Blackbaud Newsroom
Blackbaud Announces Tech Innovations to Support Social Good Customers Now and In the Aftermath of COVID-19
New solution enhancements and features designed specifically to support the unique needs of organizations during the pandemic
Charleston, S.C. (May 7, 2020) — Blackbaud (NASDAQ: BLKB), the world’s leading cloud software company powering social good, announces key technology enhancements to its solutions designed specifically to support the unique needs of social good organizations during and as they recover from COVID-19, including:
- New integration between peer-to-peer fundraising and donor management solutions simplifies the process of raising revenue and acquiring new supporters through pandemic-friendly virtual events and peer-to-peer campaigns
- Simplified donation forms expedite fundraising by allowing organizations to quickly and easily create campaigns, which is critical during COVID-19
- New financial management capabilities, such as invoice payment schedules and bank reconciliation reporting, further enable remote operational cash flow and financial operations from the cloud
- An extra layer of fraud protection at no additional cost to mitigate online fraud, which can increase during a crisis
Blackbaud powers the entire Ecosystem of Good®, including nonprofits, higher education institutions, K–12 schools, healthcare organizations, faith communities, arts and cultural organizations, foundations and companies. While some of these sectors are among those most impacted by the pandemic, they also provide the most in-demand services—and many are relying on technology in unprecedented ways as a result.
“Our purpose-built cloud solutions supported by our high-performing and reliable Blackbaud SKY® platform are designed specifically to help social good organizations,” said Blackbaud Chief Products Officer Kevin McDearis. “Our solutions are already equipped with features that are lending themselves to this current environment, and we have quickly acted upon customer feedback to add enhancements and new functionality to serve our customers, so they can continue to focus on their missions during this time.”
Fundraising and Relationship Management
During COVID-19, fundraising has become even more critical and also increasingly complicated. As in-person events shift online, social good organizations employ new strategies to maintain momentum with current supporters while capturing the attention of potential new donors. Staying in lockstep with its customers’ needs now while keeping an eye on the future, Blackbaud is releasing the following new features for its core fundraising and relationship management solutions:
- Blackbaud Raiser’s Edge NXT® is the first comprehensive cloud-based fundraising and donor management software solution built specifically for nonprofits and the entire social good community. Remote and mobile administrative capabilities of Blackbaud Raiser’s Edge NXT have proven especially critical to organizations adapting to remote work during the pandemic. As organizations across the social good space turn to virtual and online fundraising to recapture revenue from cancelled in-person events and receive vital donations, Blackbaud has released three new innovations to assist in this effort.
Blackbaud Peer-to-Peer Fundraising™, powered by JustGiving®, a stand-alone solution for supporter-led, do-it-yourself fundraising and organization-created campaigns now seamlessly integrates with Blackbaud Raiser’s Edge NXT, allowing organizations to effortlessly transfer data on new constituents, track relationships between fundraisers and donors and streamline reconciliation tasks. This integration makes it easier for organizations to grow their community and reach new donors while operating in a mostly virtual environment.
New recurring giving technology, available to Blackbaud Raiser’s Edge NXT customers globally, provides gift processing automation and performance enhancements, such as automatic retries. By streamlining sustainer gift processing, this enhancement helps organizations secure more stable monthly revenue streams and frees up staff time to focus on supporter relations.
A new donation form designer simplifies the creation of donation forms, offers more sustainer options for donors, and streamlines reporting and analysis with new reporting dashboards. This new donation technology, made available in March to all Blackbaud Raiser’s Edge NXT customers in the U.S., has proven especially timely. Usage surged in March and April, as organizations leveraged it to quickly stand up fundraising campaigns related to COVID-19.
- Blackbaud TeamRaiser®, the industry’s most trusted fundraising event software solution that powers tens of thousands of events each year, has allowed customers to quickly and easily pivot event fundraising to virtual campaigns using its flexible registration functionality and email solutions. Recent product improvements, such as the TeamRaiser integration with Facebook Fundraisers and the next generation Participant Center, have been especially valuable to organizations that have moved their event fundraising online. With a single click on the Facebook Fundraisers integration button from within the TeamRaiser Participant Center, supporters can leverage the promotional power of the Facebook algorithms to drive fundraising. On average, these supporters recruit 3-4 times more gifts and raise $150 more than other supporters.
