Name: Reciprocity in Practice: Closing the Loop Between Donors, Funds, Grants and Community Impact
Uploaded: 2026-11-04T19:30:47.290Z
Duration: 1 h 4 s
Description: Reciprocity in Practice: Closing the Loop Between Donors, Funds, Grants and Community Impact

Transcript for "Reciprocity in Practice: Closing the Loop Between Donors, Funds, Grants and Community Impact": Welcome, everybody, and thank you for joining us for today's session. Today's session is really focused on a challenge that cuts across Canadian public, private, family, and community foundations. This work is obviously deeply connected, but the systems, information, and teams supporting that work may not always be. Relationships influence stewardship, donor intent shapes fund administration, financial controls, or grant making, grant decisions, ultimately, lead to community impact. So today, our team at Blackbaud and the wonderful team at FundMiner are gonna explore what it can look like when those activities actually operate as a more connected foundation model. My name is Christian Robillard. I'm an exec... Account executive with Blackbaud Canada. And, really, my experience and perspective with foundations comes from my time seeing and being on the receiving end of a number of different grant making organizations, whether that's through some of my my volunteer work with our Ottawa Community Foundation, engaging with more ecosystem partners, and some of my studies in Carleton's philanthropy and nonprofit leadership program. Today, as you'll be introduced throughout the course of, of the event, you'll be introduced to some of my colleagues from Blackbaud as well as the team at FundMiner. We're really gonna take this from the strategic operating model into the... Some of the more practical workflows when it comes to this connected operating model. A couple of housekeeping items. One, your audio is being broadcast through your computer speakers and captions are available using that CC button, the closed caption button. Please make sure that you're submitting your questions through the q and a tab. If you're having any issues as well with your technical pieces, do the classic turn it off and turn it back on again or do the refresh tab. You will receive a link to, the recording for this webinar by email and you can obviously download some of the slides in the docs tab on the right of your screen. If at any time you're feeling really compelled to act and want to be able to engage with someone from the Blackbaud team or with the FundMatter team, go ahead and press that big friendly request a demo button. And then if you need to adjust your settings, if something isn't coming through in the way that you needed to, there's a little cog wheel below to adjust your settings. And a reminder, if you've got questions throughout the course of here, we do have a good amount of time reserved to the end, but please also put your questions in the q and a below. If I can get our first pull up, I really wanted to start with getting a sense from folks who are on this call in terms of what best describes your foundation's current operating environment. Are you looking through more, like, primarily spreadsheets and manual processes? Do you have one main platform with a few different, disconnected tools? Do you have multiple specialized systems with some kind of special handoffs? Are you mostly connected across teams and systems? Or you're not really sure and you're sort of assessing what that model might look for you. So take a couple of seconds, throw in your vote, and then we'll see what folks are are saying around this. Alright. We're starting to see some response. So we've got a lot of folks in that spreadsheets and manual processes side of things, a few folks with primary platform and some disconnected tools. We'll give it another ten seconds or so just to get people's final votes in. Wonderful. Thanks folks for participating in that poll and sharing some of your insights. I think the important thing to say here is that there... There's no single right model. You know, foundation may operate extremely effectively with a central platform and several kind of specialist applications. This question is just whether the environment that you have gives your team the information, the controls, and the visibility that they need, without creating that unnecessary manual work and complexity. So as you go through and you're in that spreadsheet manual section, it gives us an usual... Some useful context around the importance of continuity, controls, and reducing reliance on individual staff knowledge, and maybe it's a nudge for you to think about those things. If you've got one platform plus the best thing to... Plus some disconnected tool, it's a common approach. It's a common model. And really the key issue is usually the quality of the handoffs can be that challenge. If you're having multiple different specialized system, really speaks to the theme that we're talking about today. So each platform can add value while the handoff still creates some operational work. If you're mostly connected, fantastic. So those with the connected environment really use today's session to identify whether one or two individual workflows could be simplified. And if you're not sure, this is a perfect place for you to be. Today's framework is really gonna help you to evaluate your environment without assuming that every foundation needs, rely on the exact same technology. And really today, we understand that as Canadian foundations evolve, operational complexity can also increase in relationships and stewardship, donor, fund holder, and partner context, may become distributed across platforms, email, as well as staff knowledge. In finance, gifts, allocations, administrative fees, spending policies, endowments, and restrictions can create manual handoffs and reconciliation. In grant making, applications, committee review, approvals, payments, and outcomes may run through separate workflows, while board and grantee reporting is assembled manually. This doesn't necessarily mean an individual platform is failing. The friction often occurs between systems and between teams. And really the opportunity is not simply more technology. It's fewer handoffs, clearer controls, and ultimately better stakeholder service. And really, a a connected foundation model can include relationship management, fundraising, and Canadian tax receding where that's applicable for you, fund accounting, financial management, payments, grant making, research, analytics, and partner applications. It's not a checklist. It's really a menu to pick the course that makes the most amount of sense for you. So a community foundation, you might place greater emphasis on donor service, fund holder stewardship, fund accounting, whereas a private or a family foundation may emphasize more on the governance side, the financial stewardship, and the grant making. The value really comes from