Name: Product Update Briefing - Blackbaud Grantmaking™
Uploaded: 2026-05-06T20:16:27.736Z
Duration: 1 h 12 s
Description: Product Update Briefing - Blackbaud Grantmaking™

Transcript for "Product Update Briefing - Blackbaud Grantmaking™": Hey, everyone, and welcome to the Blackbaud grant making May 2026 product update briefing. Excited to see all of you here today. I'm just going to start things off with a safe harbor statement, and I do have to read out the statement in full. So this presentation contains forward looking statements that involve inherent risks, uncertainties, and assumptions. It outlines Blackbaud's current plans and general product direction as of the date this presentation was created. Functionality described in this presentation that is not currently available is subject to change at any time without notice at Blackbaud's sole discretion. It does not represent a commitment to develop or release specific features within the time frame discussed according to the presented design or at all. Please make any purchase decisions based on features and functionality that are currently available. And before we continue, I'm just going to cover a few quick, webinar housekeeping items. So first of all, the audio for this webinar is being broadcast broadcast through your computer speakers, so please make sure your volume is turned up. If you're experiencing any audio or technical issues, the quickest fix is usually just to refresh your browser. Don't worry about taking notes on the presentation as you'll receive a link, to the full web webinar recording by email after the session. So you can always go back and review anything you may have missed. We love hearing from you during these sessions, so please feel free to use the q and a tab on the right hand side to submit any questions as they come up throughout the presentation. We'll do our best to address them as we go or during a dedicated q and a period, at the end. And lastly, if you need to adjust any of your viewing settings like screen size or audio, you can use the cogwheel icon at the bottom of your screen. Alright. With that out of the way, let's get started. So, for those of you who I may not have met before, my name is Nicole and I'm the product marketing manager for our Blackbaud grant making solution. And I've been with Blackbaud for around four and a half years now, and I'm located in Toronto. We also have a new face for some of you today. So we're joined by Francisco, who is our new product manager for this product. And I'm gonna pass it to Francisco so that he can do a little bit of an introduction for himself. Thanks, Nicole. Yes. Hello, everybody. I see a lot of, familiar names. So good to see all of you. I am new to Blackbaud, five months in, a new product manager for Blackbaud grant making. But while I'm new to Blackbaud, I'm not new to grant making. I actually come from the federal grant making space, so they do, here in The US where I spent fourteen years at the Department of Education. And there, I helped announce, select, and manage large scale teacher development grants. So I love grants. I think they're a great and special tool. And in short in just a short five months, I've come to love this grant making tool. And so it has a lot of potential, and I'm just really excited to share what our future vision is with all of you today. Awesome. Thanks, Francisco. And so let's take a quick look at what we'll be covering today. So we've structured this presentation around three key areas. First, we'll start with our vision and strategy. This is where we'll share our vision and the progress we've been making for Blackbaud grant making. We wanna make sure you understand where we're headed and how that aligns with the challenges and opportunities that you're facing. Next, we'll move into the road map section. This is the deep dive. We'll walk through features that have been recently released, what's coming soon, and what's next up on our development pipeline. This is typically the part of the session where we get the most engagement, so feel free to start thinking of questions. We'll also wrap up with some reminders and resources, some important updates and helpful materials to make sure you're getting the most out of the platform. So with that, let's jump right in. So before we get into the specific road map items, I wanna just briefly ground us in how we're thinking about the future of Blackbaud grant making. At a high level, our direction is focused on helping funders steward resources with confidence by simplifying the end to end grant life cycle, strengthening trust and accountability, entering data into insight. So funding decisions drive greater impact. That direction is guided by four focus areas. First, trust and transparency. We're continuing to invest in the foundation of secure compliant grant making, so decisions are clear, defensible, and easy to stand behind. Second, a seamless journey from application to impact. We're connecting each stage of the grant life cycle to reduce handoffs and manual effort, helping teams move more smoothly from intake through outcomes. Third, clear insights for better funding decisions. By bringing grant and applicant data together, our goal is to make it easier for funders to understand what's working and where to focus next. We're building on a modern platform that evolves with you, so innovation can be adopted pace without compromising trust or control. These themes will guide our road map. And now I'll share how that shows up and what's coming next. So I do wanna draw your attention to an important update regarding the applicant and grantee portal. So most of you should already be familiar with this update as we've first introduced this in June 2024. So here's what's happening. Effective July 29, we'll be decommissioning the legacy applicant portal, also known as IGAM. It will be fully replaced by the new applicant and grantee portal. And after the cutoff date, the new portal would be the only supported system for online applications, portal activity, and application reporting. So what does that mean for you as customers? If you've already transitioned to the new portal, then there's no action needed on your end. However, if you haven't made the switch