Name: Product Update Briefing - Blackbaud Grantmaking™
Uploaded: 2026-05-06T14:16:10.892Z
Duration: 1 h 12 s
Description: Product Update Briefing - Blackbaud Grantmaking™

Transcript for "Product Update Briefing - Blackbaud Grantmaking™": And welcome to the Blackbaud Grantmaking May 2026 product update briefing. And good morning to those of you in The UK, and good afternoon to our Australian viewers today. So excited to be with you all today. We're gonna walk through our road map, and I'm just going to start out with a quick safe harbor statement. 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 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 today. And with that, let me quickly go over a few housekeeping items to make sure you get the most out of today's session. So first off, our audio for this webinar is being broadcast through your computer speakers. So make sure that your volume is turned up. If you're experiencing any audio or technical issues at any point in the presentation, the quickest fix is usually just to do a quick refresh of your browser. And don't worry about taking notes on anything. You'll you will receive a link to the full webinar recording by email after the session. So you can always go back and review anything that you may have missed. And we love hearing from you during these sessions, so please use the q and a feature to submit any questions as they come up, throughout the presentation, and we will have our team in the background ready to answer your questions. 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. Quick introduction today. So for those of you who may not have met me before, my name is Nicole, and I'm a product marketing manager for Blackbaud grant making. And I'm also joined by, for some of you, this might be a new face. I'm joined by Francisco Lopez, who is our new, Blackbaud Grantmaking product manager as of five months or so. So really excited to have Francisco join the team, and I'm gonna hand it over to you, Francisco, if you wanna give a quick introduction to our viewers today. Sure. Thank you, Nicole. And, hello, everybody. In fact, I am five months into my journey with Blackbaud grant making, but I'm not new to grant making as I like to say. I actually come from the federal grant making space. So I spent fourteen years at the US Department of Education announcing, selecting, and managing large scale teacher development grants. So I'm very familiar with the grant life cycle. In just five short months, I really come to love this product, that we have. It has a lot of potential, and, I've been really enjoying getting to know everybody to make it better. And so, yeah, right at this point, we're really just excited to share our future vision, with all of you. Back to you, Nicole. Awesome. Thanks for that intro. And let's take a quick look at what we'll be what we'll be covering today. So we've structured the session around three key areas. First off, we'll start with vision and strategy. So this is where we'll share our vision and the progress we've been making on Blackhawk grant making. We want to make sure you understand where we're headed and how that aligns with the challenges and opportunities that you're currently facing. Next, we'll move into reminders and resources. Some important updates and helpful materials to make sure you're getting the most out of the platform. And finally, we'll cover the road map. So this is where we'll do a deep dive, walk through our features that have been recently released, what's coming soon, and what's next up on our development pipeline. And before we get into, the specific road map items, I wanna 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, and turning data into insight so funding decisions can drive greater impact. That direction is guided by four focus areas. First, trust and transparency. We're continuing to invest in the foundations 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. And 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. And finally, scalable, responsible innovation. We're building on a modern platform that evolves with you so innovation can be adopted at your pace without compromising trust and control. And so I wanna draw your attention to an important update regarding the applicant and grantee portal. So here's what's happening. Effective July 29, we'll be decommissioning the legacy applicant portal, also known as IGIM. It will be fully replaced by the new applicant and grantee portal, which was first introduced back in June 2024. So after that cutoff date, the new portal will be the only supported system for online applications, portal activity, and application reporting. So what does this mean for you as a customer? Well, if you've already transitioned to the new portal, that's great, and no other action is needed on your end. However, if you haven't made the switch yet, it's critical that you do take action now to avoid any potential workflow disruption. For the specifics on what's required, you can refer to the email that was sent to you on April 29 directly to your solution admins, or you can check out the knowledge base article in the docs tab that will have more information on the transition. For applicants and grantees, this will mean that all grant applications will need to go through the new portal. And once the legacy system is shut down, all existing legacy application links, forms, and accounts will stop working. Any legacy applications will redirect to a page, asking the applicant or grantee to contact the administrator for a new link for that application. So, again, we hope that this is in, new news for most of you. We have