Name: Blackbaud Development Agent: Live Walkthrough
Uploaded: 2026-05-13T18:16:43.822Z
Duration: 37 min 32 s
Description: Blackbaud Development Agent: Live Walkthrough

Transcript for "Blackbaud Development Agent: Live Walkthrough": Welcome. Good afternoon. Good morning, wherever you're coming in from. Hopefully, you're here for the agents for good. Black by Development agent live walk through. We will get started here in just a second with some housekeeping, but you can go ahead and put in the chat. We'd love to know who you are, where you're coming in from, who you work with, any of those lovely things. I have Scott here. We'll do an intro in just a minute. We're excited to have you today. Just some housekeeping items. Hopefully, you are hearing me. The webinar audio will be broadcasted through your computer speakers. If you need captions, you can hover over the stage and click the CC, closed caption button on the bottom of the screen to turn your captions on and off. If you suddenly have any audio or technical issues or my slides freeze, usually, you can just refresh your browser. It'll come right back on. Worst case scenario, you leave and log in again. And if you miss something, not to worry. I know there's always the concern, yes, you will get a recording of this entire webinar. It will be sent tomorrow. Takes a little time to get all the transcripts and things together, and we'll send that out tomorrow. During the presentation, we would love to hear your questions. There's a q and a button up in your upper right. You can submit any questions you have for us. We also have some folks kind of in the backstage, as it were, that'll help answer them, while we are presenting. Please feel free to be specific. The more details you give us, the better we can address your questions. Next to q and a, you'll also see docs. There are tons of resources in there. Several links about all kinds of topics, whether it's respond blackbuds responsible AI or you just wanna see the agents for good development agent web page. It's there. Also in there is a link that if in the middle of this discussion, you're like, you know what? I would love to just see more. I'd love to kinda talk through this with someone. There is a specific link that says book a meeting with Daniel. Then you can pick a time that works really well for you with Daniel, who is fantastic, and we'll be happy to chat with you and, work through some of your questions and get you set up with one of our agents experts. You can also adjust any of your settings with the cogwheel at the bottom of your event space. And, finally, you can use the tabs at the top to see our agenda, meet us, things like that. Alright. That's enough of that. So agents forget Blackbaud development agent. We are going to do, a live walk through for you, tell you a little bit about the agent upfront, and then Scott will do a demo. As you come in today, we would love to know what's your biggest challenge right now, and I think Roy has the ability to send up a poll for us, hopefully. There we go. What's your biggest fundraising challenge that you have right now? We hear a lot of these. So sometimes you have more than one. You're gonna it's gonna be hard to pick one. Not enough hours in the day is my favorite, personally. I never have enough hours in the day, though perhaps that's also my team is under theft. Could be any of these. Thank you. Thank you. All good. We're getting I didn't see how many folks are on. We're getting some really good results here. While we are finishing this up, rare, handy dandy, back of the house person. There you go. I was like, keep it up. I'm happy to share about myself without it. But, for those of you who haven't been on our any of our walk throughs before or weren't on our public couple weeks, then I feel like I've been talking, talking, talking. But I'm Amelia Helm. I'm the product marketing manager on the Agents for Good team. I am in today, lovely Minneapolis, Minnesota. And something, I share with Scott is that we both really love live music, so we bond over these things. Scott, you wanna give us a little short intro? Yes. Hello, everyone. I'm Scott Paris, senior principal solution architect. Yes. I loved live music. I'm based in Denver, Colorado. I see a lot of concerts at Red Rocks, but also I am passionate about training service dogs. So I work with, canine companions and, tomorrow, the dog that we've been training for sixteen months, will be turned into Canine Companions and become a future service dog. So little bit heartbroken at the moment, but excited to talk about, the development agent with you. Back to you, Amelia. That's so sweet. I did not know that. Learn something new every time. So I'm gonna share a little bit about agents for good overall, and then we'll dig right into the development agent. Oh, there we go. Agents for good. It's the next wave of AI innovation. So beyond ChatGPT and Copilot or insights, agents aren't bots or automations. Like, you might think of a marketing automation that sends tons of the same email to a bunch of folks. These are really digital team members that are powered by AI. So agents work within your system alongside you, or at least our perspective