deciding where information originates, how it's shared, where controls are applied, and whether each team has the context required to act. And when we look at the ecosystem as we see it at Blackbaud, we currently have the privilege of working with 38 different Canadian foundations. And across the country, we're privileged to be able to work with 1,700 different customers, all using different kinds of connected systems, both foundation and otherwise. And across Blackbaud, platforms globally, we raise and help to distribute over a $100,000,000,000, in terms of dollars being reinvested back into community. The important point is not scale for its own sake. It's really the practical experience that comes from supporting different foundation operating models. And that experience informs how we approach relationship management, financial stewardship, tax receding in Canada, grant making, reporting, and connected applications. So really, no single platform needs to perform every specialized function. Blackbaud ultimately provides the relationship, fundraising, financial and grant making foundation demonstrated in the... In this next section, And afterwards, FundMiner will then demonstrate some specialized fund administration workflow. So as you watch both presentations, we really want you to focus on the operating model. So where the information starts, which platforms, owns each workflow, and how teams receive the context needed for the next decision. And what we really want you, to watch for is really that sort of demo evaluation lens and seeing what what makes sense for you folks. So with that, I'm gonna pass it over to my colleague, Mark, who's going to take us through this sort of connected system and start us down this journey path. So, Mark, over to you. Great. Thank you, Christian. Let me just share my screen here, and we could get started. Hi, everyone. My name is Mark Roy. I'm a solutions consultant with Blackbaud. I am based in Toronto. I've been with Blackbaud for about ten years. And, yeah, thank you for joining today. And for today, rather than looking at Raiser's Edge NXT, Financial Edge NXT, and Blackbaud grant making as three separate products, we're gonna follow one person in one act of generosity through the foundation. Meet Jennifer Lorenz. Jennifer is a longtime supporter who has decided to contribute $25,000 to a donor advised fund supporting health and human services. On the surface, that sounds like a single transaction. But for the foundation, it starts a much broader journey involving several teams, each with different responsibilities. The fundraising team needs to under... Understand Jennifer as a person, not simply as a gift. They need visibility into her history, interests, relationship, and engagement with the foundation. That relationship, along with the contribution itself, begins in Raiser's Edge NXT. The finance team then needs to ensure that the contribution is accounted for appropriately, that the organization has clear financial visibility, and that the funds are stewarded responsibly. That brings financial edge NXT into the story. From there, the foundation needs to put its resources to work in the community. Blackbaud grant making supports the process of receiving applications, reviewing opportunities, making funding decisions, and following those grants through to outcomes. But Jennifer may also be more than a donor. As a fund holder, Jennifer may expect visibility into the fund. They wish to make grant recommendations. They have specific intentions that the foundation needs to honor over time. That is where FundMiner extends the journey with specialized fund and donor advised fund management. So as we move through the demonstration, the question I'd like you to keep in mind is the one on the screen. How does Jennifer's generosity move through the foundation and ultimately become a community impact? We'll begin where the relationship begins with Jennifer in the razor's edge. So let's start where I said we would. This is Jennifer. Before Jennifer's $25,000 contribution becomes an accounting entry, a fund balance, or ultimately money going back into the community, Jennifer is first and foremost a relationship that the foundation needs to understand and steward. And that's really the role of Raiser's Edge NXT is playing in our story. When I opened Jennifer's record, I immediately had the relationship context in front of me. I can see that Jennifer has been giving for eighteen years, seventeen of those consecutively, and and it's nearly $700,000 in lifetime giving. But I also don't have to go hunting through the record to understand what has been happening recently. Key insights brings forward important information to me. In this case, I can see that Jennifer has recently identified as a DAFF donor. There's an upcoming lunch meeting, and her latest gift was $25,000 contribution associated with the Annabelle Johnson DAF. So, value here. Mark, sorry to... Mark, sorry to interrupt you. We can just see your, your speaker notes. If you wanted to just put on the the present mode, then, yeah, just as a as a heads up for you. I apologize. We're not seeing my screen at all. Let me just share again the appropriate window. It's the window, but... Okay. There we go. Are we seeing Jennifer? You have a thumbs up? Yes. Yes. That's We're, good. Mark. Sorry about that. Thanks for pointing that out, Christian. So what I was explaining here, we see that overview of Jennifer. We see her giving snapshot, her lifetime giving, eighteen years of giving, seventeen consecutive years. We see this nice snapshot, those insights into what recently happened with Jennifer since I've last accessed this record. But the value here isn't simply storing information about Jennifer. It's giving the fundraiser enough context to understand the relationship and decide what to do next. And knowing Jennifer isn't only part of the equation. Good relationship management is ultimately what we do with that information. Here we can see the ongoing touch points associated with Jennifer. We have a lunch meeting scheduled, correspondence, and a history of other interactions with the foundation. Those interactions become part of the institutional knowledge around Jennifer rather than living in somebody's inbox or notebooks or or even in their memory. So whether I'm the fundraising manager, the, the fundraiser managing the relationship today or someone else takes over the relationship in the future, we retain that context around how we've been engaging with Jennifer. We also want to understand Jennifer in the broader context of her relationships with the foundation. Those relationships can include people and organizations. But for community foundations, they can also include relationships with funds. And this is where we begin to connect Jennifer directly to our broader story. We can see her relationship to the Annabelle Johnson DAF along with her fun relationships associated with with