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

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.