Name: Product Update Briefing - Blackbaud Award Management™ & Blackbaud Stewardship Management™
Uploaded: 2026-05-06T16:31:41.131Z
Duration: 1 h 4 min 52 s
Description: Product Update Briefing - Blackbaud Award Management™ & Blackbaud Stewardship Management™

Transcript for "Product Update Briefing - Blackbaud Award Management™ & Blackbaud Stewardship Management™": Hello, everyone, and welcome to Blackbaud Award and Stewardship Management's product update briefing. We are so glad that you're here, and we cannot wait to share details with you about what's happening in our world and all the exciting things that are coming up soon for you. So I wanted to just start off today's session with leading, with just a quick reminder about our presentation. Certainly, it contains forward looking statements and some of the product capabilities that we'll talk about today are not yet ready. So our future plans are subject to change, and we expect there to be changes on the road map plan based on normal product development cycles, and iterative trade offs that have to happen to accomplish delivery of market facing needs, customer feedback, and certainly in response to unforeseen events. So we encourage you to make make purchasing decisions, based on currently available functionality. If you have questions about award management and stewardship management, we encourage you to see the docs tab in your engagement panel that's on the right side of your screen if you would like some additional information on Blackbaud award and stewardship management. So this is the session for our awarding solution. If you are, here expecting something different, we totally understand, and it's okay to exit if you need to. But we will be talking about all things awarding and supporting, customers in higher education and our private foundations as well. So before we get really into the thick of things, I wanted to share just some quick housekeeping items with you, just to cover just a few updates. The webinar audio will be broadcasted, of course, through your computer screen, so hopefully you can all hear me. If you need captions, activated, you can hover over and click the CC button that you see on the bottom of your screen to turn captions on and off. If you encounter any technical or audio challenges like the slides freezing or, anything like that, usually a quick refresh of your browser does the trick. But if the worst case scenario, exit the platform and try logging right back in and issues typically resolve, itself from there. But if not, we have a team on standby to help you. If you have questions, just drop those in the q and a. We we've got a full team on standby just to help support you. But the q and a widget, you'll see on the top right of your engagement panel that's on the right side of your screen there. So, when submitting questions, just a reminder, please be as specific as possible about what it is that you need information on. So the more details and specifics that you can provide, the better we can be to address your questions specifically and directly. So, next to the q and a, you'll see the docs tab that I mentioned. That's got a ton of resources for you that you'll be able to access. You can download, the information that you need, share that with your teams. And, certainly, if you need a copy of this webinar, this is recorded. It will be sent to you within twenty four hours after the events ends, and then, certainly, the session will be interactive. And so we'll have some polls that will activate throughout the session, and so you'll see that pop up on your screen. You can answer within the same platform. You don't have to leave to go do a different page or anything like that, but we'll be able to support you and get your feedback via the polls that you'll see pop up. And so you can adjust your settings anytime using the cogwheel at the bottom of your event space to customize the panel just how you would like to see it. And finally, you can use the tabs on the top of the event space to meet your speakers if you, need any of that. But we certainly are going to be powering through, some good information today to help support you, and we're gonna be covering, of course, Blackbaud updates. We're gonna be talking about some new things that are coming to you and for you, to support your Blackbaud experience, and then we'll cover, of course, the what why you came here, the product vision and road map. So what's coming what's available now, what's coming soon, and certainly what's coming, in the future as well. And we'll also share some resources with you to help support your journey beyond, the webinar as well. But so many of you, I just took a look on to see who's on our webinar. I know so many of you. We're so glad to see you back again. But if I have not had, the opportunity to meet you, I'm Kristen Grissom. I am the product marketing manager for award leadership management, Yes. and I have over fifteen years of experience in EdTech and supporting scholarships. I manage scholarships as well. So you all are very near and dear to my heart. I know the pains and the struggles that you experience, but very glad, that you're here. Just a quick fun fact about me as well. I have two kids. They keep me on my toes, but I have recently gotten really engaged in Mahjong. So not only am I fan of our product that we lovingly call BAM, I'm also very a big fan of BAMs in Mahjong as well. But I do want to have an opportunity to introduce you to our product manager, Erin, Wachols. everyone. Thank you, Kristen. My name is Aaron Wachholz, and I am the senior product manager for award and stewardship management here at Blackbaud. Been around the education space for a number of years. Most of that time has been in the k 12 space. I came on to, the award and stewardship product last summer, and, this is my first foray into the higher ed space. So almost approaching a year here pretty quickly and, learned a lot, continuing to learn a lot every day. I'm very, very happy to be here. I live in Northern Illinois, and would do anything that gets me outside. So, that's a little bit about me, and, we can go on from there, Kristen. Awesome. Okay. So we're going to be sharing just a quick update, surrounding some key