communicated this, through multiple channels. And so, hopefully, you you already know that this is coming, but the deadline is approaching. So we just wanna make sure that everyone, is aware of this transition. And you will notice when you log in to the system that there is a banner, that will have a countdown of the days you have left just as a reminder on how much time you do have left with the legacy portal. And we know that transitioning to a new system can feel overwhelming. But the good news is is that 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. So this includes worksheets, guides, webinars that you can access at any time. There's also a detailed transition checklist available under the docs tab, which I highly recommend using as a starting point to make sure you're going through all the appropriate steps you need to take. Second, Blackbaud University, is offering both elearning courses and instructor led training sessions. So this is actually free for all customers until July 29 regardless of whether you have a learn subscription or not. Third, we have the knowledge base article and FAQ section. So this goes into additional detail on the steps required for the transition, and it includes an extensive FAQ that's frequently updated. So if you have specific questions, that's a great place to check first. And finally, if you need more personalized support, you can request a paid professional services engagement. I do want to flag here that resources are limited. So if you're if you are looking to submit a request, we recommend doing that quite promptly, if that is something that you need. So now for the juicy part, which everyone is waiting for. So let's get into the road map section. So we're going to tell the road map story through three horizons. The first horizon is available now, which will cover, features and enhancements that have been recently released and ready for you to use today. The second horizon is what's coming next. So this will cover enhancements that are actively in development and are coming soon. And then the third horizon is looking ahead. So those are the key themes, big bets, and strategic investments that we're making into the product, and that will cover, all the time frame from six months and beyond. So we'll begin now with the available now, and I'm gonna hand it over to Francisco to cover the slide. Awesome. Thank you, Nicole. So, yes, this is a slide that gives a high level snapshot of what's available now across Blackbaud grant making, and you'll see these improvements, naturally clustered into three main areas. The first is, manage grants effectively efficiently. And the list here displays a significant amount of recent work that has gone into supporting, the more complex, more sort of real world workflow. So 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 so here, we've improved search and filtering within work within within the workspace and made it easier for reviewers to compare applications side by side. These are small changes individually, but collectively, they do save a lot of time and reduce cognitive load during consideration and review cycles, which are critical. And then the third is responsible innovation, and this includes things like branch level security enforcement, preserving branch assignments to consideration, masking sensitive data, and improving consistency across publishing, submission, and reporting workflows. Internally, this is critical for any organizations, and, these changes directly impact trust, compliance confidence, and long term platform scalability. Taken together, this work improves day to day usability while also strengthening the underlying foundations of the product. Alright. So, let's start with what's available now in the Blackbaud grant making and the applicant grantee portal. So over the past several months, we've delivered meaningful improvements across the core grant making space, and I wanna highlight the key areas where you'll see the most impact. The first, we've made, significant improvements to the application workflow. So these changes are designed to reduce friction during the review cycle. And so 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 those day to day operations and minimize disruption during the consideration process. Less time on admin tasks means more time, focusing on impact. Third, we've strengthened our data protection and governance controls, and we know, especially today, how critical it is to safeguard sensitive applicant information. And these enhancements give you more confidence that your data is 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, and they ensure your teams can move forward with confidence while state while laying a stronger base for the innovation that's still to come. In short, again, this has been about usability, reliability, and trust, making sure the platform works in the way you need it to every day. So this one's a hot topic. The Blackbaud verified network, continues to certainly be an important foundation for data integrity, But we've also heard where rigidity was causing friction, both for applicants and for administrators. And so with this update, administrators now have the option to request organization information directly from applicants. And this added flexibility helps accommodate organizations such as churches, international nonprofits, or smaller community groups. From an internal perspective, for everybody, this is a big win. It does reduce mismatch, prevent bad data from being introduced during intake, and cuts down on support cases related to organization resolutions. So you see, the system working in the way