other fun relationships rather associated with Jennifer. That becomes an important part of the relationship management picture because we're not, treating the fund and the person behind it as completely separate things. Understanding Jennifer's relationships give us important context. But for a fundraiser, there's another question. What does everything we know about Jennifer tell us about the potential of this relationship and how should we be managing it? This is where we can bring together prospect analytics with the actual work of managing Jennifer as a major gift prospect. On the left, prospect insights is looking across the information available about Jennifer and helping us identify signals that could be meaningful to the fundraiser. In this case, Jennifer is being identified as undergiving. We can see an estimate target gift range of 50 to $100,000 along with an excellent major giving likelihood. What's particularly useful is that we're not simply being given a score. Our eNXT provides some context around why that insight matters. Jennifer's largest annual cumulative giving over the last three years is about $31,000, which is below the estimated 50 to 100,000 target range. So for the fundraiser, the insight isn't simply Jennifer has wealth. It's really saying based on what we know about Jennifer, Jennifer's giving behavior and estimated capacity, there may be an opportunity to deepen this relationship. And then on the right, prospect management is where we operationalize that insight. We can manage Jennifer through our established prospect management process, track Jennifer's current status, and bring it... Bring together the financial and prospect information that helps inform our cultivation and solicitation strategy. So these two pieces complement each other nicely. Prospect insights helps us identify potential. Prospect management helps us act on that potential in a structured way. And that brings us to Jennifer's most recent act of generosity. Here is... Here is the $25,000 gift that we've been following in our story. We can see the contribution itself and importantly, that the gift has been associated with the Annabelle Johnson DAF. From the fundraising side, it's not enough to just know that $25,000 has arrived. We want that gift connected back to Jennifer, connected to the appropriate fund, and incorporated into the larger history of our relationship with Jennifer. Because we're talking specifically about Canadian Community Foundations, another important part of that process is receiving an acknowledgment. We can see directly on the gift that the contribution still needs a receipt and an acknowledgment, giving the team visibility into stewardship work that's still outstanding. So right here from the gift record, we can send her a tax receipt. It's... Or we could generate an acknowledgment email using Blackbaud AI pulling in the appropriate context of her gift. And once this gift is recorded, it's not sitting in isolation. It's now part of the almost $700,000 in lifetime giving and eighteen year relationship that we saw when we started. Everything we looked at at... To this point has been in the lens of one supporter, Jennifer. But, of course, Jennifer isn't the only sponsor of relationship a fundraiser is responsible for. Raisers at Genesee can also help fundraisers move from managing individual relationships to prioritizing an entire portfolio. My work center brings together who needs my attention, my portfolio, gifts, actions, and opportunities. And prospect insights helps us surface potential opportunities in the broader constituent base, including people who have high major giving potential or donors who may have capacity beyond their current giving. So rather than expecting fund... Fundraisers to manually sift through thousands of records looking for signals, we're helping them focus their limited time on the relationships and opportunities that deserve attention. So if you step back for a moment, Razer's NGINX T has helped us answer a particular set of questions. Who is Jennifer? What is her relationship with the foundation? How has she supported us? What fund is she connected to? And what should we be doing next to steward that relationship? Once Jennifer gives us that $25,000, another team has a very different set of questions. Finance needs to know, how was that $25,000 accounted for? Is it associated with the right fund? What activity has occurred against that fund? And where does the fund stand financially? So let's follow that exact same $25,000 contribution into the Financial Edge NXT. We finished the CRM demo, and here's the accounting software. Here we can see the finance side accounting for Jennifer's contribution. This is a posted journal entry batch, and the first thing finance can confirm is that the batch is balanced. We We have a $25,000 debit and a corresponding $25,000 credit with a net balance of zero. The journal identifies Raiser's Edge as the source, and the reference retains Jennifer's name. Most importantly for her story, both sides of the accounting entry are associated with the Annabelle Johnson death. Development began with the person and the gift. Finance now has a corresponding account... Accounting entry connected to the supporting fund structure. Now that the contribution has been accounted for, we can move from the individual transaction to the fund itself. This is the Annabelle Johnson DAF fund twelve 100. It is active and has been categorized here... Categorized here as an endowment. The activity summary gives finance an immediate view of what has happened against this fund during the selected fiscal year. We began with a zero balance, recorded Jennifer's $25,000 contribution as revenue, and gave $2,500 in expenses or disbursement activity. That produces a net change and ending accounting balance of $22,500 This is the finance team's perspective on stewardship. They can see what came into the fund, what has gone out in a resulting financial position without having rec, to reconstruct a story in a separate spreadsheet. The financial story does not end with the contribution when the contribution is received. Ultimately, these resources are intended to support work in the community. Here, we can see $2,500 quarterly DAF disbursement to the Toronto and Region Conservation Foundation. From the accounts payable perspective, the invoice has been approved and posted, and a $2,500 payment has been scheduled. Finance, therefore, has visibility into the recipient, the amount, the approval status, and the payment schedule. This is the other side distortion. Financial Edge NXT is not only showing the contribution coming into the fund, it is also supporting the financial processes associated with money leaving the organization. Finally, finance needs to be able to report on the fund, not simply view individual transactions. The... This fund activity report brings this story together. We see Jennifer's $25,000 contribution, the $2,500 disbursement activity, and the resulting $22,500 ending balance for the fund. That provides a clear financial history of what came in, what went out, and where the fund stands. The report can support internal oversight and reconciliation while also giving the foundation the financial information it needs to communicate responsibly with leadership and fund stakeholders. At this point, we follow Jennifer's contribution with the relationship and gift in Raiser's Edge NXT into the finance system where the foundation can account for those resources, track activity against the fund, process disbursements, and report on the resulting financial position. But financial stewardship answers only a part of the question. The foundation still needs to evaluate opportunities, make funding decisions, and understand what those dollars accomplish in the community. That takes us into Blackbaud grant making. We're now looking at the foundation through a third operational lens, that of the grant making team. This dashboard gives grant grant managers an at a glance view of grant making portfolio. We can see the value of approved, declined, and pending requests, grants by organizational unit, and the volume of requests moving through different areas of the foundation. These dashboards can be tailored to the information that matters to different users. A grants manager might focus on requests, workflow, and deadlines, while leadership or a board may want a higher level view of funding decisions and portfolio activity. The goal is to move beyond individual applications and understand the foundation's grant making activity as a whole. Of course, grant making begins outside the foundation with the organization seeking support. Here we can provide applicants with a branded portal where they can review a program information and guidelines, understand the deadline, and begin an application. For this community grant program, an applicant can select start a new application and move into the application experience. Here I have an eligibility quiz where we can fence off the application and allow only eligible individuals or organizations to apply. Applicants can then work through the required information and return to an in progress application before submitting it. Now jumping back into the grant making portal. Sorry, into the admin portal, we see here an existing request from Charleston Moves for its community pool revitalization. This request brings together the applicant, the project information, the amount request, and the current decision status. In this example, the request has been approved for $75,000 Foundation staff can access the application information, related documents, review activity, requirements, payments, and the history of work associated with the request from one place. This becomes the grant's central record, supporting the teams from the original request through decision, payment, and follow-up. Not every grant program requires the same decision process. Some programs may be administered directly by staff, while other requires assessment by an internal team, external subject matter experts, or grant review committees. For programs that use that type of application review, Blackbaud grant making can provide reviewers with a focused experience for evaluating signed requests. This is the reviewer portal where the reviewer can access the information needed to assess the proposal and complete the review criteria established by the foundation. Depending on the program, that could include questions about strategic alignment, community need, organizational capacity, feasibility, expected outcomes, or the proposed budget. The intent is to port... To support a consistent and documented assessment process. Review information is brought back into the grant management workflow so staff the information... Has the information needed to support a funding decision. This is specifically the review of a grant application for a program that uses a committee or reviewer based selection process. It is different from the DAF recommend, recommendation and fund holder workflow that FundLiner will show later. But once the foundation reaches the decision, the work continues. An approved request can have one or more planned payments, and the foundation can also establish follow-up requirements, such as progress updates, financial reports, outcome reports. That allows the team to manage the grant beyond the original decision and maintain visibility into what is due, what has been received, and what remains outstanding. Here we can see the payment schedule associated with this grant. This gives the grants team visibility into when funding is expected, to be dispersed, I should say. The status of those payments, scheduled, contingent. In this case, in the contingent payment, we see that there's a requirement, an interim report that is contingent. That payment is contingent on us receiving this report. Grant making decisions also need to be made within the context of the foundation's grant making budget. This budget summary gives the grant teams visibility into planned grant making resources, commitments, payments, and remaining balances across different categories. For demonstration purposes, this environment is used in a 2024 budget period. The key point is the structure and the visibility. Here we can see the Annabelle Johnson DAF has been established as a budget category. The summary shows the original and current budget, how much has been paid, how much has been committed through approved grants, and the remaining budget balance. From here, staff can drill down into the underlying activity associated with the budget line rather than looking only at the aggregated amount. This helps the grant team understand which grants and payments have been associated with the category and how grant making decisions are affecting the available grant making budget. This is the grant making budget perspective inside Blackbaud grant making. It should not be confused with the authoritative accounting balance in Financial Edge NXT or the specialized spendable balance in fund administration calculations that Fund Miner will discuss. What we are looking at here is the grant making budget category associated with the Annabelle Johnson DAF. And finally, the foundation can move from managing individual requests to understanding the broader results of its grant making. Dashboards can help leadership and boards explore where grants are being made, the priority areas being supported, the communities and demographics being served, and the outcomes being reported. Now this closes the loop from application and decision making to a broader understanding of the foundation's community impact. What happens when Jennifer isn't simply making a gift? What if she's a fund holder, expects visibility into her fund, wants to make recommendations, and the foundation needs to manage the underlying fund agreement, donor intent, available