resources and things that you'll need. Again, access to this is in your doc section. We have released, a Blackbaud our Blackbaud trust center. So this is a self-service portal. This is new for our customers. So if you really need details about our security posture or access to key compliance documentation, security details, anything like that, and information about AI and our policies there, this is your hub and resource for all of those things. So you can access the trust center at this link. Again, I've also got it linked in the doc section for you as well so you can see or get those audit reports, our SOC two, your compliance pieces. You can get security white papers, FAQs. You can get, program updates, but certainly one big thing that I know that you're questioning is about about our VPAT. And so Erin will share details about where we are with our accessibility and stand where our stance, there. But if you do need to get a copy of the most recent VPAT that we've got, you can do that, in the Blackhawk Trust Center as well. And so we know you're hearing a lot about AI, and so we also wanna just make sure that you're getting the access to the resources that you need and that's most important to you. But in terms of your Blackbaud solution, solutions, most of you are more more than one Blackbaud solution. And so we wanted to just remind you that your organization controls, generative AI use in your Blackbaud solutions. The global admin portal, is your hub for really how you control that. And so you get the opportunity to control, at every stage of AI adoption what's important to you and so and how you want your institution or your foundation to leverage AI or not. And so this is really important to us because we want to make sure that you understand you're opted out of AI until you're ready to use it and until you're ready to activate that for you and your teams as well. So at the highest level, Generative AI is governed through our global opt in setting on the global admin portal. So the setting is managed by an organizational admin, and it determines whether whether Generative AI features, both current and future, are enabled or disabled across your organization. So just remember, this is the default state for it to be opted out. So for most customers, generative AI features are really disabled until by default until your organization activates those, before and certainly, unless it was before activated before 01/07/2026. And so, this opt in model supports our stance on ethical AI management. It reflects our commitment to transparency, autonomy, and certainly responsible use of AI. So you have full control and clarity over how AI is deployed in your environment, and it's flexible. So you can activate that or deactivate that at any given point, for your institution. And so I also wanted to share just some additional quick resources with you for, learning more about AI and certainly what access resources that you have. So the big three things that I wanted to call out is that we have a free social impact certification that you can use. You can sign up for a wait list to be notified when enrollment opens up. You can act all of this as well on the Blackbaud trust center that we just talked about. You can certainly join the Blackbaud community of AI explorers to connect with your peers and get help documentation to help with the global AI setting and steps you can take to opt in and also to go get prompts, that you can leverage that have worked very well as well. So there's a lot of resources available at your fingertips, and we certainly encourage you to explore those. But without further ado, I do wanna make sure that we're turning over, this to Aaron to give you the important good things that you came here to hear about. Aaron, you wanna take it away? Absolutely. Thank you, Kristen. Alright. So, we'll start at the top, with why we are here and, what the vision of the Blackbaud Award management and stewardship management products is. There. Thank you, Kristen. Alright. So, the vision of our products revolves around, and you can see in the bold there, three kind of groups of people. The first, and I would venture to say the most important, are the students. The people that are applying for scholarships. We want them to be able to have the accessibility, the, the efficiency, and the ease of use to be able to do that function without any blockers and to have it be an an easy experience for those students, both to apply for and to accept their awards. The third or the second piece of that are you, the institutions. Right? So whether you're a school or a foundation, managing the back end of the product is another huge piece of this, of course. How are you getting that information? Is it easy to see? Is it easy to work with? And can you easily provide those students with the funds that they are applying for, and the ones that deserve to get that? And then the third piece is, the donor group. Right? So many of the funds that you have available to you have come from specific donors, and so we wanna make sure that that group of people is also involved in this process as well, depending on your organization's, need or desire to do that. Most organizations do want to recognize those donors, connecting the students with the donors, reporting out to the donors how their donations are being used. All of that goes into why we exist. And so that is what our sort of overarching drive is for, is meeting the needs of those three groups of people. Down below that, it breaks it down into a little bit more detail, in kind of the three sort of buckets that we on the product development side of things are looking to achieve for you. Right? So we always want our solution to be strong. And this often is really around security, making sure that we are providing you and your students and your donors with a secure environment to work in, that all of our technology is up to date, and everything like that along with our integration with Blackbaud zone security measures as well. So that's a core foundation that's always happening underneath, and you'll see that throughout the road map as we move forward as well. So streamlining there, that's really talking more about the improvement of the existing