Are You Missing Out On The Latest And Greatest TeamRaiser Participant Center Features?

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Post by Mark Becker, Founding Partner, Cathexis Partners
Mark founded Cathexis Partners in 2008, providing technical and consultative services to nonprofits of all sizes and types. He previously served as director of IT consulting at a fundraising event production company focused on nonprofits. For more than 20 years, Mark has supported hundreds of nonprofit online fundraising efforts.

If you use Blackbaud TeamRaiser to power your peer-to-peer fundraising events and campaigns, you know that the Participant Center is the web page where participants manage their event/campaign experience. What you might not know is that Blackbaud makes periodic updates to the TeamRaiser Participant Center to add enhancements and fix bugs, and if you aren't using the latest version, then you won't have the latest and greatest features.

Here are a few things to know about optimizing your TeamRaiser events and campaigns by using the latest Participant Center version:

Participant Centers can be applied to one or more TeamRaisers
TeamRaiser campaigns/events are made up of the TeamRaiser event or campaign itself, a donation form, and a Participant Center. Like a donation form, a Participant Center can be applied to one or more TeamRaisers.
The latest version is Participant Center 3
If you aren’t sure which version you’re using for any given Participant Center that you’ve set up, go to Fundraising > TeamRaiser > Participant Centers.

In the “Version Info” column, you will see “Not Current” for any Participant Centers you’ve created that are not using the latest version. A Participant Center marked as “Current” will have the latest features and enhancements.
It’s easy to upgrade.
For any Participant Center that is not using the latest version, you’ll see an “Upgrade” option under the “Actions” column. Click on “Upgrade” under the “Actions” column, and then click the “Upgrade” button in the screen that opens.

It’s important to test your customizations.
While it's easy to upgrade a Participant Center to the latest version, keep in mind that any customizations (custom coding) you have made to a Participant Center might need tweaking during the upgrade process to continue working properly.

We recommend that you select the option to create an upgraded copy of the Participant Center (versus the “upgrade immediately” option) and then assign the newly upgraded Participant Center to your TeamRaiser campaign(s)/events(s) to test the Participant Center. This approach allows you to revert to the original Participant Center if there are any issues with any custom coding you have in the upgraded Participant Center.
You should update your Participant Center before your next event or campaign.
Although a Participant Center can be upgraded for existing TeamRaisers, keep in mind that making a change in the middle of a campaign or event can be confusing for existing registrants and participants. Upgrading your Participant Center before going live with a new event or campaign helps to reduce the potential for a poor user experience.
You’ll get some cool and useful features.
There are multiple features and fixes that you won't miss out on if you're using the latest Participant Center 3. You can view a list of updates made to Participant Center in the Participant Center Changelog.

Here are just a few of the features and fixes that caught our attention:
- The Team Roster in the My Teams section can now go beyond the first five team members.
- Participants can now create a new team or re-create a team from a previous event after registering.
- Constituent Custom Interaction API methods are now available for you to create custom interactions.
- In a Participant Center that is configured to allow two photos on the personal page, a participant can upload only one photo without an error message saying that two photos are required.
You can optimize your Participant Center and site wrapper.
There are multiple ways to optimize your Participant Center and site wrapper plus deliver a smoother experience for donations from Team Pages. For example, here are some optimizations we've put in place for some of our clients using Participant Center 3:
- Site Wrapper Update – Implement a responsive TeamRaiser site wrapper that includes best practices, such as highlighted calls to action, a progress meter, and top participant/team lists.
- Power PC3 – Not only upgrade to Participant Center 3, but also update branding and make user experience updates, such as [examples] to improve fundraising results.
- Team Page Donation Pop-up – Add a Team Page donation pop-up to allow donors the option to select a team member, avoiding confusion about who (the member or the team) will receive credit for the gift.
  Example of a customized Participant Center 3 for Pancreatic Cancer Action Network’s PurpleStride fundraising walk

Using the most recent version of Participant Center for your TeamRaiser events and campaigns is a simple way to make sure you're optimizing your peer-to-peer fundraising efforts. If you'd like help implementing any of the approaches in this article, contact Cathexis Partners today.

News Blackbaud Luminate Online® Blog 01/05/2023 11:31am EST

Added by Kent Gilliam

1 Comments

Kimberley Cote Jan '23

Great blog post, thanks for sharing!