Blackbaud Announces Tech Innovations to Support Social Good Customers Now and In the Aftermath of COVID-19
CHARLESTON, S.C., May 7, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- 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((TM)), 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((TM)) 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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Forward-looking Statements
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.
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