Blackbaud Unveils Expansive Vision to Accelerate AI-Fueled Impact for Purpose-Driven Organizations

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Jun 05, 2023, 10:02 ET

Launch of next generation Intelligence for Good^® strategy provides first glimpse into wide-ranging product enhancements across portfolio

CHARLESTON, S.C., June 5, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Blackbaud (NASDAQ: BLKB), the leading provider of software for powering social impact, today announced the launch of a major new wave of its Intelligence for Good^® strategy, with an extensive agenda of initiatives and investments to be implemented on a rolling basis over upcoming quarters targeted at making artificial intelligence (AI) more accessible, powerful and responsible across the social impact sector.

"A tremendous opportunity exists for social impact organizations to use AI to address key operational and financial challenges," said Mike Gianoni, president and CEO, Blackbaud. "Blackbaud will apply our proven approach – combining high quality system-of-record data, best-practice education, integrated partner ecosystem and new social impact-specific capabilities ─ to provide an easy, safe way for our customers to test new approaches and capture this opportunity in ways that are right for the social impact sector."

While committing to the continued enhancement of existing features like AI-enabled prospecting and intelligent donation forms, Blackbaud will expand into new areas including automated generation of stewardship documents and assisted learning targeted at driving an exponential increase in the productivity of social impact organizations.

At the heart of Blackbaud's next-generation AI strategy is a commitment to make AI more accessible to social impact organizations by providing complete, ready-made solutions that address specific challenges related to the optimization of fundraising, stewardship, corporate impact and education needs. Specifically, Blackbaud plans to announce an extensive set of new capabilities in 2023, including:

AI for Peer-to-Peer (P2P) Fundraisers: Enabling P2P participants to use Generative AI-based features to make sharing their own story easier and more effective for their fundraiser.
AI for Online Giving: Providing a personalized experience to online donors through predictive AI capabilities.
AI for Major Giving Officers: Expanding Prospect Insights to include AI-driven insights into planned and major giving vehicles and likelihood.
AI for Donor Stewardship: Enabling organizations to automate the creation of key donor stewardship documents such as thank you notes through a built-in Generative AI experience.
AI for Educators: Assisting teachers with personalized, AI-driven content that has appropriate guardrails to drive more classroom engagement.
AI for School Administrators: Leveraging AI to automate review and recommendations of financial aid submissions.
AI for Corporate Impact: Empowering Corporate Social Responsibility teams to capture, visualize and tell the story of their corporate social impact missions through inclusion of modern AI services.

In addition to its increased investment in planned product enhancements to make AI more accessible to its customers, Blackbaud will accelerate the availability of partner solutions in the Blackbaud Marketplace. This includes nurturing and scaling an ecosystem of social impact-focused AI companies through its tech accelerator, the Social Good Startup Program.

In July 2023, Blackbaud is launching a cohort of its accelerator program dedicated specifically to AI startups, now open for enrollment.

"Blackbaud's tech accelerator initiative allowed us to refine our AI capabilities, providing feedback on the most powerful use cases for the social impact sector," said Nick Fitz, CEO of Momentum, the winner of Blackbaud's 2022 Startup Showcase.

This new wave of innovation builds on Blackbaud's proven history of delivering results through data intelligence and AI. In 2001, Blackbaud developed its first data intelligence product and has supported thousands of customer organizations including many of today's leading and largest nonprofit organizations, universities, healthcare foundations, major museums and more with predictive modeling services within the last decade. Blackbaud continues to modernize its data intelligence offerings, including the announcement in 2022 of Prospect Insights, a modern AI-powered service designed to provide actionable insights for major giving. Grand Canyon Conservancy, a Prospect Insights customer, reports that Prospect Insights has helped them identify the correct constituents to place into gift officer portfolios. They also use the snapshot of wealth and giving data within Prospect Insights to make more educated asks of their constituents.

"Blackbaud has become the operating system for organizations that improve the world," said Sudip Datta, chief product officer, Blackbaud. "Our investment into AI over the past decade has infused intelligence into our systems of record, and our new investments into Generative AI will now accelerate the ability for our social impact customers to act on that intelligence."

Blackbaud will provide regular updates on how it delivers this strategy through upcoming announcements and webinars, at its annual conference, bbcon, in October 2023, and its product update briefing series in November 2023.

To learn more about Blackbaud's AI vision, visit: www.blackbaud.com/intelligence-for-good.

About Blackbaud
Blackbaud (NASDAQ: BLKB) is the leading software provider exclusively dedicated to powering social impact. Serving the nonprofit and education sectors, companies committed to social responsibility and individual change makers, Blackbaud's essential software is built to accelerate impact in fundraising, nonprofit financial management, digital giving, grantmaking, corporate social responsibility and education management. With millions of users and over $100 billion raised, granted or managed through Blackbaud platforms every year, Blackbaud's solutions are unleashing the potential of the people and organizations who change the world. Blackbaud has been named to Newsweek's list of America's Most Responsible Companies, Quartz's list of Best Companies for Remote Workers, and Forbes' list of America's Best Employers. A remote-first company, Blackbaud has operations in the United States, Australia, Canada, Costa Rica and the United Kingdom, supporting users in 100+ countries. Learn more at www.blackbaud.com or follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and Facebook.

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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