Can we auto-create or import participants in bulk?

We can help expedite registration or migration of participants in bulk via our Participant Import facility.

Whether you're migrating a previous event's fundraisers to raisin or just want to register a whole bunch of fundraisers at once, our Import Participants facility uploads Peer-to-Peer Participants to a Pledge or Multi-Pledge, creating personal pages, team pages and profile information en masse.

Importing Participants

The Import service has the ability to auto-create Individuals, Teams, and Multi-Pledge Groups (if applicable) from the Manage Users section of any Peer-to-Peer campaign.

On import, the following is generated for each successful record:

• A unique username (unless otherwise specified)
• Password is auto-generated per our Password Policy
• Participant/team/group page using the default Page
• User receives a send personalized email using the “Individual Registers (Account Information Sent)” Message Template or "Team Captain Registers (Account Information Sent)" to Participant’s e-mail, as if they registered themselves
  • Note: The email can be disabled should you choose to communicate separately.

Indeed, the fundraising experience for imported participants (in the Participant Centre) is identical to any other player who registers via the front-end site.

Recommended import steps

Given that an import has public-facing impact, we typically recommend the following steps and allowing a 12-15 business period to complete your file, test and of course, load into your event: 

1. Download the sample file from Event > Manage Users > Import Participants. The spreadsheet is mapped for completion of participant information you’d like to import.
2. Collectively schedule date and time of import into the a live raisin event, assuming the file passes your internal QA. For large imports (>5000 users) we suggest performing the import outside of business hours, but in general, a 1000 user import can be performed at any time of day.
3. As an email is sent to registered users, verify that copy in the “Individual Registers (Account Information Sent)” and "Team Captain Registers (Account Information Sent)" messages is correct.
4. One business day prior to import, complete an import of a test group of users that includes internal users and specified administrators from your organization (if you wish).
5. Make your event live, if not already.
6. Go to Manage Users in the event, and initiate the full import. Add your email address as the Notify By Email.
7. Import runs in background at rate of approx. 1000 participants/hour.
8. If enabled, emails will send as each participant is registered.
9. Once complete, you'll receive an email with results of the import, including any fundraisers that might not have been uploaded along with a reason for the exception.

Technical specifications

• For users who might already have participated in a previous event on raisin, the import service also allows for Returning Users to imported, so long as you specify their previous event and user ID (this can be found in the Participants Report in Analytics), along with all other participant contact information – so often for returning participants, administrators will simply copy + paste each participant’s row and reformat based on the import specs. Returning Participants retain the same username and password as the previous campaign.
• Participants are imported without registration fees (as if you were creating them via the “Add Participant” tool in raisin Admin).
• Survey Question responses cannot be imported.
• When Team Name is added to the import file, the user will automatically be registered as part of the specified team. For the first instance of that Team Name, we will create the team anew. If there is an exact match on Team Name for subsequent rows, we will simply add the individuals to that team. If there is no match found in the system, we will, of course, create a new Team/Group. Therefore, before performing the import, you will want ensure that the data is clean so that correct matches can be made.
• If any exceptions are observed, they will be sent to you for review and manual registration.