yet, it's critical that you take action now to avoid any workflow disruption or potential data loss. For the specifics on what's required, please refer to the email that was sent to you on April 29 directly to your solution admins. And if you, for some reason, did not receive that email, please reach out to us so we can get you the correct information. We also do have a knowledge base article on the docs tab that has rehashes the information that was sent to you via email as well. So we do have that resource that will be located in the docs tab in this event. And for applicants and grantees, this means that all grant applications will need to go through the new portal. So once the legacy system is shut down, all existing legacy application links, forms, and accounts will stop working. Any legacy pages, will redirect to an error page and on that page, it will be said that they need to reach out to their administrator to grab the new link for the correct application link. So again, most of you have actually already been using the new portal, so we hope that this isn't new information for the mass vast majority of you. But the deadline is quickly approaching. And you will notice when you log in to your system, there's gonna be a static banner at the top of the page, and it's going to actually have a countdown of how many days that you have left until the deadline so that you're always aware of how long you have with the legacy portal. So I know that transitioning to a new system can feel overwhelming, but the good news is you don't have to do it alone. We're here to help and the Blackbaud team has put together a robust set of resources to support you every step of the way. First, there's the customer success on demand library. This includes worksheets, guides, and webinars that you can access at any time. There's also a detailed transition checklist available under the docs tab, which I highly recommend as a starting point. Second, Blackboard University offers both elearning courses and instructor led training sessions. Whether you prefer self paced learning or more hands on experience, there's an option for you. And do note that these elearning courses are free for all customers regardless of whether you have a learn subscription or not until July 29. Thirdly, we have the knowledge base article as mentioned previously as well as an FAQ section specifically dedicated to questions surrounding the portal. And then finally, we do have the option for professional services engagements. But please do know that limited resources are available. So if you do require any sort of paid engagement with our team, we recommend you submitting, a work item for that as soon as possible to reach the deadline. Okay. So with that, now we're actually gonna get into the road map section. We had a little bit more of an update than we usually have this time around. So to tell the road map story, we're gonna, discuss three different horizons. The first horizon is available now. So these are features and enhancements that have been recently released and are ready for you to use today. We'll also walk through what's new and how it can benefit your workflows. The second horizon is what's coming next. So these are items that are gonna be coming within the next six months. These are enhancements that are actively in development and coming soon. And then finally, you'll get a preview of what to expect in the near term, with the looking ahead section. So this is where we'll share the key themes guiding our longer term direction, the bigger bets, and strategic investments we're making to shape the future of the platform. This This structure is designed to give you a complete picture from what you can leverage right now to what's around the corner to where we're heading long term. So let's start off with what's available now. And I'm going to now pass this off to Francisco to give you a high level snapshot of what's available now. Great. Thank you so much, Nicole. So this slide here gives a high level snapshot of what's available now, as Nicole mentioned, across Blackbaud grant making. And you'll see these improvements naturally cluster into three main areas. The first is, manage grants efficiently. And the list here, you'll see displays a significant amount of recent work that has gone into supporting more complex, real world workflows. And so much of this, I do wanna say, is guided by your feedback, which we always welcome and appreciate. The second is actionable insights. And here, we've improved search and filtering within the workspace and made it easier for reviewers to compare applications side by side. And now these are small changes individually, but, collectively, they save time and reduce cognitive load during consideration and review cycles. And the third, really important, is responsible innovation. And so here, this includes branch level security enforcement, preserving branch assignments through consideration, making sensitive data like Social Security numbers safe and improving consistency across publishing, submission, and reporting workflows. And, internally, this is critical. As grantmakers, you know that these changes directly impact trust, compliance, confidence, and long term platform scalability. And taken together, this work improves day to day usability while also strengthening underlying foundations of the product. Alright. So let's start with what's available now on Blackbaud grant making and the applicant and grantee portal. Over the past several months, we've delivered meaningful improvements across the core grant making experience, and I wanna highlight the key areas where you'll see the most impact. The first is we've made significant improvements to application workflows, and these changes are designed to reduce friction during the review cycle. If you've been managing complex application pipelines, you should notice a smoother, more intuitive experience. Second, we focus on making grant maker workflows faster and more efficient. The goal here is to reduce the manual effort involved in day to day operations and minimize disruption during the consideration process and less time on administrative tasks, as we all know, means more time focusing on impact. And third, we've