Immediate Change to TeamRaiser Participant Center Email

This article was originally posted by Blackbaud on the Blackbaud Community Forums site

Critical changes to your TeamRaiser were implemented on 4/7/2023 that results in new TeamRaiser participants, or participants who don't have a validated record in Luminate Online's Constituent360, unable to send emails from their TeamRaiser Participant Center until a validating minimum threshold is met:

A participant must meet one of these criteria to use Participant Center email:

• Participant has transacted $5 or more to the organization at any point
• Participant has received confirmed donations of $5 or more from other donors
• Participant record is 365 days or older

This change is a response to the dramatic increase in bad actors creating disingenuous event registrations and Participant Centers for the purpose of using the TeamRaiser participant messaging feature to send spam and phishing emails. These nefarious messages cause an increase in SPAM complaints and trigger other email security mechanisms that prevent your audience from receiving authentic message from your organization and genuine event participants.

This issue typically only affects TeamRaiser events with a $0 registration fee process. Bad actors are navigating to these free event sites and registering and then using the TeamRaiser event's Participant Center email tool to send countless spam and phishing email that negatively impacts organizations' domains and email reputation. Our hope is that by requiring new registrants to meet a minimum threshold for validity, it will deter bad actors from having a free and easy gateway for their mischievous endeavors.

More details about this change can be found in the Knowledgebase. Please note that we are recommending some changes that you can make that we believe will alleviate event participant confusion and/or frustration they may inadvertently experience due to their status at the time of trying to send their first emails from their event Participant Center.