CASL-compliant "opt-in" field causing constituents to unintentionally unsubscribe

Hello,



We're a Canadian nonprofit and are therefore subject to Canada's Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL).  As per CASL, all of our constituents must specifically opt-in to receive our communicaitons and whenever we ask constituents to opt-in (such as on our donation forms and event registration pages), the box must be unchecked.



The issue we're having with Luminate is that every time an existing constituent (who has previously opted-in to receive our communications) makes a donation or triest to register for one of our many monthly events and workshops, they are presented with the option to opt-in to receive our emails.  And even though they have previously consented, if they don't re-check that consent box, Luminate treats this as a global opt-out.



As you might imagine, most constituents -- once they've provided consent -- wouldn't think it necessary to provide consent again, much less every time they have an interaction with us.  As a result, when we ran our first email campaign through Luminate we lost nearly all of our previously opted-in constituents and had to manually re-opt-in every lost constituent in Constituent 360 (which is not particularly CASL-compliant).  Eventually we simply elected to switch the opt-in box to be pre-checked, which is also not CASL-compliant, but at least gave constituents the opt-in option while preventing any unintentional opt-outs.



Since that campaign almost a year ago, switched back to our previous email marketing tool and have been relying on it ever since. (This, of course, means that we're paying for both Luminate Online as well as for our third-party email marketing tool.)  After that campaign we raised the issue both with Blackbaud and Blackbaud's contractor, HJC, but have essentially gotten back the same set of answers each time.  Primarily:

• Luminate is operating as designed and so there isn't a "bug" to fix, per se.
• A potential solution to the problem is to include a paragraph of text with the opt-in button, explaining to our constituents that they must opt-in each time or be opted out of our communications.
• That we can simply keep the opt-in box checked and run the risk of accuring a CASL-related fine.

These answers are unacceptable.  We need a solution that makes donating to us and staying connected with us as easy and straightforward as possible for our constituents and we want to be able to use the full functionality of Luminate.  We really love this product and see its value and potential, but it's been almost a year now and we're still spinning our wheels waiting for help.  If anyone could get back to me on this I'd really appreciate it.