strengthened our data protection and governance controls. And so we know how critical it is to safeguard sensitive application information, and these enhancements give you more confidence that your data is, in fact, secure and properly managed. And finally, we've invested heavily in stability and reliability across the submission, publishing, and reporting experiences. These are foundational improvements. They ensure your teams can move forward with confidence while laying out a stronger base for the innovation that's still to come. And and in short, in my time here, this has been about usability, reliability, and trust, all things I love, and we're making sure the platform works the way you need it to every day. Right? I wanna talk about a little bit about the Blackbaud verified network here for some of our users, which continues to be an important foundation for data integrity. But we've also heard some situations where rigidity was causing a bit of friction, both for applicants and administrators. And so with this particular update, administrators now have the option to request organization information directly from applicants. This added flexibility helps accommodate organizations such as churches, international nonprofits, or smaller community groups. From internal perspective, this is a big one because it reduces mismatches, prevents bad data from being introduced during intake, and cuts down on support cases related to organization resolution. It also makes the platform more inclusive and practical for customers operating in diverse funding ecosystems. And so the way we see it here is the key takeaway is balance. While we're maintaining strong data standards while giving customers the flexibility they need to run the real world programs effectively. Right. And duplicate management is one of those areas where small usability gaps can create serious downstream issues. So this enhancement is actually, I think, a really important one too. Grantmakers now viewing incoming applicant data side by side with existing organization and contact records and choose exactly which fields they wanna update. This eliminates the risk of silent overwrites, which has been a long standing concern for admins managing large or historical datasets. We've also expanded the ability to search for correct organization or contact when an exact match isn't found, using multiple filters like tax ID, state, and postal code gives teams far more control during consideration, which is a really, really, really critical part of grant making as we all know. And so, again, internally, this is about trust and confidence. Admins can now move forward knowing that they're preserving data integrity and support teams see fewer escalations caused by accidental data loss or mismatches. Workspace improvements are all about scale and visibility as well. And so as customers' portfolios grow, teams need better tools to manage volume without relying on exports or offline tracking. The workspace now supports searching and filtering by program name and last name submitted form, which significantly improves how admins triage work and prioritize review. We've also added additional columns for application and requirement data, including branch ID, program, and form names to see so teams can see the right context really at a glance. And so these changes may seem incremental, but they fundamentally improve day to day efficiency and help teams manage larger workloads without adding complexity because we're giving you what you need to see when you need to see it. Alright. And this is an interesting one because, again, it's small but very, very helpful. This enhancement addresses the common and frustrating workflow blockers we've heard about. And so previously, when an application or requirement exceeded character limits, grantmakers had no choice but to send it back to the applicant that created, of course, delays, confusion, additional back and forth. Now grantmakers can truncate offending fields directly from the error grid and proceed with consideration. Importantly, their original submitted values will remain accessible in their historical tab, so no information is actually lost. And this functionality applies to both applications and requirements, which means fewer interruptions during review cycles and less friction for applicants. Internally, this also means shorter resolution times for us and fewer support touch points tied to submission errors, so it's a win both ways. Alright. And now, we're gonna switch gears and talk about what's coming next. So back to you, Nicole. Awesome. Thanks, Francisco. So what's coming next? Yes. So lots of exciting upcoming functionality. And as you can see, I have a new legend item here. So everywhere you see this little sparkle icon, that means we're this is an AI powered piece of functionality. So really excited that we're gonna be incorporating a lot more AI into the product, to improve efficiency in Blackbaud or anything. So, and they're coming next. We're gonna be talking about the integration between BlackRock Grantmaking and Financial Edge NXT. For those of you who may not know what, Financial Edge NXT is, this is our accounting solution that is specifically built for nonprofit organizations. We also will be covering reviewer portal enhancements as well as progress reports at a glance. And then under looking ahead, we will be covering grant planning packages, as well as impact intelligence. So let's talk about the block by grant making and financial edge NXT integration first. So this is something that we hear about constantly from customers where having a single source of truth for your grant financials is super super important. And also today, many organizations are managing grant budgets in one system, tracking disbursements in another, and then trying to reconcile all of those numbers manually, oftentimes in spreadsheets. So there's a lot of opportunity here to kind of speed up these process that you all are already doing. You know, that process, it creates delays, introduces errors. It can make it difficult for, finance teams and program teams to stay aligned. So with this integration, what we're really aiming for is for the budget disperse and remaining amounts to be