that it should. It also makes the platform more inclusive and practical for customers operating in very diverse funding ecosystems. And the key takeaway here is balance. Right? We're maintaining strong data standards while giving customers the flexibility they need to run, the real world programs effectively. Another update, is the duplicate management, and so this is the enhanced duplicate chat. And it's one of those areas where the small usability gaps can create serious downstream issues. So this enhancement is actually really really important one. Grantmakers such as yourselves can now view incoming applicant data side by side with existing organization and contact records and choose exactly which fields to update. This eliminates the risk of silent overwrites, which has been a longstanding concern for admins managing large or historical datasets. We've also expanded the ability to search for the correct organization or contact when an exact match isn't found. And so using multiple filters like state, postal code, gives teams far more control during consideration. Again, this is about trust and confidence, and so administrators can now move forward knowing they're preserving the data integrity and support teams can see fewer escalations on our end. So, wins all around for this one. Workspace columns. The workspace environment improvements are all about scale and visibility. And so as your customer portfolios grow, teams need better tools to manage volume without relying on exports or offline tracking, which spend which waste a lot of time as we all know. The workspace now supports searching and filtering by program by program name and last submitted form, which significantly improves how folks triage work and prioritize review. We've also added, the additional columns for application and requirement data, including branch ID, program, and form names so teams can now see the right context at a glance. These changes seem incremental, but they fundamentally improve the day to day efficiency and help teams manage larger workloads without adding complexity and giving you what you need to see when you need to see it. Alright. For this one, this is the field truncation on consider. This enhancement addresses, I think, one of the most common and frustrating workflow blockers we've heard about. And so previously, when an application on requirement exceeded character limits, grantmakers had, no choice but to send it back to the applicant. That created delays, confusion, and additional back and forth. So now grantmakers can truncate offending fields directly from the error grid and then proceed with the consideration. Importantly, the original submitted values remain accessible in the historical tab, so you can be rest assured that no information is lost. This functionality applies to both applications and requirements, which means fewer interruptions during the review cycles and less friction for applicants, especially if you've got a lot coming in. This also means shorter resolution terms and fewer support touch points tied to submission errors. Alright. Back to you, Nicole. Yeah. Thanks, Francisco. So we're gonna move into the coming next section now. And so for coming next, we have a lot of very cool AI powered functionalities coming. So I've added this new legend. So anytime you see this circle icon, that means, whatever functionality we are discussing is powered by AI. So we're looking forward to review your portal enhancements, progress reports of a glance. And then in the looking ahead section, we'll also be covering impact intelligence. So starting with the grantee progress reports at a glance. So this really highlights how our platform will give you clear real time visibility into grantee progress reports. One of the most common challenges we hear from grant managers is that it's difficult tracking where things stand, especially when you're dealing with multiple grantees. Reports could get buried in email threads, shared drives, disconnect disconnected spreadsheets, and it can become nearly impossible to get a reliable snapshot of overall progress. So with our solution, that will change entirely. As you can see on the screen, you can instantly view what has been submitted, what has been approved, and what is coming up next, all in one centralized dashboard. There's no need to chase down individual grantees or manually cross reference documents. Everything is organized and accessible at a glance. The second key benefit here is around staying on track with reporting requirements. The system will have built in awareness of upcoming deadlines, and due soon reports. This means that your team receives proactive notifications well in advance so there are no more missed deadlines and no more last minute scrambles to pull together documentation. So this we're planning on fundamentally shifting your workflow from being reactive to proactive. Taken together, these capabilities allow your organization to manage grants more efficiently, reduce administrative overhead, and ensure compliance with reporting obligations. And I'm gonna pass it back to Francisco to cover, our reviewer portal. It's a mouthful. Reviewer portal enhancements. Go ahead, Francisco. Thanks, Nicole. Yeah. It is a a mouthful. Let me see if I don't stumble across some of my points here. So this is we wanna share with you all how we're thinking of a revamped, review report. It's designed to make your evaluation process faster and more consistent. We know I know that building rubrics, coordinating reviews, reconciling scores, all of that takes a lot of staff time, and it's not something you do all the time. And so the reviewer portal streamlines all of that. It gives your team the tools to accelerate evaluations at scale without sacrificing the quality we need. You'll also see more consistent scoring and rationale across your review panels. So we're integrating AI. We're thinking where they're they're more human, prone to errors. And so it also creates a smoother collaboration whether reviewers are internal or external partners. Again, importantly, AI supports the consistency and the efficiency here, but your grant teams and yourself, you all remain in total control of the criteria and ultimately the final decisions. And so we're gonna go and show you a quick, demo, to, showcase some of that now. 