Financial Management
Blackbaud’s cloud-based financial management solutions have eased the transition to working from home with tools that support collaboration and efficient remote working. Organizations are finding success through Blackbaud’s cloud solutions for financial management, such as:
- Blackbaud Financial Edge NXT® is a complete fund accounting software solution designed specifically for social good organizations. Recently, Blackbaud released multiple usability improvements, many directly as a result of customer feedback, such as invoice payment schedules and bank reconciliation reporting. Additionally, many of Blackbaud Financial Edge NXT’s existing features are especially useful during these times. For instance, for accounts payable, customers can receive emailed vendor invoices, pay those via ACH rather than writing and mailing a check and email the remittance directly to the vendor. Also, Blackbaud Financial Edge NXT’s budgeting capabilities allow customers to import or manually create an unlimited number of budget scenarios as they navigate through the unexpected expenses and changes resulting from COVID-19. Expense Management enables employees to submit receipts for payment in a work-from-home environment, so organizations can stay on top of their financial position, even while not physically in the office.
- Blackbaud Grantmaking enables an organization’s entire disaster team to have visibility into projects and seamlessly work across time zones. Additionally, Blackbaud Grantmaking applications are easily modified, so an organization can quickly create much shorter versions of existing grant applications specific to COVID-19, making the process less time-consuming, so funds can be quickly issued to organizations that need them most during the pandemic.
Payment Services
Social good organizations work hard for every donor and dollar, so the system of capturing supporter’s payments must be reliable, simple and secure – which is truer now than ever before. Enhancements to Blackbaud’s trusted payment services platforms include:
- Blackbaud Merchant Services™ is Blackbaud’s end-to-end payment processing solution that has helped social good organizations around the world raise billions of dollars. Blackbaud Merchant Services already provides enhanced fraud protection, simplified Level 1 Payment Card Industry (PCI) compliance and Point-to-Point Encryption (P2PE). And, now all Blackbaud Merchant Services customers have access to an additional layer of fraud protection at no additional cost. This protection helps mitigate online fraud, which can increase during a crisis, such as COVID-19, and distract customers from what truly matters – their missions.
During this time, customers are in need of faster funding. Daily disbursements are already available to U.S. and Australian customers, and now this faster funding option will be available to Canadian customers as well. Through daily disbursement, customers are receiving more than five times as many disbursements a month, which speeds up cash flow and is critical if organizations are seeing increased demand for their services.
To learn more about how Blackbaud is supporting its customers during COVID-19, visit Blackbaud.com/COVID-19-resources.
About Blackbaud
Blackbaud (NASDAQ: BLKB) is the world’s leading cloud software company powering social good. Serving the entire social good community—nonprofits, higher education institutions, K–12 schools, healthcare organizations, faith communities, arts and cultural organizations, foundations, companies and individual change agents—Blackbaud connects and empowers organizations to increase their impact through cloud software, services, expertise and data intelligence. The Blackbaud portfolio is tailored to the unique needs of vertical markets, with solutions for fundraising and CRM, marketing, advocacy, peer-to-peer fundraising, corporate social responsibility, school management, ticketing, grantmaking, financial management, payment processing and analytics. Serving the industry for more than three decades, Blackbaud is headquartered in Charleston, South Carolina, and has operations in the United States, Australia, Canada, Costa Rica and the United Kingdom. For more information, visit www.blackbaud.com or follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and Facebook.
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Except for historical information, all of the statements, expectations, and assumptions contained in this news release are forward-looking statements that involve a number of risks and uncertainties, including statements regarding expected benefits of products and product features. Although Blackbaud attempts to be accurate in making these forward-looking statements, it is possible that future circumstances might differ from the assumptions on which such statements are based. In addition, other important factors that could cause results to differ materially include the following: general economic risks; uncertainty regarding increased business and renewals from existing customers; continued success in sales growth; management of integration of acquired companies and other risks associated with acquisitions; risks associated with successful implementation of multiple integrated software products; the ability to attract and retain key personnel; risks associated with management of growth; lengthy sales and implementation cycles, particularly in larger organization; technological changes that make our products and services less competitive; and the other risk factors set forth from time to time in the SEC filings for Blackbaud, copies of which are available free of charge at the SEC’s website at www.sec.gov or upon request from Blackbaud’s investor relations department. All Blackbaud product names appearing herein are trademarks or registered trademarks of Blackbaud, Inc.