balances, and spending policies? This is where FundMiner extends the story. John, why don't you take it from here? Great. Thank you, Mark. Let me share my screen. Can I just get a validation that you can see that, Mark or Christian? Looking. good, John. Thank you. Perfect. Well, thank you, Mark. Thank you, Christian. For everyone, my name is John Maneri, and I lead our sales team here at FundMiner. I've been at FundMiner for the past year, but prior to that, spent a little over nine years, at Blackbaud with my colleagues, Mark and Christian, working with organizations across both the... Both Canada and The US. Now at FundMiner, all I really think and all I should say, all we really think about is the work that really happens after the gift, right, or after funding has come in to make sure that all of that hard work that you're doing, right, is actually able to turn into impact and turn into outcomes within your communities. Excuse me. I'm really honored to be here to represent FundMiner, and we as a company were honored as Blackbaud's twenty... Two thousand twenty six Partner of the Year just a few weeks ago at BBCon. And as we think about this, and and I really like how Christian and Mark have framed this as right, the operational, kind of, functionality... Not functionality, but the operational stance, right, of your foundations and of your organizations. We at FundMiner wanna help extend, right, the good work that you are doing, right, in the advancement work or the development office, in the finance office, and with your community partners. And as we go through today, we'll extend and continue to tell that journey... Or that story of Jennifer's gift to the foundation and how it can actually deliver impact, with your communities and with your partners. But before we do that, you know, just thinking a little bit, you know, on the story and what we're trying to solve for and and really getting back to that experience that, you know, the Jennifers right within your network and your donors and your supporters are expecting, they expect a seamless giving and impact experience. Right? Jennifer makes that $25,000 gift to the DAF. She expects the acknowledgments and receipts. She expects that the disbursements to your community partners and and organizations, right, receive that money, right, when directed. And that she sees and gets the report of impact right after it's been delivered. The reality though, right, is what we see, you know, you know, sort of before and and current state, was really evident in that initial poll that, Christian put up for the group. It's often this work is being done by a dispersed group of stakeholders and fund holders and fund managers. Each of those funds and the, the revenue that you're bringing in all have different restrictions and requirements of how they're spent and how they're used. Fund information is often siloed right between systems and between offices. And, you know, this is all being put together and managed, you know, we jokingly say by Excel and Caffeine, but it's true that it's right between these manual processes and reports between offices and systems. Ultimately, and and Mark, spoke to this quite, clearly and and candidly, it's ultimately an equation and a, call to action around donor trust. Donors and your supporters, they want to continue to give and to support your your organization and the organizations within their community. The sad reality though is that very often the funds that organizations are receiving go unspent and unused or undispersed to their community partners. Very often that is because of, right, these siloed systems and offices, right, that there is not that level of fund visibility, right, and visibility of donors' intent and the communities that they serve and how funds are are intended to be used. And for Fund Miner, we really want to act as, right, that execution layer for all of this work that happens after the gift. What I mean by that is we truly wanna give one home, right, for this work. When I think about, you know, how, you know, various operations, right, kind of in current state live amongst your fundraising team, maybe donor relations, your IT, your out counting, your program delivery. There is not a clear visibility, right, into that fund and into that gift that goes between offices and systems. Very often if you're having to answer questions, right, today you're having to go to your CRM or your, you know, recipient management tool or, you know, a SharePoint drive for documents. And what we want to do is become that execution layer for all of your fund related information from development, from the business office, from your grants workflows, so that you have that clear line of sight from a donor and how they interact with their fund or funds or their DAF to how you manage and make sure that funds are dispersed to your community partners all the way through to how impact is delivered, and you can tell that story back to your donors and supporters. I'm going to quickly stop sharing to then share. Screen again. Alright. Excuse me. And I'm in the FundMiner platform. FundMiner as a solution, we are very much thinking about how we can, centralize fund related data and information from your various systems, whether they are all Blackbaud. Right? Razor's Edge NXT, Financial Edge NXT, or Blackbaud grant making, or a mix of other solutions, we wanna be able to bring together and put in one place, right, that fund level detail that lives across different offices. As Mark called out, right, when you think about development, right, owning that fund to donor relationship. The business office thinking, you know, transactions and revenues and expenditures. Your grants team is focusing on who is actually receiving and getting the impact of this this work. We We want to be able to bring that all in one place so that you're better able to manage, rate, spend, and report on what's happening. What you're seeing here, right, is the heart of FundMiner. So this is what we call the My Funds page and all of that information from your various, areas of your operation and of your foundation is coming together in one place. We work with a, an unlimited user model and what that means for you is that you're able to have both restricted and unrestricted users. So, if you do have community partners that need some level of access to this, they need to see the funds that benefit their organization, their initiatives. You're able to provide that level of detail. So, each row that you see on the page here is an individual fund. You're also able to restrict the type of data, right, that you provide to various individuals. So you may not want to provide every bit of operating financial detail to various members of your community and the partners that you work with. But you do want to provide information on available balances and purposes and restrictions around gifts. So all of that can be established here and