all visible in one place. So that you'll no longer need to toggle between separate systems, rekey data from one platform into another. And so everything would flow through automatically, when a payment is posted in financial and IGENXT. The grant record in Blackbaud grant making would reflect, in real time what is going on in your accounting solution. So what that means, in practice is less manual entry and fewer errors, and your team will spend less time on administrative reconciliation work and more time focused on the outcomes that matter, which is I'm sure why ultimately you all got into grant making in the first place. So the bottom line here that the integration will remove this friction between grant management and finance, and both teams will be able to work together from the same numbers, which will help build trust internally and help you make faster, more confident decisions about your grant making programs. And another second key benefit of this integration is the real time payment visibility. So this is something we know has been a pain point for a lot of organizations. Not having a clear up to date picture on where payment stand at any given moment. So with the integration, you can see exactly what's been paid, what's pending, and what's coming up next, all without leaving that grant record. So there's no need to chase down payment status in a separate financial system. Email your finance team for updates or cross reference spreadsheets to figure out if a disbursement has actually gone out. So this is particularly valuable when it comes to cash flow planning. So having those clear payment timelines means you can forecast more accurately, allocate funds with greater confidence, and avoid situations where you might be caught off guard, by unexpected payment gaps or overlapping commitments. It also helps you set better expectations with your grantees. So when someone asks, something like, what is my next payment coming? You can answer that question immediately and confidently, and have all of those numbers in front of you. So basically, in short, everyone will be looking at the same data in real time and you'll be able to make better decisions because of it. And before we wrap up this section, I do wanna make sure everyone's aware of an exciting opportunity. So we are launching what we call an early adopter program for the upcoming enhancements to, for this integration and we would love for you to be part of it. So this is an exclusive opportunity where you'll be able to get hands on with the new features before they're generally available to the rest of our customer base. So you'll be among the first to experience the improvements, and more importantly, your feedback will directly shape, what this final product looks like. So we take early doctor input very seriously. It's one of the most impactful ways, that we use to refine our solutions before our broader release. So if you're interested, in signing up, you can head over to the docs tab and there will be a link, for you to sign up for the early adopter program there. And, yeah, we really appreciate your willingness to engage with us, and it really helps the entire Blackbaud community benefit from a more polished user testing experience. So please do take a moment to register, and we'd love to have you involved. And then moving on to the granting progress reports at a glance. So this slide really highlights how our platform, will give you clear real time visibility into grantee progress reports. So one of the most common challenges we hear from grant managers is that it's difficult tracking where things stand across multiple grantees. So reports might get buried, in various places like email threads, shared drives, disconnected spreadsheets and whatnot. So becomes nearly impossible to get a reliable snapshot of the overall progress. So as you can see on the screen, you'll be able to instantly view what has been submitted, what has been approved, and what's coming up next all in one centralized dashboard. So there's no need to chase down individual grantees or manually cross reference documents, so everything will be organized and accessible in one place. And the system will also have built an awareness of upcoming deadlines and reports that are due soon. So this means that your team will receive proactive notifications in advance so that there are no missed deadlines and no more last minute scrambles to pull together documentation. So these capabilities will allow your organization to manage grants more efficiently, reduce administrative overhead, and ensure compliance with reporting obligations. And then I'm gonna pass it back to you, Francisco, to cover the review portal enhancements. Awesome. Thank you, Nicole. So yeah. So this one is exciting. We're looking, at we wanna share with you what we're thinking, how we're thinking of a revamp to review report on. So it's gonna be designed to make your evaluation process faster and more consistent. So we know that building rubrics, coordinating reviews, reconciling scores, all of that takes a lot of time. So this reviewer portal streamlines all of that. It gives your team the tools to accelerate evaluations at scale without sacrificing the quality we love. You'll also see more consistent scoring and rationale across your review panels and smoother collaboration whether reviewers are internal staff, you know, such as, board members or external partners. Importantly, AI supports the consistency and efficiency and efficiency here, but your grantees remain fully in control of the criteria and, ultimately, the final decisions. Awesome. And then I am just going to tee up a video a demo video of the review portal just so you guys can get a little bit more of a sense of what will be included in these enhancements. So managing dozens of grant applications should not mean drowning in spreadsheets. The reviewer portal, as we've reimagined it, gives you everything you need to evaluate, track, and fund the right grants all in one place. So let's take a quick look. So here we land on the review and select dashboard. At a glance, you can see eight applications under review, five already selected, and 10 not selected. No digging around. Your pipeline status is front and