Little Green Light Integration

Overview

Connect to your LGL account

Follow these steps to go to your Little Green Light setup screen:

Click Settings on your top navbar to go to settings
Click the Integrations tab on the left menu
Click available integrations tab, and search for little green light
Select Little Green Light

Now follow instructions to establish a connection to your Little Green Light account.

1) Get an API Key from Little Green Light

a) Login to your Little Green Light account.
b) Go to "Settings" and click the "Integration Settings" tab
c) Locate the "LGL API" link on the left menu
d) Click the option to Create an API Access Token
e) Copy the "API Access Token" and paste it below

2) Enter the API Key in the textbox provided on the set up screen

Once this connection is established, your BetterUnite account will be able to communicate with your LGL account and you'll be able to send donor and donation records to your LGL account.

Sync Data

The first step before syncing your transactions to LGL is to map your campaigns and events in BetterUnite to their corresponding campaigns and events in LGL. This ensures that when the data is transferred, it will be directed to the exact location you need.

Once you have mapped the destination locations, and save the mapping, you will see the "sync" option on each mapped campaign row.

Click the "Sync" button and you will see all transactions within this BetterUnite campaign/event displayed for you to sync to LGL.

Note the various options below. The blue "Sync" button will appear on each transaction that can be sync'ed. The green status button and the corresponding LGL gift id will be displayed on each transaction that was previously sync'ed.

Additional Options

Below are some additional options you can consider as you work through integrations over time.

Do not Sync

You can mark any transaction as "Do not sync" to mark them as not syncable. These may address scenarios where you may already have the information in LGL, or you just prefer not to sync this particular transaction based on it's attributes.

Reset Sync Status

If you need to re-sync a transaction, you can reset it's sync status and enable the sync option again

Filter Transactions and Exclusions

Note the date filters and status filters highlighted below, as well as the ability to mark $0 transactions as non-sync status in bulk.

When syncing donations (and donors) to Little Green Light from BetterUnite, the following fields are mapped:

Donor → LGL Constituent

When a donation is synced and the donor doesn't yet exist in LGL (no match by email or name), a new constituent is created with these fields.

BETTERUNITE CONTACT		LGL CONSTITUENT	NOTES
First Name	→	first_name
Last Name	→	last_name
Middle Name	→	middle_name
Donor Type	→	is_org	true if DonorType ≠ Individual
Company Name	→	org_name	Used when donor is an org
Employer	→	org_name	Used when donor is an individual
Job Title	→	job_title
Spouse Full Name	→	spouse_name
Is Anonymous	→	is_anon
Email Address1	→	email_addresses[0]	Only if non-empty
Address Line1 + Address Line2	→	street_addresses[0].street	Only if AddressFormatted is non-empty
Address City	→	street_addresses[0].city
Address State	→	street_addresses[0].state
Address ZipCode	→	street_addresses[0].postal_code
Address Type	→	street_addresses[0].street_type_name	Enum to string

After creation: The LGL constituent ID is saved back to Contact.LGL_ID in BetterUnite.Donation → LGL Gift

Each donation creates a gift record under the matched or newly created LGL constituent.

BETTERUNITE DONATION		LGL GIFT	NOTES
lglContact.Id	→	constituent_id	Resolved constituent — always required
Intended Donation Amount	→	received_amount	Effective amount (gross minus refunds)
Donation Date	→	received_date
Deductible Amount	→	deductible_amount
Reference Number	→	check_number	Only when PaymentType is Check; empty string otherwise
(constructed)	→	note	Includes campaign name, ref number, and purchased items
Campaign.LGL_CAMPAIGNID	→	campaign_id	From campaign mapping
Campaign.LGL_EVENTID	→	event_id	From campaign mapping
Campaign.LGL_APPEALID	→	appeal_id	From campaign mapping
Campaign.LGL_FUNDID	→	fund_id	From campaign mapping
(hardcoded 1)	→	gift_type_id	Always "Gift" — InKind not yet supported

Note format: "Payment from BetterUnite Campaign: {name}, Check/Ref #{ref}. Purchase Details: {item1}; {item2} (qty)"

Contact Matching Logic

During Donation Sync (BU → LGL)

STEP 1

Check if Contact already has LGL_ID→

STEP 2

Search LGL by email address→

STEP 3

Fall back to name search→

STEP 4

Create new constituent if no match

If multiple partial matches are found, the user is prompted to select the correct one or create a new contact.