individuals are able to come in and set their own view to have access to information that is most pertinent and important to them. I do want to carry on and continue the story of, excuse me, of Jennifer's gift to the foundation. So when we think about that $25,000 gift, right, to the Annabelle Johnson donor advised fund, we can see that come into FundMiner here. And not only can we see the fund and the fund ID, we can see all of, right, the financial information. Right? Year to date expenses, giving, starting and ending balance. Anything, right, that may be pertinent for your team and your stakeholders, or I should say your your fund managers that are working with the fund can be surfaced here. To go into a Fund to show it in a little bit more detail. So all of this, right, is detail coming from different systems, whether it's criteria and restrictions of how a Fund needs to be used, who is responsible for actually acting and spending and utilizing this with a community partner, to things like financials. I'm using Mark's, example. So we can see Jennifer's year to date contributions. We're able to see things like committed, excuse me, committed dollars and estimated balances that are still available. Oftentimes, this is, again, data that lives between systems and it can be difficult to identify what these figures are or where they are. And we wanna make... As we think about how we serve our community members and we serve the partners that we work with, we wanna be able to give them enough information to make informed decisions on how they're using and how they're spending this this, this money that is available to them. So coming from Mark's example, we can see that $2,500 commit... That expense that's been committed. We can see the remainder of the usable balance. Oops. Sorry. Excuse me. We're able to see the donor or donors that support a fund. So, again, coming back to Jennifer, as well as her, as well as her gift, which is not showing here. But we can see the gifts that are coming in, to the foundation and to that gift... Or to that fund. As I jump around, Ultimately, as we deliver impact, we wanna be able to demonstrate and show this back to our supporters. So we are able to bring all of that data, right, those details from various systems and and areas around your organization into the platform to then start using this to deliver and demonstrate impact back to your donors and supporters. You're able to create as many reports and templates that you may need or would like within the platform And you're able to meet your donors where they are. So whether this is delivery through a printed piece that gets sent in the mail, an email or a digital and branded landing page and site, you're able to surface up the content and the impact or the the insights to your donors and supporters that is going to be most relevant to them. You're also able to personalize this. We very often see with the community foundations and organizations that we work with that it's extremely difficult to demonstrate and communicate impact to their supporters and their stakeholders at scale because of the work and the lift to pull information from these various systems, to merge it into a document and a report, and to get it out to their supporters in a format that is relevant and what their their audience is looking for. So we wanna be able to bring in things like their name, their giving impact, and narratives, from around the community. Narratives are items that can be collected. So we're able to surface that and and ask recipients of funds, your community partners, and as you see this example here, excuse me, where you're able to plug in and merge in content, from the the recipients or the individuals that you're collecting narratives and stories from. I think it's really valuable also if any of you are operating and managing endowment or need to share some level of financial information. Again, we're able to bring in that contribution information, dollars that have been committed, usable balances. So as we look at this and we preview this again for, Jennifer specifically, forward along here, we can see, right, that we're merging in that content from her DAF. We can see her year to date giving. We can see the the distributions to spendable. So any type of information that is pertinent to share with your donors or with your stakeholders can be done here. What's nice as well is that these reports are intelligent. So very often we see organizations have donors and supporters that support multiple funds and multiple initiatives. So being able to package together all of the impact in one space, in one area for your supporters, is is quite valuable. Right? Because we wanna take a donor centric approach and a donor centric view in how we do this. Everything here is designed to be drag and drop in a WYSIWYG type editor. You're able to report to all of your funds to a segment or a group of funds, to think about how you may want to be more strategic in your engagement. And while data is coming into the platform in a very fun centric manner, you're also able to take a donor centric approach to how you engage and how you steward your supporters. Now going back to Jennifer and the supporter of this Annabelle Johnson DAF, we also want to enable your supporters to have visibility into the funds they support, the reports they get, and how they may direct, gifts through a DAF. So through the platform, your donors are able to have their own view into the portal or into a donor portal to be able to see the fund or funds they support and the amount of information that you wanna provide. So I'm logged in now and viewing this as Jennifer, And I can see I support two funds through the... Our ACME, foundation example. But perhaps with that, Annabelle Johnson DAF, I wanna come in and see some of that information. Now, candidly, I'm logged in as an admin so that I can see all of the data points, but everything here you would be able to restrict in lockdown so that... And... Or so that Jennifer, excuse me, is only able to see the information that is pertinent to her. So it may be something where we only wanna show that usable balance and what has been committed and perhaps her year to date contributions. She is able to come through and pull her own reports as you've created them. Certainly, you can deliver them as you'd like, through direct mail or through email. But giving Jennifer and your supporters the option to come and access their reports as needed, to serve their own needs. But I think most exciting is being able to enable workflows and approvals. So, DAFs... DAF grants being one of those. So enabling Jennifer to come in and be able to direct how she would like this fund and how she would like this funding to be used, whether this is a single use or a recurring use, to be able to come in and say, I would like a thousand dollars to go to this purpose, and this is why it's being used, and I want this to