBeTheMatch.org. We chose that route for the sole purpose of allowing someone to do a Life Event like a birthday AND an athletic event at the same time. We are now refreshing the TeamRaisers each calendar year so fundraisers can repeat DIYs like a birthday or an annual event.


    -Kerrie

  • Jason Thomas
    Jason Thomas ✭
    Eighth Anniversary Facilitator 1 Photogenic

    Brian Mucha:

    We do have a Do It Yourself teamraiser, which is structured just like that. (http://luriechildrens.org/cofonline)


    The problem with joining more than once is duplicate email addresses which are generally not allowed.


    Usually they aren't actually doing two fundraisers at once, so we just disable the old one so they can register again.


    If they are concurrent, then it's a little harder. Some email services like gmail allow you to easily make an alias for your address. MyName@gmail.com is the same as MyName+Anything@gmail.com. Otherwise they usually just use different email accounts.


    The key for us seems to be having an event cordinator that stays in touch with everyone and helps them navigate problems like that.


    It's a bit clunky, for sure. If it's really a problem, I think you can have Luminate set to allow duplicate email use in Teamraiser. You can definitely have it allow duplicates during registration, so parents can register their minor kids with the same address.

    Hi Brian, when you say "Usually they aren't actually doing two fundraisers at once, so we just disable the old one so they can register again." Can you please describe your workflow? How do you disable the participant's record, so that they are able to register again? And, when they do register again, is a new record in luminate created? Or does registering for the same event simply re-activate the previously deactivated profile? Thanks - Jason 


     

  • JD Piland
    JD Piland ✭
    Ninth Anniversary Facilitator 1 Photogenic
    Hey everyone,


    Thanks for the great feedback so far! I'm liking the idea of adding a question to the registration process asking for end date. That would be the easiest way for us in our current setup.


    That said, I also like the idea of separate TR events, but I wonder how that would work with the sync (we're in LO and Luminate CRM) -- do you have to do a configuration for each events? Not to mention refreshing the TR events each year. @Kerrie -- Do you find this to be a big project, or are you just clicking copy and moving on? What all goes into it on your end?


    Thanks again, everyone! Keep the ideas coming!

    J.D.
  • Brian Mucha
    Brian Mucha ✭
    Ancient Membership Facilitator 4 Name Dropper Photogenic

    Jason Thomas:

    Hi Brian, when you say "Usually they aren't actually doing two fundraisers at once, so we just disable the old one so they can register again." Can you please describe your workflow?

    So it's just a matter of opening the participant record, clicking 'Make Inactive' and then 'Remove Participant'. This leaves the constituent record alone, but it converts all their gifts to event gifts and removes the participant record. It would be awesome if Make Inactive did the job, but no soap - so I guess a better term would have been 'delete'. But everything has presumably already synced to RE or whatever your CRM is if you need to do historical reporting.

     

    J.D. Piland:

    Not to mention refreshing the TR events each year.

    We don't refresh every year, but we did recently replace our old Circle of Friends and a separate old Tribute DIY with this single new design. Rather than registering for the new teamraiser, lots of fundraisers wanted to 'move' their old page to the new TR, along with all of their dozens and sometimes hundreds of gifts. That is a LOT of soft credits to deal with. Many of them had been using their page continually for a few years. My original choice to not refresh every year was for this exact reason. Either you are going to have both years running simultaniously until every fundraiser in the old one finishes, or you will be moving lots of fundraisers. Neither is ideal. I initially resisted moving all of those old gifts but people went crazy.
  • Jason Thomas
    Jason Thomas ✭
    Eighth Anniversary Facilitator 1 Photogenic

    Brian Mucha:

    Jason Thomas:

    Hi Brian, when you say "Usually they aren't actually doing two fundraisers at once, so we just disable the old one so they can register again." Can you please describe your workflow?

    So it's just a matter of opening the participant record, clicking 'Make Inactive' and then 'Remove Participant'. This leaves the constituent record alone, but it converts all their gifts to event gifts and removes the participant record. It would be awesome if Make Inactive did the job, but no soap - so I guess a better term would have been 'delete'. But everything has presumably already synced to RE or whatever your CRM is if you need to do historical reporting.

     

    J.D. Piland:

    Not to mention refreshing the TR events each year.