Send volunteer hours to Little Green Light

Approved volunteer hours can be added to the volunteer time log on each volunteer's constituent record in LGL, alongside their giving history. Volunteer names, hours and dates all carry over.

You will find this on the Volunteer Hours tab of the Little Green Light setup screen, which appears once your account is connected.

Before you start

Three things need to be in place:

A connected LGL account. The volunteer tab appears only after your API key is saved.
At least one volunteering category in LGL. LGL requires a category on every volunteer time record, so hours cannot be sent without one. Add categories in LGL under Settings, then reload the BetterUnite setup screen so the new categories appear.
Hours recorded and approved in BetterUnite. Volunteers check in and out, or self-report their time, and an administrator approves the entries under Volunteer Management. Only approved entries with credited time are sent, unless you choose to include entries still awaiting review.

Set up the volunteer hours sync

The settings are open the first time you visit the tab. After you save them once they collapse, and the gear icon on the card header reopens them.

Default volunteering category. The LGL category that hours land under for any volunteer page you have not given a category of its own. Set this, or give every page its own category, before turning the sync on.
Include the location in the description. On by default. LGL has no location field on a volunteer time record, so this is how location travels. See the location notes below.
Also send hours that are still awaiting review. Off by default. Hours you send before approving them are already in LGL if they are later corrected or rejected, so leave this off unless you have a reason.
Keep volunteer hours in sync. Turns the volunteer sync on for your organization. Leave it off to keep the integration to donations only. Sending hours yourself with the buttons below works either way.

Click Save settings when you are done.

Choose a category per volunteer page

Each row of the Volunteer pages table has a Volunteering category in LGL picker. Leave it on Use the default, or choose a category for that page alone. This is how a tutoring program and a gala can report under different categories in LGL.

A page with no category of its own and no organization default cannot be sent, and its hours are reported as skipped rather than filed under a guessed category.

Send hours

There are two ways to send, both on the Volunteer Hours tab:

Send all hours, on the card header, sends every eligible entry across all of your volunteer pages.
Send, on a single row, sends only that volunteer page's hours.

When the run finishes you get a summary: how many entries were added, how many previously sent entries were updated, how many were skipped and why, and how many new constituents were created in LGL.

What the volunteer pages table shows

COLUMN	MEANING
Volunteer page	The volunteer sign-up page the hours were recorded against. A "failed" badge appears here when the last attempt for some of its entries did not go through
Location sent	The location that will travel with this page's hours, or a note that the page has no location
Volunteering category in LGL	The category this page's hours land under
Approved	Approved entries with credited time. The pool a run draws from
To send	Entries not yet in LGL, or corrected since they were sent, and the total hours they represent

How volunteers are matched to constituents

Volunteer hours are sent without stopping to ask, so the volunteer is resolved to an LGL constituent in this order:

The constituent already linked to the contact, from this sync or from a donation sync.
An exact email match. An email address identifies a person in a way a name does not, so this wins outright. If LGL holds more than one constituent with that address, the earliest is used, and it keeps using the same one on later runs.
A name that matches exactly one constituent.
Otherwise a new constituent is created, carrying the volunteer's name, email address and address.

Step 4 applies even when several constituents already share the volunteer's name, because a shared name is not proof of the same person and attaching hours to the wrong donor record is the worse mistake. The new constituent's id is saved to the BetterUnite contact, so this happens at most once per volunteer however many namesakes LGL holds.

If you would rather the hours joined an existing record, add the volunteer's email address to that constituent in LGL, or change the email address on the BetterUnite contact to match it. The next run will then link them at step 2.

Volunteer hours field mapping

BETTERUNITE VOLUNTEER TIME	LGL VOLUNTEER TIME	NOTES
Resolved constituent	constituent_id	Matched or created, as described above
Credited minutes	hours	Divided by 60 and rounded to two decimals. This is the reviewed figure, not the raw check-in and check-out
Credited minutes	completed_hours	The same figure, since credited time has already been through review
Actual start, or the scheduled start	date	The date the volunteer worked, in the volunteer page's own time zone
Actual end, or the scheduled end	end_date	Sent only when the block of time ends on a later day
Page or default category	volunteering_category_id	Required by LGL on every record
Constructed text	description	Job, shift, times, location, impact figures and note. See below
Time entry id	external_id	Identifies the entry so the same hours are never logged twice

The date deserves a note. It is the volunteer's local date in the time zone of their volunteer page, not the underlying timestamp. An evening shift on the west coast of the United States would otherwise be reported on the following day.