remain anonymous. She's able to come in and start the approval process here. As a administrator, and let me exit this, impersonation, I'm able to come in and see all of the tasks that have been received. So I can see that there is a... Excuse me, you know, a DAF grant that's been submitted. And I can come in as a staff member of the foundation to come in and add in my own information around the organization that this is being dispersed to. I can approve or deny this or ask for more information. But we are really thinking about how we can enable that workflow from the time a donor is making that gift, moving through your various offices, but then really thinking about in a linear flow, how we are connecting your donors to your foundation, to the impact that they're delivering throughout your community. With that, I think I'm gonna turn it back to Christian for now. And I will pick that back up as soon as I can turn off my my mute button as everyone seems to be having the thick little thing. John, Mark, really appreciate both of your your detailed walkthroughs of really this this idea of the connected foundation operating model and really showing that that seamlessness, that reduction of friction that we can see when, again, a lot of the... Those different systems are able to talk to one another. We have about ten or so minutes left for for our time together, and I'm noticing some questions in the q and a start to to trickle in. So I'd like to start to get to those and just a reminder for our folks to, insert those questions into the q and a feature, there. And if you're able to as well, please direct it to if you have a question specifically for Mark versus you... If you have a question specifically for John just so we can make sure that you get the answer that you're looking for. What I'm seeing right now is, three questions. So I'll start off with the first one. And, John, Mark, feel free to to jump in with with whatever you're thinking. So, earlier, someone was asking about gaps that tend to happen in the handoff between different kinds of teams, different parts of the organization, different stakeholders. Can each of you, based on on your experience, talk to where some of those, tend to happen in terms of those gaps that that can that can exist in hand off? Jeff, do you wanna take a first stab at that, Mark? Yeah. I'm trying to get my, mute button off. I I I think it's about connecting the data. Right? And and that's one thing I I was trying to show and and throughout... You know, I I was taking you through three different platforms there and have that constant connection of that initial gift is connected to that specific fund so we know where it is to be directed. You know, and and that could... And take that a step further to that individual donor. So making sure that those connections, remain in each of those stages so we understand what is the origin of this this specific donor dollar, and where is it supposed to be allocated to make sure we stay in line with that. I I think that's one of those areas that that that we need to keep an eye on. I I would echo that sentiment, Mark, as well. And I think what you showed and and the value of the Blackbaud solution is that you provide that connectedness so that you... When the gift is received and entered into the CRM, right, it's clearly moving from razor's edge to financial edge to grant making. And, you know, that in and of itself, right, is a win. And from the FundMiner side, we also see that gaps. And I think what you're solving for, right, is that you're creating that linear connection, right, of the gift and of the the financials right from system to system. And on our side, what we often see, to expand on that gap is that while it's moving from system or office to expand on that gap is that while it's moving from system or office to office, there is not that singular view right across all of the systems. Very often you do not... You have non financial users or folks that aren't accountants, right, that while they may have access to a financial solution like Financial Edge, it's... It looks like Greek to them or a foreign language. Right? Because they, you know, can't approach it. Right? And they're not sure where to go. They are not a program... They may not be on the program side or the the granting side. So for us, we want to... I think of it as kind of making that all three-dimensional. Right. Being able to pull data, right, from each of those systems that's pertinent and shown in a way that is valuable to the end stakeholder and the end user. Because what a, a fundraiser may need to see from those three systems is very different from what a member of your community or a community organization may need to see and experience versus a donor. Yeah. And and and and John, wanna pick up on that because we have a question. related to that with. respect to those end users. And and, Mark, I'll I'll put you on deck as well. But when we think about who those end users are and the folks in this this operating model and using these connected systems, those who would ultimately benefit most from using these series. of tools, who who comes to your mind in terms of who benefits the most or who. might benefit disproportionately so? I'll start off there. And and one thing to try to explain is we have different teams with different roles, and they have diff... They they absorb that data differently and have different uses for that data. So... And and, certainly, we know in in small foundations in in in across the charitable sector, you know, we we we wear many hats. So there are people in different roles, and sometimes they they need to manage those different areas. But having specific tools for those specific roles, I think, is very important. And and and I I could say that from the fundraisers to the grant managers to to the accountants. They have very specific roles and these tools will give the... These different platforms, these interconnected platforms, to give them the specific tools for them to be the most successful within their roles. I I don't know... I I I don't know if there's any one specific role that would, benefit more than others, because really, we we have the tools that'll benefit all of those different roles, I think. Yeah. I I I think that's an important sort of kind of through line to pick up on, Mark. And to me, when I think about that question, to me, it's really about the the communities and the stakeholders, right, that we serve or that you as a foundation serve. And when I say that, right, some of those may be internal stakeholders, your own staff and your own folks, right, that need access to this information in different ways. But it's also right your external stakeholders, whether it's a donor or the recipient of a fund or an or, you know, a... An organization right within the community, all have some level of benefit, you know, quote, unquote, from the tools, right, and from this this, you