Name: InsideTrack: Blackbaud Enterprise Fundraising CRM Resource Center
Uploaded: 2026-04-21T16:01:06.409Z
Duration: 31 min
Description: InsideTrack: Blackbaud Enterprise Fundraising CRM Resource Center

Transcript for "InsideTrack: Blackbaud Enterprise Fundraising CRM Resource Center": Can you see it? I cannot. All I see is leave. Although it says No. We're at this point. live. We had this before. Lovely. We're live. Thank you so much, everyone. The beauty of SaaS technology. So, anyway, thank you very much for the call out, on chat. You're a great community. Welcome to the, second edition of the inside track of what's new and next for Blackbaud CRM. We are delighted today, to be introducing the new Blackbaud CRM resource center to you. Just a couple of webinar housekeeping items. You found the chat. Thank you for helping me out as your host. I just wanted to note a couple of other things, in here that, you know, you are broadcast through audio speakers. If you want to, you know, if it starts to glitch or anything like that, usually, if you just reset your browser, that takes care of it. We will be monitoring the the q and a. Sometimes, we lose questions in the chat. So if you have a question you'd like the team to answer, please use that q and a, button for that. Also wanted to note the doc section. I've put a roundup of resources, including a link to the new resource center in there. So please feel free to check that out. And finally, we do recommend you close out other programs that you may have running on your device, in order to free up bandwidth, to keep you running smoothly here. Wonderful. So next up, I just wanted to quickly cover the safe harbor statement. We some of the capabilities that we'll be talking about today are not yet available, And just note that future plans are subject to change based on normal product development cycles. So your feedback, and in response to unforeseen events. So please make any purchase decisions based on current available functionality. Today's speakers here, I'm joined by a great group of colleagues, to lead the conversation. I'm Allison Madrigal. I, do product marketing for Blackbaud CRM, and I'm delighted to be joined by Chris Sager, our product marketer product manager, excuse me, for, CRM, and also, Gethin James, esteemed, solutions architect, that works very closely with this product as well. So to get us started, I wanted to just kind of at a high level from an agenda standpoint, we will start by looking at our, vision and strategy for fundraising innovation. This is where we'll really review how we're building CRM for the future and what that path looks like. Other other things, this will help us sort of set the stage for the resource center topic, which is the focus of today's call. And then we'll turn to the highlight of this. We have a demo for you, that you'll look at this new centralized hub, and we'll close out with some, exciting sessions ahead, that you don't wanna miss and ways to engage with us. So without further ado, I will turn things over to Chris Ager to take us through, fundraising innovation. Chris? You're very much, Allison. Hello, everyone. And to the same point, I'll make it as Allison. Thank you very much for letting me know it's up up and running because we didn't get a notification on this one, so thank you for that. I just want to start, by some way summarizing all the goals we want to drive, this year through the huge amount of innovation that we have planned for Blackboard CRM, not just for this year, but continuously into the future. So this is not a one, moment in time for Blackboard CRM. This is the future of Blackboard CRM. And that innovation starts now. And it starts with the reimagined product experience through Blackboard Sky UX. The new experience, though, is much more than just a fancy new look and feel. Yes, it's responsive. Yes, it is accessible, but it's the foundation that is used to drive all of our in all of our intelligence and the way that we bring that goodness to your organizations. And this innovation allows us to streamline your processes and make your teams more efficient so they can spend more time building relationships and driving your missions forward rather than spending their time entering data and navigating through Blackboard CRM. Even though we've got this new fancy, user experience. They'll want to be in there, but, you know, we want them doing, driving your missions. So as we release more of these innovations and more of this experience, whether that is the fundraising intelligence that you get from chat for Blackboard AI, the new intelligence dashboards, or when we move to completely a non autonomous agents for good, which will start with the development agent. That's all planned to to be rolling out in preview this year, or rolling out this year, all three of those. It's vitally important that we keep you informed with all these innovations and updates as they happen. She might be here today. So these innovations are designed to handle the requirements of higher value fundraising. Our focus is to provide tools to major gearing departments that enables them to engage with more supporters, whether that's to complete prospect researching faster than ever before or, and give or give you the information you need to be successful through Power BI reports, metrics analysis, or even just the ability to ask questions. But I'm not talking about data collectors or AI chatbots. That that's that's not what we're talking about. We're going much, much deeper than that. These tools need to handle the complexity that you have and you use within Blackboard CRM. That's why you use Blackboard CRM. And so we're designing these to adapt to your processes using your branding and learning your messaging, all whilst simultaneously ensuring that your data is always secure. And there's lots and lots of gates that we go through to ensure that your data never leaves your environments. So why does that come back to the resource center? Well, as we build this reas as we build the resource center, it's one of the core ways that we want to get information to you. So as we release these features, there'll be lots of different elements being added to the resource center. And I won't divulge anything right now. I'll spoil the fun for for in a in a moment. But because these tools are so complex, you need that complexity to to meet your