success with TeamRaiser??

Jennifer Reager · July 2015

If I may be frank, we've had TeamRaiser for about 3 years now, and we've experienced far more difficulties than successes in attempting to use it for our annual Walk event. I'm talking from the initial design process to integration and everything in between.

My question is, has anyone else had similar experiences? If so, do you feel that the product and support are improving at all over the years? Are there functionalities that you love and/or couldn't find elsewhere?

All of my colleagues are to the point where they've all but refused to use it moving forward. But before I jump ship and find something else (and then purchase, implement and train. . .), I thought I'd hear from some other users. Thanks!

Jon Reich · July 2015

Hi Jennifer,

Are there any specific TeamRaiser issues you keep running into? We at Cathexis Partners work w/ hundreds of organizations that use TeamRaiser... and most snags can be worked around with either some personal/advanced training, or simply due to the flexibility of the tool (along w/ some creative brainstorming and sometimes custom coding). We'd love to hear what rough edges you're bumping up against... to offer some suggestions for how you might be able to work around them to better fit your org or event. You definitely want to avoid throwing the baby out with the bath water, as we believe TeamRaiser is the best and most flexible p2p tool out there. We've had many clients come to us frustrated over the years... but sometimes requiring relatively simple fixes to put them on track, and rekindle their faith in the power that TeamRaiser brings to the org.

Thanks,

Jon

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Jon Reich

Cathexis Partners

www.cathexispartners.com

Jeanette Bogren · July 2015

We have used TeamRaiser for two years. Our major issues have involved the integration with RE. We have had recurring problems that have created huge reconciling problems for us. We have slowly seen improvements but are still on guard at all times for problems. We had our initial teamraisers set up for us through a third party vendor. That was helpful. We recently have engaged our marketing team for help in editing/creating pages. They were amazed at how convoluted web editing is in the program. They had never seen anything like it. Luckily, they have been able to figure things out and create workarounds, etc. As far as event tracking, we have done okay there when we only use Luminate as the database of record. The reporting options are also difficult to customize and get what you want out of them because the setup is so odd (we have no problem with RE). We find the emailing abilities fine for our purposes. As long as the program abilities and support continue to improve, we will probably keep using it because we can keep our ongoing data from year to year and have responsive sites that participants find easy to use on their end.

Kent Gilliam · July 2015

Brad Abernathy · July 2015

I've worked with the TeamRaiser product for a little over 10 years now. We've switched to an in-house platform and then back to TeamRaiser. I agree with Jon that it is the best and most flexible peer to peer fundraising application there is. With flexibility comes overwhelming configuration, design and setup options. It can be frustrating, like any system. There's a lot of things to consider depending on your list of frustrations but Blackbaud has many departments that can get you on the right track. And there are tons of 3rd party vendors that will take your money to help as well. We're fortunate to have UX, front end and back end developers in-house as well as experienced system staff to get what we want out of it. For our walk/run, our site is http://walkrun.stjude.org. Feel free to check it out. I see we're community neighbors so feel free to reach out with any questions or issues and I'll answer to the best of my ability. I'm all too familiar with implementing new systems and getting buy-in from users within the company. That is no easy task regardless of the platform. Despite our experience with the tool, we continue to learn year over year and adjust and customize. A lot.

Jennifer Reager · July 2015

I appreciate the feedback! It's been tough for us because apparently we really don't have the personnel, budget, or time that it takes to get the most out of this product. Our pages look fine, but we've had difficulties with every aspect of the functionality, both from the registrants' perspective and the back-end/admin perspective. I don't trust the RELO integration process. I've talked with various support people over the years until blue in the face.

We used to have NetCommunity Spark, and I felt much the same way about it. Online Express has been a great replacement. Clean, customizable, intuitive. Is there an equivalent in the TeamRaiser realm?

Brian Mucha · July 2015

"...we really don't have the personnel, budget, or time that it takes to get the most out of this product."

I made a point like this in a few talks about TR. You really need to invest enough resources to keep running smoothly. Feature rich means that TR is complicated. There are like twenty pages of configuration! And there are some bits of old as dirt design, and just plain weirdness here and there to deal with. And aside from the technical aspect, you still have to manage an event with lots of participants. On the other hand, TR accounts for about 50% of our online fundraising. It's labor intensive, but it sure can pay off.

"I don't trust the RELO integration process."

Apparently the new data sync is improving RE-LO communication. I hear the roadmap has Teamraiser/RE Events integration coming too. We're planning on migrating this year (from the ancient Connector.)

"I've talked with various support people over the years until blue in the face."

Ha! Join the club!

Sarah Hodo · July 2015

I am glad to see this discussion. We are in the process of switching from Sphere. We have not launched our TeamRaiser page yet, but have run into a lot of these issues getting it off the ground. It is frustrating to be told that once you have paid the money for this product, you then need to pay a developer or pay for more service hours to make it work or make it look right. I still have hopes that this is the best product for what we need and I am happy to see some good dialogue about how people make it work for them. I am finding that some of the answers in this community are incredibly helpful for making the product work for us. Thanks everyone!

Brian Mucha · July 2015

I think of it sort of like an off the shelf eCommerce package like OSCommerce or perhaps a collaboration/management system like Sharepoint. After a bit of configuration it *works*, but it's going to be a generic version that doesn't have many advanced features active. You wouldn't think that a Sharepoint build for hundreds of users wouldn't need a specialist to handle, because it's big and complex and technical.

If Teamraiser had an actual manual, it would be a pretty thick book. Taking advantage of the advanced stuff is going to mean someone has to dig into that and own it. And you'll also see posts here about taking TR beyond even the advanced stuff by 'hacking' it a bit with techniques that a developer would know.

If you do one that doesn't change much or is fairly simple, you might outsource all that or struggle though yourselves. But we do several that are changing every year with all the bells and whistles. It just makes sense to staff that person with someone that knows code. It guess it's just about how far you want or need to take it.

Jennifer Reager · July 2015

We use TeamRaiser for one annual Walk event. The initial plan was to get out-of-town congregations and other groups to run their own Walks, once we got ours up and running. That hasn't happened for a few reasons, one being that we wouldn't wish TeamRaiser on anyone!

Our event is also free to register, but you can purchase t-shirts and start fundraising teams (thus TeamRaiser). That was some key info that was ignored in our setup, when the registrant info was populated on the Gift tab in RE rather than the Event tab. Long story short, we've made more messes than teams, heh. Most of the profit from this event comes from sponsorships.

From everyone's comments here, it's sounding like TeamRaiser is not a good fit for us. Maybe it would be a few years down the road. Now if I can just figure out what IS a good fit.

Jon Reich · July 2015

Hi Jennifer,

Thanks for the additional information. Sorry to hear about the snafu w/ RE. I suppose you could always consider separating the registration and fundraising... and just use the Calendar Events module in Luminate Online for the sign-ups... and then at the end encourage those who register via that channel to also fundraise (linking them over to TeamRaiser at that point). That way you could have a very simple and streamlined TeamRaiser setup for fundraising only, that would be very easy to copy and manage year to year. Granted.. it'd be best to not have to use multiple modules, but we have had clients that have used Surveys, Events or even Donation forms for registration, and then linked to TeamRaiser for only the fundraising portion of their event successfully. Not common, but it is done sometimes.

Just tossing that idea out there in case it helps w/ your ongoing brainstorming.

Best,

- Jon

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Jon Reich

Cathexis Partners

www.cathexispartners.com

success with TeamRaiser??

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