functionality. Right? So how can we make what already exists better and improve that for you and students and and donors? And then the third piece there, soaring, is really looking out a little bit more into the future. Right? Like, so what can we do to be innovative? This certainly includes, of course, right now, AI and looking to how that can be incorporated into the product facing I'm sorry, customer facing parts of our product. So all the parts that you, your students, and your donors will see. How can we be innovative there and make this a modern, easy to use, AI powered experience for you and on all of the folks that interact with it. So that's why we exist. That's why we're here. That's why you've chosen to use our product, and we're very, very grateful, that you've done so. And we thank you for that. And so let's move on to getting into a little bit more of the details here around what that looks like for you today. So what we're gonna do today is talk about these three primary groups here. And, this is really following up from our last product update briefing in November 2025. So, we have that span of time, that we're gonna be looking at here and talking about what we've done and where we're going, in the next coming months and even out to years, which would be the more, like, looking ahead, piece of the puzzle here. Alright. So we'll start with what's available now. So, one of the things, and this was mentioned by Kristen right off the bat was, the, accessibility there. That's the one of the middle the the middle part there. So we have spent, a very, very large amount of time working on this, and getting all of the things that we could get done for you around accessibility. We did generate that that VPAT that is now available in the trust center. Kristen, talked about previously, that is accessible to you as a customer, behind your BBID login to ex access the VPAT there. So that is available. That was a big, big focus of the time that we've spent between November and today, on our team is getting that work done and out for you for all of you. The other big piece that we've been working on and are continuing to work on, and again, this will will show up later as we talk through this, is the applicant portal redesign. Complete redesign of the experience that your students or applicants go through as they're applying for scholarships. So that's a rebuild from the ground up, and that's another very, very big push that we have, going, and we'll again talk more about that. And then we just mentioned a minute ago about the strengthening part of this. Right? So constantly under the under the radar, so to speak, our team is always working on upgrades, focusing on security, and making sure that that is not an issue for you, that you don't even have to worry about that. But we do wanna make sure we're telling you that we are doing it because it's super important for us to do. We know it's important for you, and it's an ongoing stream across all of the things that we do. Alright. So getting into a little bit more detail here, the accessibility enhancements. So, we got another slide coming up about that. So I'm gonna talk a little bit more about that, and I've already spoken to that as well. The security upgrades, we did have a number of these, since last November that we've been working on, to make sure that, again, all of our underlying technology is at the right, level, and with those, different various technology technology services that we're using to run the system for you and making sure that is all up to the correct versions and everything is, is in the right order there. And then the new applicant user experience, again, is something that we're continuing to push forward. We have moved into a CTP, which is customer technical preview. That's a big step forward as we move through the product development phases. This is the first opportunity for real customers to see what we've been doing and to test it out. It's designed to be done in a very small and and contained and controlled environment. So we just have two schools, that have been helping us with this, and we've been receiving feedback from both their administrators and their and students that they were able to have test out the, functionality for us, which is then giving us more direction on things that we're like, oh, that button actually doesn't take you to the spot we thought it did. So we can go back and fix that and leading up to the next step, which is the early adopter program. And so we're gonna get into that a little bit more too. I've got a number of slides to show you that will, just give you a a picture of what this applicant user experience looks like in the redesigned mode. Alright. Oh, and then also, we did go, forward and completed our work that needed to be done to get our hosting and environment set up in Australia. So, that's very exciting for us. Of course, it is only really affecting those folks in Australia, but it's a it's a big deal for us, because it allows us to offer this service to to to more customers. Right? So we love what we're doing. We think this is a great product that meets a lot of needs for many, many institutions, and we wanna share it. So, we're now able to, in the Blackbaud Pacific, region, offer award and stewardship management to customers in Australia. So that was some work that we did as well, and we're we're happy to to announce that. So coming back around to the accessibility. So last year, towards the 2025, Blackbaud had number of products go through a full accessibility audit. So award management was not the only one. There were others that went through this process as well. We use a third party for this. So we're not gonna audit ourselves. Right? So we have a third party, and that, is a partner that we've chosen, and their existence is to do this type of work. This is what they do. They're accessibility firm. And so they gave us a full and complete audit on the both the applicant web facing experience as well as the back end administrative, non web facing experience. And the differentiation there is that a lot of the, ADA guidelines and, the federal requirements are really focused on that web facing part of things, and so that, of course, then was our focus as