is that they should. You can think of them as AI powered colleagues who show up every day and help your organization do more, move faster, move more intentionally, designed to augment your staff. So we all saw on our poll. Everyone's team is very thin. We could use more people and more, maybe, agents activating to reach the goals that we have. We've already set these goals, so we need more capacity. We know that in the social impact space, human relationships drive outcomes, and it's really the core part of why so many of you serve the missions you do. And as we can see, we know that resource constraints mean important work just gets delayed or dropped, and this is innovation effort. Innovation effort is all about giving your team the capacity you need so that you can focus on the mission and the human side of your work. So our first development agent is, the development agent, and I would love to share a video with you. Imagine connecting with more people who care about your mission personally. Meet Blackbaud Development Agent, your new agentic AI fundraising teammate. How can you reach thousands of supporters without burning out your fundraisers? Working securely inside your system, the development agent identifies donor prospects and communicates one on one at scale, expanding your team's capacity so your fundraisers can focus on high impact human to human moments and major asks. Getting started is simple. Share your mission and brand voice. Choose how you want your agent to engage and fine tune their first messages before ramping up their portfolio, just like a human fundraiser. Every discussion and donation is captured securely in your system of record without bouncing between tools, keeping data highly secure and up to date. And your agent even knows when to hand off the discussion to you for human manager support. Blackbaud Development Agent helps you do more with less while engagement stays personal. Request a demo today. Thank you. So just as a quick recap, that's our first, agent for good. It's the development agent. The agent works right inside today, our NXT. Soon, it will come to CRM, with any package that you have today to expand your capacity. The development agent was built to help you reach often neglected, maybe, lapsed donors or mid tier donors, and lots of folks are using them to reach all kinds of groups. Maybe it's alumni or folks who used to volunteer with you. They learned your organization and your brand, and the agent has the ability and skill to prioritize and individualize every donor communication across email and text messages, logging their actions along the way meticulously. And then, as you saw, when something really needs a human, they don't escalate. Just like I might flag something for my manager that's out of my depth or maybe there's a big ask to be made, That's what the agent does, and it's really easy. You're not coding. You're not importing. The agent can show up, and it gets to work. Really, within two weeks, we have you up and running, and it works right within your CRM. So what can you expect to achieve with development agent? You will engage more donors, really one to one. It's a conversational interaction, not with mass email blast or cookie cutter mailers that show up. You'll increase your team capacity for more strategic tasks and more relationship building, and you'll support your donor pyramid. So reinvigorating those lapsed donors, building a strong pipeline for the future of major giving. Now let's take a look at it, and I will hand it over to Scott who will expertly lead us through that demo. Me. Give me one second here and share my screen. Wonderful. Thank you, Amelia. So wanna show you how the development agent is embedded within Blackbaud CRM. So as we start off and think about how you, navigate through Razer's Edge NXT today. One of the important things to note is the development agent just works alongside your fundraising staff. So the development agent is actually a fundraiser in the system. So you'll see here, I'm showing my fundraiser list. Development agent is assigned to, potential prospects, and communicates with the prospects. But the embedded nature of how the development agent works alongside your fundraisers allows any of your prospect reporting or major gift reporting or prospect management reporting, you can report on the development agent itself. When we think about the development agent and how it's embedded within RE NXT, I'm just gonna go to the portfolio and show you the development agent console. The development agent console, within Razer's Edge NXT is your one one stop shop for configuration, escalations, viewing all communications that the agent has planned. So when we think of configuring and setting up the agent so it communicates in your voice, your brand voice, One of the first things that you do is give the agent a name. So you'll see here, we've named the development agent Evan. This is for Foggy Valley Animal Rescue, today, so everything's gonna be in the context of an animal rescue. So once you name the agent, you, bring in your organization name, then you add the brand voice. So this is how you configure and build up the agent's brain and knowledge base