organization processes, your needs. So these tools inherently have that that complexity as well. But complexity isn't abstract. Right? It happens every day. It's in every process and in every need. And so complexity is just a word. Actually, the way we build these tools, the way we want these tools to operate means that they will not be complex to operate, but they will be able to cope with what your organization demands of them. So one of the beauty of of this, and we've said please add your q and a into this as well, is it's a two way conversation going on here. Here. There's as much as we can get a two way conversation going on. We want your feedback as well. So to try and get a little bit of feedback, I've got a couple of polls as we go through this. I'm gonna launch these, and please do provide us your feedback. This is how we are going to drive, and understand how you use Blackboard systems right now. So I'll launch the first one. I'll give you a few minutes. Let me do that. There we go. Hopefully, you should get a tab. There's a poll section on right hand side where or in where your chat is. It's right inside for me anyway. You can, start to add on there. Do I hit share as well? I need to do that. Oh, not yet. Okay. And then I can share the results. Okay. Perfect. Well, I'll give you a few more minutes, and then I will hit, share now. Wait for a few more votes to come in. So it is looking good. Twenty, forty, oh, coming up to, you know, 30 odds votes now. Here we go. Five, four, three, two, one. Alright. Let's see where we are right now. So taking the lead in here, support knowledge, you know, two thirds of all the votes, and that's that's absolutely what we would expect us to see with this. We've got product documentation. And perfectly at the bottom, I'm not always sure where to look. That is what we want to solve. Right? For those people that mark that question, this is what we wanna solve. So I'm incredibly interested to see what you think as we go through this. So thank you very much for all of those. Let me just close that one for now. And so so, Juan, this is one more, and then we're gonna move on. So, what's your biggest challenge today when you're looking for Blackboard CRM information? And this kind of might go into some of the the content that we have available to today and just making sure we're getting the tone right, the detail right, for what you need, in there. And depending on your role, you're gonna be looking at different things. I appreciate that. But we really do wanna make sure we cater for everyone's requirements here to, as we go through this. Right. Give it a moment more. Got 27 votes. Almost 30. Okay. Alright. Again. Alright. Let's have a look. And where are we at today? So, it's hard to know what's coming. That's a very fair fair comment. We've got lots and lots of information out there. And to your point, it's spread across too many different places. And, again, this is why we're here today. This is why we've been working on this resource center is to try and update all that information, to give you more information, at your fingertips in one place so you do know where it's, available to you, every time. And then for those that take too long to find the answers, let's see if we can do this in, a few months' time and see if we can change that number. So I really appreciate your honest, responses there. It's very nice to know we're not going too technical. So that's perfect, for for what I need. Alright. Thank you very much. I am going to now move on and hand over to Gavin. Hello. Hi, Chris, and thanks so much for, inviting me to join this one. This is what I'm really excited about. I'm assuming that I was asked to join this one because, for six years before I joined Blackboard, I was, heading up the data function in the advancement office at UCL. I have done my fair share of rummaging around looking, in the different resources for the information that I wanted in relation to our Blackboard CRM instance. So this one brought a a real moment of joy to me. I'm gonna tab over into the next slide. And we talk a lot about, single source of truth in the CRM world. Normally, we're talking about that in relation to our constituents, how Blackbaud CRM gives us that overarching view of everybody and everything. But for the resource center, the single source of truth we're actually talking about is for the resources and the tools that are gonna enable you to get the maximum value from Blackbaud CRM and the investment you're making into the product. It's bringing together a whole range of, existing resources into one place, But really, and I think this is the thing we want to stress, this is the start of a journey for us in the Backbone CRM community. We're creating this hub first, and then we're gonna be adding content into it over time. And what we add next will be directly driven by what you tell us. So please, you know, feedback and and let us know what you want. Take this opportunity. Another thing we wanted to flag is that we really intend the resource center to be a space for everyone who engages with Blackboard CRM from your day to day users to, database managers, even through those advancement operation leaders who potentially may not interact that much with the, core system itself but are looking for kind of high level information, we want the resource center to be a space for them. So as I say, tell us, tell us what you want in there so that it becomes, you know, one of those most, clicked on bookmarks in your browsers. Here you can see a couple of examples of the things that we, a brand new content that is kind of joining the release of the resource center. But as part of this, if you've got ideas for what you'd like to see next, please pop them down in the chat. And to help bring this to life, we've got a kind of a a quick video walk through of the resource center that I'm going to, ask Chris or Alison to hit play on now. Today, I'm going to show you the new resource center for Blackbaud Enterprise Fundraising CRM, your centralized hub for everything you need to run, manage, and evolve your fundraising operations. Whether you're a system administrator, fundraising leader, or technical team member, the Resource Center brings together trusted guidance, product updates, and learning tools in one place so you can spend less time searching and more time driving impact. At the core of the Resource