well. So we got, VPAT results for all of it, but our focus is really on that web facing, which which really is largely the applicant experience. Right? Like, we there are other people that have web web facing functionality or interaction we talked about, like donors. We got reviewers. Right? So there's other people that are involved here, but it's really focused mostly on the applicant. That's the biggest piece of this. And so then, of course, consequently, our focus was on the applicant side as well. So once we got that audit done, they came back to us with, a number of findings of things that we can fix or improve upon. Those findings are generally bucketed into critical high and low. And we over the course, once the audit was, completed, as I mentioned earlier, we pretty much focused the majority of our development time on this, over the course of the early part of 2026, and we were able to complete the critical and high findings. And then our plan now as we move forward is to continue working on those low findings. Some of you may have also heard that the, the date requirement was extended to, 2027 now. So that gives everybody a little breathing room, not to mean that we are gonna not do anything anymore. I'm not saying that at all. Just letting you know if you weren't aware that the date, did get pushed out to 2027. So we continue to have a very clear plan forward on a continuation of the remediating, of those low findings and making sure that everything is squared away for you on that front. The other cool thing about this, circling back now to the applicant UX redesign, is that the new redesigned applicant user experience is by definition of done for us accessible. Right? So, the current accessibility audit was done on the existing user experience for applicants. And when the new applicant experience comes out, that's gonna be a great benefit too for this accessibility angle of things because we built it to be accessible from the beginning. So we have that to look forward to as well, which is another exciting piece, to kinda weave into this accessibility story. Alright. So let's continue on here with what's coming next. Alright. So, again, the security story, as I mentioned right from right out of the gate, this continues on. You'll see this in every, slide that we talk about whether it's now, coming next, or out in the future. Security is always important to us, and we're continuing to do that always under the radar for you. The French Canadian translation, this is another, exciting feature for us for two reasons. Number one, most importantly, because it's going to be a huge benefit for our Canadian customers. Many of the Canadian schools, require or desire to have applicant user experience, for their applicants in French. And so we are, very close actually to having this available, and that will allow those Canadian schools to be able to have the entire applicant user experience available in French. The cool thing about this as well is that it sets the stage and creates a foundation for us to do more with translations. So just one example that would be pretty clear in The United States is to have the applicant user experience available in, let's say, for example, Spanish. Right? Very commonly spoken language in The United States in addition to English. By doing this French translation, it also sets that foundation for more translation opportunities to come. So, good things to look forward to there as well. The applicant user experience, we've already talked about. That is just continuing to onion. We're gonna talk about that here, more with some some slides and some screenshots to show you a little bit more about what that looks like. And on the innovation side, to the applicant user experience again, you see there, the the connections story here. So it's really important to us that we continue to drive towards this connected system story. This is important across Blackbaud, and it makes a lot of sense. As Kristen mentioned kind of in her introduction there, there are many of you on this, pub right now that own multiple Blackbaud products. You're not only using award management. Some of you are. That's totally great. But there's a very high percentage of award management users that also use RE NXT, for example. We wanna improve those connections, and we're in the process right now of working on that. I have been working specifically on the award management to RE NXT storyline, and we're gonna go to that one first. And then once we achieve that, our goal is to go further with, other types of ways that we can connect things together. So this is something that you'll continue to hear about from me as we move forward, is this idea of the desire to connect more black more of the Blackbaud products into award and stewardship management. So that's something that is is coming as well. We have for a while now been talking about concurrent cycles. And if you're, if you've been around for a year or two or more, you that term is familiar to you. If you're a little bit newer, that might be a a new term. But the basic idea here is that the concurrent cycle opportunity, gives you at the school level the ability to have two application cycles open at the same time, which is not possible today. Leading up to that, there's a whole bunch of work that needed to be done underneath to kinda get to that. In recent months, we've had somewhat of a technological breakthrough, and we've really shifted our strategy around how this is happening. And that is in works in the works right now and will continue throughout 2026. And I'm excited to have the November pub because I think by then, we're gonna have even more cool stuff to talk about with this. So keep that on your on your mind and on your radar. And that's not only going to get to that concurrent cycles, eventually, but this new strategy that we're on is also going to realize. And what we're seeing from our initial work on this is some pretty significant system performance and optimization benefits as well. So excited that that's in the works and coming for you. Alright. So let's go into a little bit more detail here about the applicant, experience piece here. So this information here is just kind of framing out a little bit about