to communicate with potential prospects. So when we look here, we'll see a variety of impact statements, maybe annual reports, maybe letters from the executive director. You can upload your brand voice. That really becomes how the agent communicates, and chooses what language it chooses, to communicate at. So you upload, the agent. You start to go through the process of onboarding the agent. You can do manual assignments to prospects, over time, so you'll see this onboarding process here. And, typically, we suggest the first couple weeks, do manual assignments. Maybe the agent communicates with staff members, board members, potential people who are very involved, maybe volunteers within the organization. And then over time, the agent will, begin to manually assign, this information, and choose to communicate with unassigned fundraisers based on bid major, gifts, ability to give, within a targeted gift range, and the agent over time is going to start to, do assignments and communications, with those untapped prospects as well. So let me fast forward and just show you a few options here. As we see within Razer's Edge NXT, you'll see a communications history here. So we've given the agent a name. We have, supplied the agent with specific communication pass and brand that the agent will, autonomously communicate. You'll see here, you have the ability to review any up to upcoming communications. So you have seven days to review upcoming communications that are happening. So we'll see examples here. Maybe Julie, we'll see a specific engagement where Devin introduces himself as the very first AI team member powered by Blackbaud AI, and really starts to introduce the organization. So before this goes out, you have the ability to do thumbs up, thumbs down, even regenerate the email, so the agent, again, learns based on your feedback or future communications. So you have the ability the agent will communicate via email as well as SMS. Soon this year, we're also going to be introducing a conversational avatar that will also be, sharing and having bidirectional conversations, with these particular prospects. Let me fast forward and just show you an example of a communication path that the agent does. So I'm gonna move to the complete and canceled area. I'm gonna look up my record where we can see a history of communication that has happened with me. So from here, you'll see Devon introduced himself, talked, really wrote an engaging email to ask specific questions to the prospect. What may motivates you most to give? How do you feel about the programs and services we complete we currently offer? And then you'll see Devin's transparent here of, being powered by Blackbaud AI. You have a few options options here for how you would want Devon to introduce himself and be transparent. But then I wrote back, what is Foggy Valley's greatest need at the moment? And the agent within minutes writes writes back based on the information you've uploaded, what programs and services you're currently targeting for funding. So developing adoption programs and behavioral recovery initiatives, supporting research that advances animal welfare practices. And then I write back, how do I donate? Devon then writes back with a link to the donation page. And that then can be, the donation page. This could be a Blackbaud donation page, and and we're showing a Blackbaud online giving form. So you could even have personalized dollar handles here, that is specific to, that particular prospect. Totally integrated. So once the donation comes back into razor's edge NXT, you're then seeing the development agent, receive credit for that specific donation as well. I'm gonna switch back to this tab, But there are times where it doesn't go this smooth, and a prospect may ask specific questions that the agent can't answer. So something like, Devin, what events does Foggy Valley have coming up? This then becomes part of the escalation path where we're keeping humans in the loop. So if I go back to the development agent management console, you're going to see this needs attention area. This is where escalations will happen. So the agent stops communicating with prospects. And then within this area, you're going to see escalations. So these are specific things that the development agent can't answer. So it may be something like what options are available for plan giving, what events do you have coming up. You have a variety of ways in which you can handle these escalations. So you come in here. You can see provide missing information. So I could actually train the agent to do a response, based on specific content that I share or maybe a link as well. So if I did this, the agent's gonna communicate back, and the agent is going to be able to answer future questions as well around that. But, certainly, there are times where you want a human to intervene. You can also assign it to a person. So this would stop, inter the agent will stop, the interactions and engagements. It then becomes a notification to the particular user in our end, for them to take over in their work center as an action, and then it becomes human intervention for it as well. So we kept this in mind as we develop, the development