Center is clear, task oriented documentation. These guides go beyond feature descriptions to help you understand how Blackbaud CRM works in real world fundraising environments, covering configuration, security, data management, and best practices. At the top, powerful search and filtering tools help you quickly pinpoint what you're looking for, from a specific configuration question to guidance on a new capability. From the homepage, you'll find a dedicated security and compliance section, bringing together documentation on current release information, lifecycle, and dependency details, and a system information protection section where you can quickly access release notes, system requirements, deployment readiness guidance, and more, all in one place. We want to make it easy for customers to continuously get more value from Blackbaud CRM, not just at go live, but over time. The resource center is focused on helping your team make the most of your investment. Here, you'll find practical information about our cloud innovation, recent product focused blogs, and guidance to help you adopt new capabilities faster, refine workflows, and solve common challenges as they come up, all without having to search across multiple systems or ask around. Whether you're exploring new features, looking for best practice recommendations, or trying to optimize how your team works day to day, these resources and e learning videos are designed to meet you where you are and help you move forward. The essential resources section highlights foundational content designed to support teams at every stage. These are the core materials many organizations rely on most often, including key documentation, guidance, and references that come up again and again. It's a practical starting point when you need answers quickly or want to ground your work in recommended approaches. Technical resources are readily available to help technical and operational users fine tune how the system is configured and used. This includes deeper documentation, configuration guidance, integration references, and technical best practices that support automation, data flow, and system performance. These resources are especially useful for administrators, operations teams, and anyone responsible for maintaining or extending the platform. Instead of trial and error, teams can reference proven approaches to streamline processes, reduce manual steps, and support more consistent outcomes across the organization. Cloud migration resources are available to support organizations as they plan and move to Blackbaud cloud operations. Here you'll find resources such as readiness considerations and technical guides, so teams know what to expect before, during, and after migration. Whether you're early in consideration or actively preparing for migration, this section helps centralize the information you need in one place. Below, you'll find e learning videos that highlight what's new and recently updated in Blackbaud CRM. It's designed to give teams a quick view into the latest enhancements, improvements, and changes without having to search through release notes or communications. Each video includes clear context around what changed and why it matters, helping teams understand how new capabilities fit into existing workflows so they can prepare rollout to end users. New learning videos are published regularly so teams can continue building skills as the product evolves. Ultimately, the Blackbaud CRM resource center is designed to put clarity within reach, bringing knowledge, updates, and guidance together in one intuitive experience. It's another way Blackbaud helps enterprise fundraising organizations reduce complexity, move faster, and stay focused on what matters most advancing your mission. Explore the resource center today and see how it supports your teams now and as your fundraising strategy continues to grow. There we go. That was very slick. So I really hope that you are all sitting there thinking that looks amazing. How can I access this wonderful thing? We've made it really easy for you to get into it from the ever present question mark that follows you around Blackbaud CRM. You can click on that help icon, and you'll see that there's a link directly there to the resource center. But please do grab it and bookmark it so that it's somewhere that you can come back to easy whenever you're kind of thinking about your, advancement activity. So I'm gonna hand over to Chris now. I think we've got a a couple more, poll items that we wanna go through. But if you've got any questions specific to this stuff, please do keep populating them into the q and a area, and we will be, picking them up. And then potentially also, I think we'll have a little time at the end to do some verbally. Thank you, Kevin. Yes. I am back. Hello. We're just putting the link in the chat as well so you can access it through that as well. So give us a second. We'll get that published. But I've got two more polls, for this, to try and get a bit more information, and then we'll we'll go through and answer any other questions that you that you've posted in the q and a, section for this one, as well. So let's do the first one. This one is based on what you've just been seeing, what type of resource center content is most valuable to you? Now the question, in there as well is things like, is it the how to guides, release notes, and road map details, cloud infrastructure and and stuff going on with Blackboard cloud operations, The integrations out there that we're rolling out, and there's gonna be acceleration as with everything we're doing right now, there's gonna be acceleration on the amount of things like Sky APIs being made available too, and then learning and best practices in there as well from all of our Blackboard institutes, and across the wider Blackboard community as well. So these are all very, you know, decently sized chunks. There's lots of material and scope within each of these, but it really helps us to know where to focus our energy, especially in the short term as we we get started and start moving forward, through all of these features. So I can see the votes coming in. This is fantastic. Is it staying still? Well, we've got a few more coming in. Got a few more coming in. Alright. Let's see what I've gotta keep keep the polls over, but I'm gonna share them anyway so we can start to see, what you are