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5 Things to Ask as You Prepare to Transition from Luminate CRM to the Nonprofit Success Pack

With the upcoming deadline for Blackbaud’s end of support for Luminate CRM, it has never been a better time to switch to Salesforce.org’s Nonprofit Success Pack. As a Salesforce.org premium partner, with a decade of nonprofit consulting and Salesforce implementation experience, Candoris is ready to be your partner on this journey! 

“Candoris listened, made suggestions, and gave us a system that provides us the flexibility and future growth potential we had been missing.”

Children’s HopeChest 

Looking into migration options?  Here’s what you need to know… 

Wait? What’s happening with Blackbaud? 

The first question you might have is: What is going on? Blackbaud, the makers of Luminate CRM (LCRM),  recently announced that as of June 30, 2022 they are ending support for this product. If you’re using Luminate CRM, you must move off of that system before this end of support date because at the point it shuts off, you will no longer have access to any of the data stored in the system. There are several options. Luminate CRM integrates with Luminate Online and support for Luminate Online will continue after the cut-off date. But no matter what tool you choose to move to, if you want to continue using Luminate Online, your new CRM will need to have a custom integration which can be costly. There are other products available that provide CRM features, but the easiest for a fast transition that provides equivalent functionality is to move to the Nonprofit Success Pack (NPSP). 

What is the Nonprofit Success Pack? 

Luminate CRM and the Nonprofit Success Pack are both built on a Software as a Service platform called Salesforce.com. Salesforce.com was originally a sales-focused tool used by for profit companies to help them streamline their business processes and keep their data all in one location. But nonprofits soon began to tailor the highly customizable platform to meet their own needs. It wasn’t long until Salesforce.org was born – and an official version of the features that nonprofits were using began to be compiled. Donor/Constituent Management and Fundraising, Program Management, Volunteer Management, Grantmaking, and many other feature sets came together into a single package that eventually became what we now call the Nonprofit Success Pack. This package of nonprofit-focused tools sits on the Salesforce.com platform and contains a broad set of out-of-the-box functionality that can be customized to each nonprofit’s needs. What makes it so appealing for a quick transition from Luminate CRM is that since they are both built on the same platform, much of the look and feel will remain the same. The navigation and analytics tools and even some of the basic database components will be exactly the same. 

How long will migrating take? 

In spite of the similarities between LCRM and NPSP, the scope of the change is likely fairly significant if you’re using more than one or two pieces of the functionality or if you have custom configuration that you’ve done to the system. You should plan for a month of planning and up to a few months of mapping out business processes and translating them from Luminate CRM into the Nonprofit Success Pack. You should also plan on several months of data mapping and migration, some of which could be done in parallel with other work. Depending on the size of your team, you may need to spend another month on training for both end users and administrators of the system. There are differences in terminology and process between the two systems even though they are trying to accomplish many of the same things. As you can see, with these kinds of time requirements, that doesn’t leave much time to spare! 

Has anyone done this before? 

Yes! Believe it or not, Candoris has been helping people move from Luminate CRM to NPSP (and other similar migrations) for almost a decade! We have experience guiding clients through the process for reviewing your usage of Luminate CRMs various features and explaining NPSP’s comparable functionality. We can help plan out a timeline and then handle the system migration as well as the training necessary to move your nonprofit over to NPSP. 

When should I start? 

As soon as possible! Clients starting on this journey right now will have the necessary time to be able to complete the migration and have some time for testing and confirmation of their new system before the official Luminate CRM end-of-life on June 30, 2022. This is a good thing! You don’t want to wait and be up against the wall at the end of the window. 

Bonus Question: What if I’m not ready for NPSP but I still need help with getting off of Luminate? Candoris can still help! Contact our team to discuss options for removing Luminate CRM and getting all of your data so that you can take more time to make your decision. 

Read more about the successful migration with Children’s HopeChest