agent that humans can work alongside Devon, and communicate as well when there are specific questions, that can be done. Last piece that I wanna show you, is really when we think of, the embedded nature of the solution. So when we think of particular constituents, I'm gonna bring up my record here again and show you examples of other engagements. So you'll see here SMS texting is also supported in the solution. Historically, SMS texting with Razer's Edge NXT has been done by a partner. So excited to introduce this functionality where the agent can communicate via SMS texting. This is currently for The US only, but we're looking into international options, in the future for this as well. But you'll see a similar conversation here with Devon via SMS texting, that can be done once I opt in. All of the opt ins and opt outs are tracked in the consent piece, within a constituent record as well. So the last piece I really like to show customers is the embedded nature of the solution. So we're gonna go to my constituent record. And from here, you're going to see my actions. So over time, you will see in real time as the agent is communicating an action back on my record. So all of that back and forth I did with Devon, you'll see an AI generated summary of the communication. And, also, it's going to be updating this action in real time, so it's not 17 actions on a specific record. It's doing one action for the engagement, and you're seeing a summary for that. So left hand of the organization knows what the right hand is doing, with Devon's communications as well. So that's a brief overview of the development agent in action. I think we're gonna talk a little bit about the road map, so I'll stop sharing, and we'll go back to, the presentation. Hello? And, Ray, I think you were gonna drop a poll here, but we'd love to hear from you more that, what additional pieces can you talk about? So you'll see here, I'd like to talk about what else can we offer for you. So getting a personalized demonstration, sharing more about the development agent with my leaders, understanding the organization's potential results with the development agent, or even AI preparedness for my organization. As we've been Yeah. showing this to customers, we have a variety of conversations with customers. So I'd love your feedback about this. Amelia? Now I was gonna say we'll talk about the road map here in a second. I know some of the questions we're fiercely answering on the backside about what's coming, and then we'll get into questions. While folks are answering the poll, I do wanna say we have a couple here in the chats and, things about, like, what the responses have been. And we'll that's a good call out for the next time we should fold in some of those, stats we have about different generations. But one we always get this question. How do people feel about an agent reaching out to them? And I had that question too. But, honestly, it hasn't played out. I think a lot of folks have a little bit of, like, a negative response to it when they ask the question, but that's not how it's played out. Folks really love the responsiveness. We're seeing older, especially retired folks, love when they're available. Someone can answer them right back. Right? I don't know if you've ever emailed, a nonprofit maybe you volunteer for. Sometimes it takes weeks to get someone to answer your email. Right? Someone's available right that minute. The agent can answer a lot of those questions really quickly about the program they're, you know, they're being asked about, whatever it might be. Younger folks are more sometimes really already comfortable working back and forth with a Claude or a chatty BT, to think through things. So we haven't the unsubscribe is really low. We've actually seen a lot of positivity around there. So happy to talk more with you about that, but it's just a a hot topic I see popping up. I wanna make sure, that we answer that one. Scott, do you wanna talk us through the next what's kind of coming up? And then if there's any other hot topics, we'll we'll hit on them. Yeah. So, so the development agent became available in March, but we've also been working with customers in an early adopter program to really get feedback as the technology emerges and the development agent continues to grow. So you'll see here on the first column here, you have the ability for the agent to communicate, with unlimited portfolio assignments. Some of the other vendors out there that do Agentec development solutions cap, portfolio assignments at a thousand. You can have unlimited portfolio assignments with the development agent. We've also released SMS as I showed, also the way the agent assigns for mid level giving. You have the ability to filter who exactly, what range you want to use for the development agent to assign. So those are, features that we've released, in the last couple of months. When we think of what's to come this summer, we're building a bunch of dashboards that are going to be showing performance of the agent, how the agent responds, even some data mining components of it where we can see specific topics that the agent is, focused on, but also the agent's performance, not just dollars