what are some of the benefits that your students are gonna see and that you're gonna see from this. Modernization, is is a big one. It's just gonna look and feel and act much more modern than it is today, which is just gonna make everything easier on your students and their, experience as they're going through this process. We think that there's gonna be a higher rate of completions because the applicant UX will be easier, so that's gonna be a benefit as well. Decreased support, again, just focusing back on this idea of ease and efficiency. Hopefully, students will have less questions about the process in general. And then again, the equitable access that goes into accessibility and other ways that we wanna make sure that your funds are available across everybody who may be, able to to, to apply for them and receive them. Right? So we want that equability equitability across the board, and we feel like this new experience is going to, help with that as well. I mentioned earlier that we have this, CTP. Again, that stands for, customer technical preview. It's, again, just as a quick reminder, that's a, a, a testing mode of the new functionality, but in a very contained, method with only a few customers. And so this is just a a nice quote that we are able to get from, one of our student testers at the University of North Carolina Asheville. They're one of the schools that partnered with us here on this, and we really got a lot of other feedback like this, and it's exciting to see from actual students. Many of these students, I think all, if not all, most of the, I believe, of the North Carolina students anyway, had previously applied for awards through the what is the current experience. So they had a cool, way of testing because they could compare it to what it was. Right? So, we're excited to see that the students are, are also seeing some of these things as well. So alright. Little bit of a timeline here about where we're going with this. So, you can see pretty straightforward here, chart to read. We're looking to get into that EAP. I believe it is the next slide. You're gonna see a QR code. We are looking for schools who who are interested in being part of the EAP. That's the early adopter program. Again, the difference between that and the CTP is if you are interested in the EAP, that's gonna be in your, production environment, which means that your students, if you're part of the EAP, anybody who applies in a real a real life application, not just a testing environment, will fill out the new the application in the new experience. And we are really looking for schools to participate in this. You can get get a time frame idea there. We're looking in that July, August time frame to have some schools willing to participate and and allow us to turn this on for you with the goal then of releasing it to the general availability of all customers in the early mid fall time frame before we get into the the heat of the of the actual application season. So that's the time frame that we're working on right now. And to give you a glimpse of what some of it looks like here, we'll just kinda go through some of these slides and give you an idea of of some of the things that we're that we're doing. There's that QR code I was referencing. Feel free to capture that. If you're not able to capture that QR code, but you're interesting still interested in participating, you can put that in the, like, the q and a or somewhere in the system here. Just, give us a shout, and we'll get your your school name down, and we'll reach out to you. We would love to have any and all, folks who are interested to participate there. There will there will be a limit at some point, but, we're not at that limit yet. So, please, if you're interested, we'd love to have your participation. Alright. So you can, right off the bat here, I think, get a pretty quick feel of the new user experience for the applicant. It is in, the Blackbaud, what we call the Sky user experience. It's what, the Blackbaud, UX design sort of format is looks like today. And so it's not only modern, it's also consistent with other Blackbaud products which is also great. So we have we're creating a consistency here, as well. So, couple of new tabs there across the top, easier navigation, for the students to see. Application types there are available as well. So just a cleaner, more modern look in in the general navigation there. Again, this is just a a couple of screenshots here of the new experience on the left there. That's a general application, and what that's gonna look like for your students. We have the opportunity types here as well. So it's a new filtering opportunity for students there as you can see to leverage in identifying additional scholarships. So we wanna make sure that students do have the opportunity to get that information, that they know all of the available scholarship opportunities that are available to them. So the goal here with this is to give them a better way, an easier way to see that information. On the right there, and I'm gonna on the next slide, you'll see what this fly out looks like. But we have a couple of, persistent links there, which means they stay with the student along the way as they move through the process here. The FAQ fly out, I think, is great because it is customizable by you. So you can have your own FAQs here that you know students have. This kinda circles back to that slide I was referencing earlier where the hope here is that you have less students contacting you with questions because you're able to answer their questions proactively. I'm sure you all know the top questions that students ask. You can hit it right off the right off the get go here and just answer their questions before they even need to ask them. So, that's a great great opportunity there as well. And then if the student wants to see their personal, information here, they also have that opportunity on the fly out. So, again, the the fly out means that when they click the link, that tab or part of the screen you see on the right there, it flies out. It opens up from right to left, and then it closes back again. So, that's what I mean when I'm when I'm referring to a fly out. This is probably, I would say, the number one