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 you your five approved grants, 500 k 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. Awesome. Well, hope you guys enjoyed that deep dive of the reviewer portal, and let us know if you have any feedback on what you just saw. Feel free to also put feedback in the q and a section as well. And before we move on quickly, I just wanted to call out. We do have BBCon coming up, September 29 to October 1, and it's going to be taking place in Columbus, Ohio this year. And so just wanted to let you all know that the early bird registration is still open, so you can save a pretty penny on a conference ticket if you are interested in attending this year. It's always lots of fun. I will be there and Francisco will be there and, bunch of other members of the grant making team. And we will be having grant making specific breakout sessions as well. So looking forward to seeing you all there. If you do want to register, you can go to bbconference.com and register there. And finally, moving into the looking ahead section. So this is where we'll be covering our key themes, on a longer time horizon. And so I'm gonna hand it back to Francisco to take us home with Impact Intelligence. Alright. So Impact Intelligence. Yeah. This is something we're thinking of, again, as we just mentioned, a little bit more longer term. So really appreciate any feedback or ideas you have around this concept. And so in short, this really represents an evolution in how we think about, how we help customers think about outcomes, right, not just activity. And so it really tries to simplify answering this question of, like, what are my grants doing? Are they working? And so at its core, it turns approved grantee reports into real time AI generated insights. So it would go from a grantee submitting the report to you, you approve it, and at that point, you know, the data is fed to to the portal. This allows funders to, Okay. I think I'm just going to I'll cover these last few slides for us just as we experience some technical difficulties here. So impact intelligence. So, our goal impact intelligence is to so that funders can prove outcomes, track progress, and tell their impact story effortlessly. Leads. So we're really trying to bring together all of those key metrics that you would normally use to tell an impact story, and make those accessible in one location and make it easy for you to pull reports. If you're running a request for reports or it's a report that you pull on a regular basis, just so you can have all of these metrics tied together for you. And you can see in the screenshot here. So you'll be having access to real time impact metrics with AI powered insights derived from submitted and improved grantee report. So it's really going to be directly pulling from those reports, so that you don't have to manually run through and put information and numbers together. You have it pulled in using AI, and then it will kind of surface up these data points for you. So you'll also have integrated percentage based trend tracking, which can monitor progress over time. So you can see the trends if you're trending up, if you're trending down, maybe there's certain areas that you might want to dig into a little bit more. And basically, all of these metrics will pull together across programs. So if you have multiple programs that you're working on, you really want the data to roll up in one view and also have access to the individual program views as well. This is a great way to pull together all of your insights and provide that holistic reporting. And finally, you can see at a glance whether your funding is reaching the populations that you that matter most to you. So it can help you identify which communities are being reached, identifying any gaps, maybe imbalances, you want to be able to reach certain communities more. This can help surface up some of the insights and it highlights also which programs you have that are performing well and which ones may need some attention or adjustment. So you can see all of those data points there and also from the geographic distribution as well as at the program level. So we're really trying to make it easier for you all to drill down, and get those specific data points, more quickly and efficient efficiently without having to build a bunch of custom reporting. And these data points will be pulling directly from your data, and so that will surface them up quite nicely. And so that is all we have today. Just wanted to thank you everyone so much for joining. And if you do have any remaining questions, we do have a team, like I mentioned, in the background trying to answer all the questions that they can answer. If we can't get an an answer back to you right now, we will make sure to follow-up, with you individually on those questions. But other than that, again, thank you so much for joining, and hope you have a good rest of your day. Thanks, everyone.