raised, how quickly the agent is responding, escalations, opt outs, a variety of dashboards for you to see. We're also building goal driven engagement. Goal driven engagement allows you to create personalized goals for the agent to execute on in addition to, just general cultivation, solicitation stewardship. So, I could do specific goals of, hey, Devon, I'd like you to work on a cultivation plan and communication plan for all recent gala event attendees. So you can do further engagement by the agent working on specific communication paths for that. And then further in advance, we'll be working on international messaging, multilingual constituent engagement. If a prospect responds in French or Spanish, the agent will respond in that specific language. And then the, agent avatar will be a bidirectional conversation that you can have with an avatar, as well. So really exciting, road map that we're looking at for the months ahead, for all these features for the development agent. As a long time Blackbaud employee, this is year '21 at Blackbaud. We're moving so fast, with the agent doing very specific things. So, excited to see the rapid pace of innovation that we're doing around the development agent. Amelia, I and I know we've got people backstage. I think we're gonna transition to questions. Any any recurring questions that I could answer? Yeah. I think I touched on how people feel about the the agent and the research going into it. I did get to share with someone. We do have, and I'll share in just a second, some AI thought leadership webinars once a month. One of them will be with our head UX researcher, Maureen Curry. She literally has a PhD in tech adoption. Lots and lots of work has gone into and continues to go into how we have developed this agent and other agents we're working on, and I can't wait for her to show them because she is brilliant. And, also, it's just really interesting if you're interested in this in this landscape. I think, I think we'll reiterate. Scott, can you just refresh us on who where is the agent available? Like, if I only have r n x t, the lowest package we haven't updated in a hundred years or five month CRM, where is this available today, and how's. that? So it is available for US customers that are razor's edge NXT customers today. It is an additional cost, from your RE NXT subscription. We are looking to do, early adopter program for RE NXT customers in Canada starting in September, and then soon to come, Pacific Asia, as well as Europe, for later this year for Razer's Edge NXT customers. For Blackbaud CRM customers, we will be building the agent, the development agent for Blackbaud CRM customers. We're looking to kick off a early adopter program this fall, for the agent for Blackbaud CRM. And then by the end of this year, we'll have availability for all Blackbaud CRM customers that are hosted in Blackbaud cloud operations. Fantastic. I think the only other one I'll hit on here is there's some question on, oh, I love that it sends text messages. What's the cap on that? How does that work? You get one you get one development agent, at least today, one development agent. You can assign it thousands of prospects, truly at scale, thousands of prospects. It will email and text at scale as it needs to. So if someone says, I wanna text back and forth with this agent for a while. Great. It's not like you don't pay the 10¢. If you're old enough like me to think about text messages costing 10¢, they do not. We we want it to scale. That's the whole point of Agenctic AI. It's the whole point of the value of AI. Yeah. It's all it's all baked baked into the subscription cost. So, ability to do unlimited email, unlimited text, and real time integration back to the database. I don't think see, it will give a little bit more time for folks who still have questions outstanding. I know we're still typing in the background. I will just give my plug here, for that agents for good AI impact webinar series I was mentioning earlier, where we'll have Lorraine join us. We have one a month. Internal blackboard folks, external folks. Some of it our first one, I think, was just about change management. Right? How do you manage change? How do your team think about adding an agent alongside them as fundraisers? What expertise are you bringing to the table as an agent manager, that the agent needs, right, that your team might need, and how does that differ? Those kind of topics are what we discussed there. We don't do demo. We don't dig into, like, the technical aspects. This is really about as the as the world we're living in has changed, what are the topics that have come to mind? And we hope you'll join us for some of those because I think they're they're really interesting. That is all we have for you today. Scott, thank you for joining me today. Thank you, Amelia. Thank you all. Thank you all. If you have questions on the back end, we will continue to answer them. If you don't close out, we'll keep chatting here for the next couple minutes, before I fully end the session, so that you can get answers if you need them. And then if you don't, we will follow-up with you. Looking forward to having more one on one discussions. Thank you.