know, total solution, right, that we're talking through. But as Mark pointed out, right, it's delivering that insight, and that information to them in a way that can be consumed and actually acted on. And and I would imagine to making sure that folks who are either, a, using those tools, but, b, need to rely on those tools, know that they have the reliability and the consistency that that information can be shared across multiple teams and that it's ready to be pulled and it's. ready to be ultimately used at a moment's notice as opposed to as we sort of saw at the at the top of this of this webinar, folks talking about while things live in spreadsheets. So for some teams, they might be able to understand that, but having a unified set of systems, helps people to be able to pull and use that data, which is really what it... What it's about is it's using that data to enhance relationships, to enhance service, and to to remove that friction where we can. Yeah. And I I even think of, you know, some of our community foundation partners that are using both Blackbaud, right, and FundMiner to do this work are cutting down on thousands of hours of this manual operational lift between teams, between their their external stakeholders that they support that now can be delivered to actually, that can be directed towards actually delivering the mission. Right? Delivering the work that they're there to do. And I think that that ties in nicely to your point, Christian. Wonderful. The the last question I'm seeing in in the chat is around, confirming that seeing all this great information where it's being pulled from. And if I can take if I can take a stab at answering one of these with. with our two great experts on the call, It's coming from these two, these two sets of systems. So whether that's in, razor's edge with respect to your CRM, whether that's in, financial edge, that is your accounting, finance, infrastructure, whether that's Blackbaud grant making in terms of, the granting out and the tracking of those dollars or in FundMiner when it comes to that, DAF and fund holder administration, deeper insights, those sorts of pieces. So if I didn't answer that properly for the person that... It was Alex who would ask that, feel free to add an extra q and a to make sure I actually address it, properly. And I'm seeing a last question that just snuck in under the radar before we start to wrap around. How much IT support is required to get something like, like a... Like Blackbaud or FundMiner up and running? So maybe maybe, John, I can start with you on that side, and then Mark can can pass it over to you in terms of that that level of of time investment to get these kinds of systems going and and what people should be thinking about when they're looking to implement this kind of a connected system. Yeah. I'm... Absolutely. I'm happy to to grab that first. So from our side, the IT lift is minimal. It's helping set up things like your, you you know, single sign on, right, and domain for emails that are being sent out through the platform. We do have direct API integrations to the various Blackbaud platforms, which that sometimes requires just having the admin access to the Blackbaud systems to be able to get access to the key, that that API key to make the connection. But for us, it is really a project with the end users. Right? And the folks that are going to be living in the platform day to day to think about what are those data points and what is the fund related information from your CRM, from your financial solution and beyond that need to come in to a platform like FundMiner and what are, right, the DAF requests and the other workflows and approvals. So an IT lift is is quite light on our side. From the Blackbaud perspective, I I I would echo that as well. I I mean, first and foremost, these are cloud cloud softwares that we're talking. about. There's... We're there... There's no servers you need to manage. There's no updates to to the platform. You'll always be on a current, platform. But I'll also say that we don't sell our products as off the shelf, platforms. Okay? We will be working with you for that implementation. You'll have. a project team, a consultant that's working with your team to understand your workflows, to understand your nomenclatures, to build out your tables. And and so so there is, a bit of lift depending... The amount depends on a different platform as far as how many hours we're we're talking about working with that, implementation team and that consulting team. You'll have professionals building that out for you. We will be setting you up for success, not just handing you off, a piece of, piece of software, really. At the end of the day, you will want a subject matter expert to kind of be the the the lead on any of these platforms internally. Often that sits with someone in IT, but not always. But understand that that you won't be left alone to your laurels with, you know, a a a piece of software saying here, you know, here... Here's here's an instruction book and set it up. We will do that for you and with you, with with our consulting team. Yeah. And I and I think that's a a great place for us to to wrap up for today. So first off, Mark, John, really appreciate the two of you taking the time to craft this to, explain to folks where the values lie and really guiding people through what this connected operating model can look like. And I and I wanna leave folks with a couple of of wrap up pieces as we end. First is really, connected operations doesn't require every single workflow to live in one oversized application. We can work between different models and, really, that value lies in the handoffs. It's where information originates. It's how it's shared, where controls are applied, and whether the next team has enough of that context and information to ultimately act on. And the final piece is really the the best place to start is is one workflow with measurable friction, challenges, issues rather than rather than trying to undergo this transformation all at once. So if you enjoyed and wanna continue this conversation either with, the Blackbaud or the FundMiner team, again, if you wanna press that demo button, you're able to, request that kind of tailor... Tailored demonstration, and there's a pull up there right now. If you wanna raise your hand to say, we're interested in exploring this further, whether that's a workflow demonstration, a tailored demonstration, or any other additional resources that you might want. And, of course, you'll get a recording to the conversation that we've had today as well as the additional resources that Blackbaud and FundMiner are making available. And just really appreciate everyone joining for all the work that you folks do in communities across this country, and thank you very much for your your involvement and your participation in terms of your questions, answering the polls, and we hope to hear from you soon.