    We don't refresh every year, but we did recently replace our old Circle of Friends and a separate old Tribute DIY with this single new design. Rather than registering for the new teamraiser, lots of fundraisers wanted to 'move' their old page to the new TR, along with all of their dozens and sometimes hundreds of gifts. That is a LOT of soft credits to deal with. Many of them had been using their page continually for a few years. My original choice to not refresh every year was for this exact reason. Either you are going to have both years running simultaniously until every fundraiser in the old one finishes, or you will be moving lots of fundraisers. Neither is ideal. I initially resisted moving all of those old gifts but people went crazy.

     

    Hi J.D., Thanks for the clarification! (Make inactive -> Remove Participicant). With this workflow, is all historic data lost? For example, a participant returns for year 3, curious about gifts in year 1. Would one be able to revisit their activity in year 1 (if they've been since made inactive and removed from the event)?

  • Brian Mucha
    Brian Mucha ✭
    Ancient Membership Facilitator 4 Name Dropper Photogenic
    > (Make inactive -> Remove Participicant)


    Yep, it's gone from LO when you do that, so we'd have to look to Raiser's Edge for history.
  • Kerrie Goughnour
    Kerrie Goughnour ✭
    Ancient Membership Facilitator 1 Photogenic

    J.D. Piland:

    Hey everyone,


    Thanks for the great feedback so far! I'm liking the idea of adding a question to the registration process asking for end date. That would be the easiest way for us in our current setup.


    That said, I also like the idea of separate TR events, but I wonder how that would work with the sync (we're in LO and Luminate CRM) -- do you have to do a configuration for each events? Not to mention refreshing the TR events each year. @Kerrie -- Do you find this to be a big project, or are you just clicking copy and moving on? What all goes into it on your end?


    Thanks again, everyone! Keep the ideas coming!

    J.D.

    @J.D. -- It's easy enough to copy the 6 TeamRaisers, however it's a large project to update all of the forms, pagewrappers, automated communications, etc. We also partnered with a vendor to help us streamline everything and make a handful of enhancements. Happy to share more details if you're interested!

  • Miranda Yorke 2
    Miranda Yorke 2 ✭
    Ancient Membership Name Dropper First Reply

    Brian Mucha:

    Jason Thomas:

    Hi Brian, when you say "Usually they aren't actually doing two fundraisers at once, so we just disable the old one so they can register again." Can you please describe your workflow?

    So it's just a matter of opening the participant record, clicking 'Make Inactive' and then 'Remove Participant'. This leaves the constituent record alone, but it converts all their gifts to event gifts and removes the participant record. It would be awesome if Make Inactive did the job, but no soap - so I guess a better term would have been 'delete'. But everything has presumably already synced to RE or whatever your CRM is if you need to do historical reporting.

     

    J.D. Piland:

    Not to mention refreshing the TR events each year.

    We don't refresh every year, but we did recently replace our old Circle of Friends and a separate old Tribute DIY with this single new design. Rather than registering for the new teamraiser, lots of fundraisers wanted to 'move' their old page to the new TR, along with all of their dozens and sometimes hundreds of gifts. That is a LOT of soft credits to deal with. Many of them had been using their page continually for a few years. My original choice to not refresh every year was for this exact reason. Either you are going to have both years running simultaniously until every fundraiser in the old one finishes, or you will be moving lots of fundraisers. Neither is ideal. I initially resisted moving all of those old gifts but people went crazy.

     

    @BrianMucha If you had to transfer all the gifts, what would be the best way to do it? Can't imagine manually opening constituent records for all donors to a page and soft crediting gift by gift ...

  • Brian Mucha
    Brian Mucha ✭
    Ancient Membership Facilitator 4 Name Dropper Photogenic
    Fraid so. One by one.


    I have a trick though. Pull a donation report for the constituent, that includes the Transaction Id. Open in Excel and use this formula:


    =HYPERLINK(CONCATENATE("https://secure3.convio.net/ABC/admin/TransactionMgmt?txn.mgmt=change_proxy_type_selector&mfc_pref=true&txn_id=", F2,"&mfc_popup=true"), "Click Me")


    That will generate links that go directly to the soft credit screen for each gift. That eliminates all the searching and clicking along the way for each one. I can do 50 in ten minutes.

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