Blackbaud Announces Cloud Solution for Higher Education, Enabling Institutions to Manage the Complete Student Lifecycle

CHARLESTON, S.C., Oct. 9, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Building on decades of leadership in the higher education community, Blackbaud (NASDAQ: BLKB), the world's leading cloud software company powering social good, today announced the Cloud Solution for Higher Education with the introduction of a new Education Management portfolio and the addition of stewardship management and guided fundraising tailored for higher education. Blackbaud offers the most robust advancement capabilities on the market and is now enabling higher education institutions to manage the complete student lifecycle--from admissions to alumni engagement. The announcement was made during bbcon 2018, the premier tech gathering for social good, taking place this week in Orlando, Fla.

"Today's announcement of the Cloud Solution for Higher Education is the next step in Blackbaud's continued commitment to provide comprehensive, purpose-built cloud solutions that drive digital transformation in every market we serve," said Mike Gianoni, president and CEO, Blackbaud. "We are proud that thousands of higher education institutions across the world currently partner with Blackbaud to drive success. Now, with the introduction of our new Education Management capabilities and addition of new stewardship management and guided fundraising solutions, colleges and universities now have access to even more tools to help them achieve their goals."

Education Management at a Glance

Blackbaud's new Education Management portfolio includes student information, recruiting and enrollment management, school website systems and learning management, enabling institutions to build a connected campus that delivers a better student experience.

"Our admissions team is creating processes that can be done in the software instead of manually--it's very freeing to have all of these options that we never had before," said Martha Stocker, software support administrator, Lutheran College of Theology at Chicago. "Blackbaud's education management capabilities provide us with one system that maintains all the information rather than multiple systems that don't talk to each other. There is a lot of excitement here because we have not had the tools to be strategic with how we recruit."

The Cloud Solution for Higher Education

Blackbaud's Cloud Solution for Higher education combines Blackbaud's proven leadership in higher education--including fundraising and relationship management, analytics, financial management, grant and award management, and marketing--with its new education management capabilities. Today, Blackbaud also announced the addition of the following solutions tailored to higher education:

    --  Blackbaud Stewardship Management(TM):  This software transforms donor
        relations by making it easy to collect quality impact statements and
        share them with donors. Blackbaud Stewardship Management enables
        education institutions to collect communication from scholarship
        beneficiaries and provide it to the right donors--providing
        personalization and connectivity at scale to simplify a formerly
        time-consuming process.
    --  Blackbaud Guided Fundraising(TM): Made possible by Blackbaud's
        acquisition of Reeher in May 2018, Blackbaud Guided Fundraising provides
        the tools, automation, and project management capabilities that annual
        giving teams need to scale a multi-channel, person-to-person fundraising
        strategy. Blackbaud Guided Fundraising will enable education
        institutions to better leverage student fundraisers through coordinated
        phone, email, SMS, direct mail, and online payments, allowing students
        to engage with donors directly with personalized messaging across
        multi-channel communications streams, while ensuring effective
        engagement through algorithm-driven predictive segmentation and
        real-time donation processing.

Key outcomes of Blackbaud's Cloud Solution for Higher Education include enabling universities and colleges to advance their institutions with increased revenue, deepen alumni engagement and enhance community outreach, connect departments and students, and improve the student and alumni experience through high-impact lifecycle management.

"Alumni communities are more dispersed than ever before, and alumni and campus communities have new and sophisticated expectations," said Tim Hill, president and general manager, Blackbaud Higher Education Solutions. "Helping institutions of all sizes reach their goals and achieve success is one of the reasons we come to work; we're constantly innovating to meet their needs. Our purpose-built cloud solutions for higher education ensure a thriving institution both today and in the future, with unmatched solutions, analytics, and expertise that span the complete student lifecycle."

To learn more about how Blackbaud is changing the landscape of higher education technology and the Cloud Solution for Higher Education, visit www.blackbaud.com/who-we-serve/higher-education-institutions or stop by Blackbaud's booth in the expo hall during bbcon.

Click to Tweet: Today at #bbcon: @Blackbaud announces Cloud Solution for Higher Education with new Education Management portfolio, enabling institutions to manage the complete student lifecycle https://blkb.co/2IKoxVD

About Blackbaud
Blackbaud (NASDAQ: BLKB) is the world's leading cloud software company powering social good. Serving the entire social good community--nonprofits, foundations, companies, education institutions, healthcare organizations 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 and the United Kingdom. For more information, visit www.blackbaud.com.

Blackbaud Media Contact
Brian Kosoy
Director, External Affairs
843.654.3004
brian.kosoy@blackbaud.com

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 related to our dividend policy and share repurchase program, including potential limitations on our ability to grow and the possibility that we might discontinue payment of dividends; risks relating to restrictions imposed by the credit facility; 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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SOURCE Blackbaud