positively, reviewed feature, if you wanna put it that way, of the new applicant UX, which is auto save. This, from all the students as well as the administrators is something we heard a lot of repetitive, we love this feature type of thing. So, the students will, as they're completing their application, continue to get their information saved automatically rather than having to manual, manually save that. Obviously, prevents them from losing information. And it just really is, I think, a much more modern expectation of what any person would expect a form that you're filling out online in 2026 to do for you. So, this is a big deal. It seems kinda little at first, but it's a impact across the board. Very, very happy that we're able to provide this, and and we're excited to get this out again into the hands of more of your students. So, that's a piece there to definitely keep in mind. The inline help is also a great feature again, supporting the students, hopefully allowing them to be able to complete the application on their own without having to stop and go for help somewhere else. They have this inline help that's available to them. You create the text here as well. So customizable and available for your students, to be a quick answer to a question that they might have. It also, I would say, saves space too because somebody might not need an answer to that question. Right? So instead of having it all there in in chunks of text, it allows the student to choose and choose their own adventure, if you will, and, click the link or the the icon if they wanna see it. It'll pop up and it'll go away. So we have some, also enhancements here for the references. The, again, the just the design is much easier. You can see the previous review and the smaller screenshot at the bottom there. The previous view, I mean, for the for the reference compared to the one in the background here. More categories across the top. The reference requests are easier to see down the left margin there. Just a much easier way to navigate through this process, for the references. This is the application center, the, the home page, if you will, for the student. You can see again the former, what was technically still the current, user experience down in the lower right there compared to what it is, in in the main in the main picture there. Enhancements all the way around for navigation, ease of access of information, just making everything clearer and easier for your students as they move through this process of applying for scholarships at your school or your foundation. And the final piece here, is the student facing donor pages. So again this circles back to that very beginning vision statement where we want to make sure that we're also focused on how these funds are becoming available for your students at your school. And so connecting your students to the donors is an opportunity that you have to do, and we're making that, again, easier here for your students to do that. Ways to see the donors, sorting, and just streamlining the entire user experience for them. Just making it easier, simpler, and a better way to manage that process. Alright. So with that, let's now move into the more future looking. So all of that, the what's coming next in the middle of these three sections, that's designed to be in, things that are coming in the more near future, in the next few months, let's say. Looking ahead is a little bit more out into the future, a little bit more vision y, if you will. But at the same time, are things that we have been, working on, and it may be more it may be less working on it in terms of an engineering or development standpoint and more on a research standpoint. But these are things that we are working to achieve for you, but we're looking at these things a little bit out into the future. So as mentioned, security, again, at the top, always happening underneath, constantly upgrading that underlying technology to keep everything safe and secure for you and everybody who interacts with this system. The connections piece in the streamlining part in the middle there, spoke about that earlier. Again, just to emphasize that we've got a lot of different ways that we can do this. It's a it's a very important piece of this puzzle for us because we will again, we want we know that many of our, foundations or schools are using, in particular, award management, stewardship management, and also RE NXT. We've also got FE NXT thrown in the mix as well. But our focus initially is to be looking at the award management and the r e n x t connection piece there. We do have a partner called Redarc who has already created a connection for this. You can find that in the Blackbaud marketplace. This already exists for you to use today, and there are, directions out there on how to set that up. And that will send information from award management to our NXT. That already exists today. We'd love to have you using that. What we're looking at going forward is how can we make that better. I think there are I don't think let me rephrase. I know there are ways that we can make that better. The, I have talked to a number of schools about this topic and what we call discovery sessions. I would also put in a side tangent note here. If you're willing to be a a school who's just open to talking to me about stuff, I would love that. If that's something that you wanna, again, drop in the q and a or somewhere here, I don't recall. I think my email address is coming somewhere towards the end. Reach out. I I would love to talk to you. I'm always looking for schools that wanna talk about things that we're looking to do. It's very, very important part of this process. So my point there is that I have spoken to a number of schools around what can we do better or differently in terms of how we're connecting award management to the RE NXT piece. And so that is the first focus that we're going with right now. And then down the line, we're gonna start to look at what else can we do. The FE NXT piece. How can we, build on the stewardship management piece? Again, there are APIs that exist today for stewardship management. They can be better. We wanna make them better. So these are the things that are gonna be a little bit more out