center. From here, every tool you need is just one click away. So if you click under review, you immediately see what matters. Eight active applications, 67% of reviews complete, an average score of 3.8, and twenty five days average in review. You scroll down, and each application card shows you requested funding, submission date, reviewer progress, current score, and time in review, all without opening a single file. The selected for funding view shows your five approved grants, 500 ks committed, and a 4.5 average score, plus the exact approval status of each award, whether fully approved or pending board sign off. And so because not every decision is a yes, the not selected view shows you why. Each declined application includes a plain language reason like budget concerns or limited organizational capacity, so your team stays aligned and your decisions are defensible. You head to the reviewer pool, and you have 24 reviewers at your fingertips in this situation, sortable by expertise, experience, availability, and scoring history. If you need someone for, for example, a health and wellness grant right now, you can see it in seconds who's available and who's busy. And so here, the application scores view ranks every application by average score with a visual score distribution so you know exactly how your pool is stacking up. 12 applications above the four point o threshold, four below, no guesswork on where to focus. Reviewer forms here keeps all your evaluation templates organized and versioned. Your general form has been used in a 156 reviews alone. And with scoring criteria and rubrics, you can generate a tailored weighted rubric for any grant category using AI in seconds. Or if you'd like, you can build your own from scratch. So, essentially, we're looking at less time managing process, more time funding impact, and that's the reviewer portal built for grantmakers who need clarity, speed, and confidence at every step. Okay. So hope you all enjoyed that little bit of a deep dive video, and seem to be curious to hear if anyone has feedback on that. If you do, feel free to, pop something in the q and a if you have any questions on that functionality. So I'm just going to take a little bit a little bit of a break here to make sure you're all aware that we are we do have BBCon, which is our annual customer conference. And that is coming up in Columbus, Ohio from September 29 to October 1. And if you are interested in attending, it's always a great time. I'll be there. Francisco will be there. A bunch of other members of the grant making team will be there. So we're really excited to see all of you who will be joining us there. And we will have grant making specific breakout sessions there as well. And if you do wanna sign up, we do have early bird pricing right now. So you can save a substantial amount of money. If you know that you're gonna go, feel free to register. You can do so at, bbconference.com. So don't forget about that. And we will be moving forward to the looking ahead section now. So these are, further road map items that will be delivered, six months or longer into the future. And I'm gonna pass it back to Francisco to talk about Impact Intelligence. Awesome. Thank you, Nicole. And so Impact Intelligence here, the idea is that it represents a meaningful evolution of in how we help customers think about outcomes, right, not just activity. And the question of whether or not a grant is fulfilling its mission is a hard one, but it's a good question. And so at its core here, Impact Intelligence turns approved grantee reports into real real time AI generated insights. And so this allows you to understand progress, prove outcomes, and tell your impact story without adding, reported, reporting overhead. This capability bridges a long standing gap between grant operations and executive storytelling. It connects work teams it connects the work teams are already doing to the insights leadership cares about. And so, again, the emphasis here is effortless. So it does insight without manual analysis and intelligence without adding burden. Alright. So this view focuses on executive ready impact metrics that can, for example, be consumed quickly and confidently. Impact Intelligence pulls together data across programs into a single dashboard, allowing leaders to see progress holistically rather than, like, program by program. And integrated percentage based trend tracking makes it easy to understand how outcomes are changing over time, not just for things done today. Okay? And this view makes it easy to understand, where, funding whether funding is reaching the populations and the regions that matter most. Oops. Sorry about that. Skipped ahead. And Impact Intelligence also highlights top performing programs alongside those that may need attention or adjustment. The key thing here is that we want everyone to to realize and to understand that this is gonna be, something that you build. The dashboard's gonna be unique to what you need and, the reporting can be customized. And so, this should generate insight that you may not have thought about before, but, you know, insights that will be helpful as you make decisions not just on current funding but also future funding. Awesome. And so yeah. That leads us to the end of the presentation. I just wanted to thank everyone again for joining us today. I'm super excited about the future functionality that Francisco just covered. I'm really excited that we, you know, have a product manager who has experience in the grants management space. So lots of exciting things coming to the product, this year. And, again, feel free to, let us know if you have feedback on the presentation or the road map. And then if you have any questions, our team is gonna stay on in the background just to make sure that all of these questions are being answered. If you, for some reason, don't have your question answered, we'll make sure that we get the appropriate answer to you individually. But again, we do have a team working in the background to try to answer as many questions as we can, with with the knowledge that we all currently have. So, thanks again for joining the presentation and hope everyone enjoys the rest of your day. Thanks all. Thank you all.