What goes in the description

LGL's volunteer time record holds a category, a date, hours and a description, and nothing else. Everything it has no field for goes into the description, in this order, with any empty part left out:

The job name
The shift name
The times themselves, because LGL stores a date with no time of day
The location, if you have that setting on
Whether the hours were self-reported or entered by staff
Your own impact figures for the page, such as meals served or dogs walked
Any note on the entry
The name of the BetterUnite volunteer page

So a description arrives looking like this:

Cleanup Crew. Saturday Morning. 9:00 AM to 12:30 PM. Riverside Park, 100 Main St, Springfield IL. meals served: 40. BetterUnite: Spring Cleanup Day

Location, and what Little Green Light can hold

This is the one place where LGL cannot hold everything BetterUnite knows, so it is worth being clear about.

LGL has no location field on a volunteer time record. Location travels inside the description, which is why the setting exists.
Location is held per volunteer page, not per job or per shift. It comes from the location on the page itself, so every shift on a page is sent with that page's location. If you run one page covering two sites, the hours cannot be told apart by location.
A page with no location simply sends none. The Volunteer pages table tells you which pages those are.

Corrections and sending again

Hours are protected against being counted twice, in two independent ways. Each entry records the LGL row it became, and before adding anything the volunteer's existing LGL entries are checked for that same entry. A run you repeat therefore adds nothing the first one already sent.

If you correct an entry after it has been sent, the next run edits the existing row in LGL rather than adding a second block of hours. Correcting three hours to two leaves two hours in LGL, not five.

What is not sent

Entries with no credited time. A volunteer still checked in, or an entry never approved, has no figure to report yet.
Entries marked Do not sync.
Sign-ups with no recorded time. Volunteer hours come from the hours engine, so a page where nobody checked in and nobody logged time has nothing to send, even if people signed up for shifts.
Times of day, as data. LGL stores a date only. The times appear in the description.
Anything as a gift. Volunteer hours go to the volunteer time log, never to the gift record, so they do not affect giving totals.

Import Contacts from LGL

This function will allow you to import in bulk all of your LGL contacts into your BetterUnite account.

When importing contacts from Little Green Light into BetterUnite, the following fields are mapped:

Contact Identity

LGL Field	BetterUnite Field	Notes
id	LGL_ID	LGL's unique constituent ID, stored for sync tracking
first_name	First Name
last_name	Last Name
is_org	Donor Type	If true → Organization; if false → Individual
is_anon	Is Anonymous	Anonymous donor flag

Email

LGL Field	BetterUnite Field	Notes
EmailCalculated (primary email)	Email Address 1	Derived from LGL's email addresses list (primary)
Email2Calculated (secondary email)	Email Address 2	Derived from LGL's email addresses list (secondary)

Phone Numbers

LGL Field	BetterUnite Field
Phone where type = "Work"	Work Phone
Phone where type = "Home"	Home Phone
Phone where type = "Mobile"	Cell Phone

Employment & Relationships

LGL Field	BetterUnite Field	Notes
org_name	Company Name	Only when is_org = true
org_name	Employer	Only when is_org = false
job_title	Job Title
spouse_name	Spouse Full Name

Primary Address (first address in street_addresses)

LGL Field	BetterUnite Field	Notes
STREET	Address Line 1
City	Address City
State	Address State
postal_code	Address Zip Code
Country	Address Country
street_type_name	Address Type	"Home" → Home, "Work" → Work, else → Other

Secondary Address (second address in street_addresses, if present)

LGL Field	BetterUnite Field	Notes
STREET	Address2 Line 1
City	Address2 City
State	Address2 State
postal_code	Address2 Zip Code
Country	Address2 Country
street_type_name	Address2 Type	Same mapping as primary

Matching / Deduplication Logic

Contacts are matched to existing BetterUnite records using:

Primary email (case-insensitive match on EmailAddress1)
Full name (case-insensitive match on FullName) — used as fallback when email doesn't match

New vs. Existing Contact Behavior

New contacts: All mapped fields are populated on create.
Existing contacts: Fields are only updated if the BetterUnite field is currently blank/null. Existing values are never overwritten. The LGL_ID is always updated regardless.