into the future. But just keep keep on your mind and on your radar. Keep an ear out. Keep an eye out for the award management to r u n x t piece of that puzzle, and that's gonna be the thing that we're gonna be looking at more more specifically around this topic in the in the coming months here. And then the innovation piece here, we're gonna look at the next slide again that talks more about the also includes the the Kiwi, create users upon import functionality. We wanna be able to open that up to more customers, and then AI too. I mentioned that earlier. You know, we are very aware that we we need and want to incorporate AI into our customer facing products for you to leverage making things more efficient for you. That's the goal. And we wanna be able to utilize that technology to help you in your roles at the schools and and and foundations in managing this award management and stewardship management, world. Right? So those are things too that we are, talking about and learning about, and more to come there as we progress through 2026 and look out into 2027. So this next slide here is giving a little bit more information around this re rethinking of how, again, we're getting to that concurrent cycles piece at the end of this, blue and green rainbow, if you will. Right? The pot of gold at the end there. But there's a whole bunch of stuff along the way that's gonna help you out. And the the performance improvements, I think, are a really, really key piece of this. Again, just to emphasize, this is new work. This has just begun. And but the but the initial results that we're seeing are fantastic. So we're really wanting to put our foot on the gas here and keep this moving forward. And we want the other the other thing here is, I believe, going to be a very beneficial thing is compared to how this was being worked out previously to how it is now, I believe we're gonna be able to have more quick wins, be more iterative on this process, and be able to get things out to you along the way. So and, again, I keep emphasizing this performance issue, not issue, but, goal that we have. We wanna make that we want the system to be more performing for you. We want your grids to load to load faster. So those are all things that we're driving towards with this new, new pathway that we're on. And, again, we're just really excited about what that's looking for in the future. And, again, we're looking out into the future now. This is future looking, but along the way, I think we're gonna get some of that more midterm coming next kind of stuff as we continue to look out to the future goal of of this project. The next slide is another visual of, what we've been talking about in terms of this connected systems piece here. So we have another QR QR code for an EAP sign up here. We don't right now have an e I e excuse me, EAP in place for this, but we will as we work towards that in the future. So if this is something you're interested in learning more about as an EAP customer, let us know, and we'd be happy to have your name on that list for when the time comes, for that EAP to begin. And this is another visual here. Again, just kinda wrapping all of this connected systems into one, larger chart around how all of the black box systems can work together for you. So as we talk about connected systems, this is our goal. We would want you to have an experience as a customer where all of these products that you're using are working together, and that's what the connected systems story is really leading to. So, that's our end goal, and that's what we're continuing to drive towards. So that is the extent of my portion of the presentation today. I really hope that was useful for you. If you have questions, I am open to talking to anybody who wants to talk about this. Happy to expand on anything that I didn't get into quite as much detail as you would have liked on. But, again, just as a quick reminder, if you're interested in the EAP specifically for the new applicant user experience, let us know. We're actively looking for participants for that. Keep an eye out for that to come. Keep an eye out for more information about that connected systems piece, and keep an eye out for more updates on this new technology path that we're on, ultimately guiding us towards that broader QE availability and better system performance as well. So thank you so much for your time today, and Kristen has come back on here to take us through the, remaining slides. Over to you, Kristen. Thanks, Erin. Alright. So I know we are getting close, to the end of our session. We've got a lot of really great questions, that have been shared in the q and a. We've also activated a poll. If you wanna take a look at that, we'll also activate another one in just a second related to BBCON. But we have a lot of really great information to share with you, specifically about how you can leverage your solution, how you can get the most value from it. And most specifically, we have, a brand new award management boot camp so available. So many of you took advantage of this in earlier in the spring, and we certainly hope that you will continue taking advantage of this in the summer, as well. And this was very popular. It was so popular that we decided to bring this back for another round, just to make sure we were getting access to resources and and putting this in the hands of as many people as possible. So this takes place in June, and so this is a four week live instructor led led training session that's delivered through Blackbaud University. So this is free for Blackbaud Learn subscribers. So if you have access to that or need additional information about that, we can help you there as well. But this is open to as many of your teams, that you would like. Seats are limited, but if you are interested in this, I would highly encourage you to go ahead and take advantage of that. This is linked in your doc section as well, so if you want to take advantage of getting registered for it, check out the dates. You can attend as many of these as you would like or one if you only want to attend one. It's totally up to you, But we'll be offering two live sessions per week throughout the month of June, and each session is an hour and a half long. And so