voting. Oh, it's live and running. Oh, this is fancy. Right. The, so how to guides documentation taking just over half of the votes, in there, which is great because we wanna get those those, videos out as we're releasing more. You we'll start to to develop sort of bite sized, mini training update videos around what we've just released when so you can keep up with all the updates. It's not just gonna be blog posts, for those that are very visual in the way that you learn and consume information. So bite sized videos too, I'm a huge fan of. We got the release notes and the roadmaps. Thank you very much. In there, we'll try and get more information in your hands sooner, through this as well. Integrations API is in there as well. Great. And learning pass and best practices in there. Thank you very much. Yes. So we'll make sure we we focus on those top two, first of all, and, the learning pass will build up as it goes anyway, but we'll make sure that's front and center as well so you can see all of that. So thank you very much for all of your votes. I'm gonna close this one for now and fire off the last one. So here's the last one. There you go. So which areas do you need most guidance on right now? So forget the information that you want to see day in day out, and they may well align, but in here. But where is it that you struggle most that that Bloodwold really, could do with securing and building all that knowledge, up to give you more detail, more process, more understanding, in there. This is the last one, but, this is fantastic feedback for us because it really does help us develop this. The resource center will not change. Sorry. The resource center will change. It will not stay static. Sorry. I get that right where I am. We keep developing this. And so as we go through the last one, we've got cloud operations in here. We've got security and compliance. We've got integrations, analytics, and preparing for what's next. Okay. So that's a nice relatively equal spread. So thank you very much for all of your feedback. This is this is really, really helpful. Right. I think I might hand over to you now, Allison, or is it q and a. We I? was no. Just coming in to help with, the q and a, Oh, fantastic. and just to real time, actioning of feedback, making that last poll multi select. So I'm glad to see the glad to see the feedback there as Chris and I work to, to frame out content ahead. So that's wonderful. Yeah. So we did get a question about, the slide deck being available. So this session is being recorded, and I will wrap it up with a, a blog post that'll be posted to the community. I will also share, the slides in that blog post, for you as well. So that is all, you got we've got you covered there. Question, for you, Chris. The, Sky API endpoints, for Blackbaud CRM, do we have a timeline, for increasing coverage of those endpoints? We do. In fact, we are just about to start in what is essentially our next development cycle, which starts early next month. We are going to start developing more Sky APIs. And we're gonna keep developing more Sky APIs as we go through not just May, but throughout the entire year, throughout this as well. So, yes, we are actively working on Sky APIs to build up, the catalog of available options in there. We've been looking and working with our partners right now, as well to see what their feedback has been on Sky API and the the feedback you've got from from them as well. Looking at ideas bank, looking through the various different sources that we've got information from from you too. We're gonna look to prioritize those first. But, ultimately, yes, we want that complete coverage, so we've been building a lot of tools to help us accelerate that that process. So watch this space. It's. getting exciting. Wonderful. Any other questions for us today? And we're happy to continue engaging, with you on the community or any other. We'll also, be talking about this a little bit on the upcoming product update briefing. So feel free to, as you kinda get through it, give us your continued feedback. Speaking of product update briefings, these are, officially happening in the May. So, please, if you don't already, have yourself registered, for these, we really encourage you to check it out. You'll see we have Blackfoot CRM one, but there's a variety of, of, briefings that would, that may be relevant and and beneficial for you. Highly recommend that you check out the agents for good, session, as well as the focus session for online giving and also, payment services. You can register for all these at the blackbelt.com forward /product dash update. I also put a link to this in the doc section that you can easily access if you'd like. Other happenings, about here, BB Dev Days is kicking off in, June. Registration is still open. There are many registration options for this, one including free. But this, for those of you that don't know, this was founded, within the Blackbaud CRM community and has grown now, to be larger, but it is very, highly relevant, to, Blackbaud CRM developers, both, coders and, you know, kind of the low code, groups. So really encourage you to check this out. It's a great place to explore APIs, build new skills with demos and skill labs, connect with the developer community. So it's really a lovely, multi day session for us. The next inside track will be focused on, the future of Blackbaud CRM, with AI. There's a link for all of this in the docs area. So hope to see you all in the pubs, but also back for the June 16, inside track. And then one final note about b b con. In, late September, early October in Columbus, Ohio, and I'm really just so delighted to share that this is the first year that we are going to have a full track for Blackbaud CRM. Reviewing sessions, there is just amazing content. So thank you all of you that have submitted, great, sessions for this. I'm really looking forward to, getting those approved and posted and shared with the broader, community. It's going to be a really great track. I encourage you and hope to see you all there. And then finally, well, that was it. Sorry. I thought I had one more slide. So thank you all very much for joining and for reminding us that we are live. And, yeah, we look forward to seeing you, in May at the pub. Thank you, Chris and Gethin, for your excellent presentation and making time for us today. Thanks, Thank you. everyone. Yeah.