the topics covered in June, you'll see those listed on your screen, but you'll also be able to sign up for each individual course that's available as well directly on, the BBU, so the learn page as well when you click that link. And so I did want to also resurface. We're getting a lot of questions about RE NXT, which is Raiser's Edge NXT, which is our flagship, fundraising solution. So this is a very popular product that a lot of our customers use both award management as well as Raiser's Edge NXT. And so we wanted to make sure that you had access to or were aware of this free resource that's available to you in, the form of a free connector. And so this is available for you in the Blackbaud marketplace as well, to take advantage of. And this is really an integration that gives users three sixty views of award activity inside of Raiser's Edge NXT, just displaying constituents' award information from Blackbaud award management right on the constituent page in RE NXT. And so, additional details about this just so you can see, what this is, what it does. This integration actually synchronizes award recipients and cross references the funds from directly within Raiser's Edge NXT displaying award and fund information on a home screen tile. And so you can also drill down into those capabilities to so you can see details from directly within RE NXT without logging into a separate system, so going back and forth between org management and RE NXT as well. But just so you can see the details of how the data flows, to help you visualize this integration, this shows you how the data flows between the two solutions. And so as you'll see, once the two are connected, you can configure the data to be able to be viewed at either the fund level or the constituent level, depending on what type of information it is that you need. So the more data you have at your fingertips, the better you are able to be able to strengthen relationships with your donors and hopefully to be able to raise more funds to support your institution and the students that you're serving as well. But, again, that is a free resource, and it's available in the Blackbaud marketplace as well. So you'll look for the Redarc, razor's edge and award management connector tile. So take advantage of that. I also wanted to just really bring up the fact that we have, a program called our impact awards, and this is open right now. And, just a quick heads up, this is the deadline is coming very soon, so May 15. We've talked a lot about what's coming next on the road map and how you can take advantage of, what's available now, but we really wanna take the opportunity to recognize customers who are already, turning innovation into real impact. And so, this awards program really focuses on celebrating customers that drive impact and driving real measurable, results with your solutions. And so this is your chance to really nominate your incredible work, the things that you're doing behind the scenes, to spotlight your successes on the, BBCon main stage as well. So if you have a story that you're proud of, we'd love to hear from you, and certainly this is the the perfect time to be able to submit a session. And so we wanna hear your story and what outcomes you're seeing from your solutions as well. And, also wanted to make a plug just for, BBDEV days. This is highly popular with within the higher education community. This is where builders across the Black Belt bot ecosystem come to explore really what's possible. So between June, this virtual event is really designed to for developers and technically curious, problem solvers at every level. So you don't have to be a developer or a code someone who knows code very well to be able to engage in this, in BBDEV days. So if you are interested in this, you can really tap into this to really see how others are solving real world problems within their solutions, and you can come up, level up your skills with labs, demos, and keynotes to really tailor your experience as well or just to connect with your peers and partners facing the same challenges you are. And so you can build more with your solutions and accomplish more. So if you're interested in this, take advantage of, the site that you see on the page at blackbaud.com backslash b b dev days. And, certainly, many of you have seen a lot of you. Here, we've seen a lot of sessions that, you have submitted as well, and, we have the opportunity for you to be able to engage with us at bbcon. I just posted, a link that you'll see here as well for the poll. If you're interested in taking advantage of getting engaged with BBCon, we have, of course, the main stage sessions, that are happening in Columbus, Ohio on September 29 through October 1, but we also have a unique opportunity for you to be able to get engaged as well. And so if you're interested in presenting a session, we have a couple of more spots that are available, for our customers to be able to tell your story, tell us about what you're doing and what you're accomplishing, and you can share your advice and feedback, as well. These are highly popular sessions, and, this is where a lot of ideas come to life. But also peer to peer wise, you get great best practices and tips and advice, as well, and not just related to your award management. You can certainly, tap into the main stage sessions, but also, the sessions that are available across many different products as well. And so if you're interested in that in submitting a session, you can reach out to me directly or in the chat or respond to the poll, and we'll certainly follow-up with you as well. And so just as a fun fact here too, if your session is selected, we waive the BBCON registration for the primary speaker, that is selected as well. So there's a lot of exciting things that are happening, within Blackbaud award and stewardship management, but also coming soon, for you as well. We hope today's session was helpful, for you in learning about all these things, and we will stay on the call just a little bit longer too to address, some additional questions that have come up. So if you have any questions or anything we can help with, certainly let us know, and thank you so much for your time in joining us today. Thank you, everybody.