Name: Blackbaud Raiser’s Edge NXT® Executive Insight: Leading Your Mission Forward with the Unified View
Uploaded: 2026-02-24T19:01:10.453Z
Duration: 32 min 20 s
Description: Blackbaud Raiser’s Edge NXT® Executive Insight: Leading Your Mission Forward with the Unified View

Transcript for "Blackbaud Raiser’s Edge NXT® Executive Insight: Leading Your Mission Forward with the Unified View": Hello, everyone. Welcome. Welcome. Give everyone a moment to get logged in here. I am really excited to be here with you today and with Trit as well. Welcome everyone to our session today on Blackbaud Razor's Edge NXT executive insight, leading your mission forward with the unified view. Now to start us off, a little bit of context for today's session. Today isn't a product demo. It's a leadership conversation about impact, outcomes, and how Razor's Edge NXT supports strategic fundraising performance. Today, we'll look at how the new executive impact report helps connect where you are today with what's coming next. And before we get into all the goodness, a few little housekeeping items for those who haven't been in a Goldcast webinar before. The audio is coming through your computer speakers, so just adjust your settings if you're having any issues. Any technical issues like freezing, refresh your browser, or hop out and hop back in, and that should resolve things for you. We'll also ask that you use the q and a tab today for any questions you have. You'll see on the right hand side of your screen the chat. I see lots of hellos coming in, so thank you for that. You also have a q and a tab. So any questions that come up, pop them in there. We'll do our best to get to them today. But keep an eye on the Blackbaud community for more updates, if there's any questions we can't get to. And you'll find helpful links in the docs tab of some of the resources that we'll touch on today. Lastly, you will receive a recording of this session by email in about twenty four hours, and there's a copy of the slides in the docs tab. Alright. So to kick us off, a couple quick introductions. My name is Kimberly Cote. I'm a customer success manager on our Blackbaud Canada team. And with me is the amazing Trit Mulligan who leads our Razer's Edge NXT product management team. Today, I'll start by walking you through what the executive impact report is and why it matters to leaders. And then Trit will take you into what's coming next and how those innovations build on that insight. Great. And keep the introductions coming. I love seeing all the chatter there in the chat. Thanks, folks. So why it matters. When I talk with fundraising leaders, I hear a very consistent reality. There's more pressure to prove impact in ROI and less time for analysis and higher expectations for clarity and confidence. Most organizations already have the data. The challenge is turning that data into insight leaders like you can trust, share, and act on. You don't need more reports. You need insight that helps you focus your teams, really prioritize where that time and resources will have the greatest impact. And that's why executive insight matters right now. So very excited. The new executive impact report is a leadership level summary of your fundraising performance, and it's built for executives and boards, and it focuses on outcomes rather than that day to day activity. I've had the pleasure of being closely involved in the pilot behind this report as well as the soon to come Financial Edge NXT executive impact report. Excited for you to see that as well. And what stood out to me is how quickly leaders connect with these insights. The usage benchmark answers a simple question I hear all the time from leaders like you folks. Are we fully leveraging the tools we've invested in, especially compared to similar organizations? So that usage view in the report compares how key areas of Razor's Edge NXT have been used over the last twelve weeks at your organization against peers of similar size and vertical. Then for our US customers today, the report also highlights core fundraising outcomes like retention, growth, and donor engagement. And the last slide of your report has more details on those metrics. And for those of you outside The US like me, these metrics are coming later for other regions. Now when I walk through this report with executive teams, it changes the conversation. Instead of debating numbers, leaders focus on what's working, what to celebrate, and where a small shift can make a meaningful difference. It gives them clarity without complexity. And the real value of the executive impact report is what it enables next. It helps you as leaders quickly identify what's working, where a little attention might be needed, and how to align those fundraising, finance, and executive teams all around shared priorities. And in my experience, it creates that momentum. Decisions happen faster and with more confidence because everyone's looking at the same trusted data. That's also why understanding what's ahead for Razer's Edge NXT matters as well. The report shows you where you are today, and what Trit is about to share really builds on that foundation. So without taking up any more time, I will hand it over to Trit to walk you through what's coming next. Thank you, Kimberly, and welcome, everybody, to the session. I thought we would start with just a quick poll on how you are and it is there we go. On which of these KPIs on the scorecard best represent your board's fundraising health? So, Kimberly, if you could launch that. And everybody just take one second. We'll do this pretty quickly. Where are you focused on retention rates, recapture, acquisitions, revenue per donor, active donor growth, percentage of active sustainers? Already seeing it. Not seeing any votes coming through. Looks like I'm starting to see a couple of votes coming through. There we go. There we go. Yeah. A lot of folks we you know, folks that I talk to, retention rate is extremely important, especially now in these days and times, to keep the ones that you have and continue to make them grow. So let's do a second poll, and let's talk about where do you lose the most staff time today. Is it in gift entry, in data cleanup, stewardship follow-up, Or is it something else? Data cleanup. You know? And importantly, you're gonna we're gonna hear a little bit more about this today as I talk about, you know, how we're leveraging, you know, AI. Data cleanup is gonna become more and more important, as you're doing more analysis on the data that you do have. So thank you for that. Helps us kind of, like, set the the bench of, you know, the conversation for today. But let me just, go ahead and move right into this, which is, you know, this statement, we treat we treat your insights as product fuel, captures how we think about our road map and how we partner with leaders. Everything you'll see next is grounded in our out in outcomes. The results you're accountable for, growth, efficiency, adoption, and confidence in decision making. We don't start with features. We start with the questions that leaders ask. How do we grow revenue and donor value? How do we scale teams without adding complexity? How do we ensure adoption of modern workflows? How do we turn data into action, not just reporting? Your insight shared through conversations, feedback sessions, town halls, and real world usage are what shape our priorities, but just as important, we believe in closing the loop. That means being explicit about how feedback translates into road map decisions and how those decisions tie back to measurable outcomes. This is not a road map of isolated enhancements. It's a road map designed to help leaders move the metrics that matter, adoption, efficiency, fundraising performance, and confidence at scale. So as we get into what's coming, the lens is to use is simple. How does this help my organization perform better? That's the bar we hold ourselves to, and that's the story this road map is meant to tell. First, an explanation of how we're thinking about AI. It is at a system level, not as isolated features, but as support across the full life cycle of fundraising and donor management. When we stepped back and looked across how you actually work in Raiser's Edge, from prospecting and moves management to stewardship, reporting, and performance, we saw a common pattern. The challenge isn't a lack of data or tools. It's the cognitive load of pulling everything together, deciding what matters most, and knowing what to do next. So instead of starting with where can we add AI, we started with where do fundraisers and the admins who enable them spend the most time interpreting information, stitching context together, or second guessing decisions. That's why our priority use cases span all aspects of donor management and fundraising, from prospecting and pipeline optimization to engagement, stewardship, reporting, and strategy. These are the moments where intelligent assistants can genuinely help. And it's important to be clear. This isn't about replacing your expertise. It's about leaning into it. We're grounding these assisted workflows in Blackbaud's data products, predictive models, and institutional knowledge. Combined with your judgment, your understanding of your donors, your mission. The goal is to reduce the friction between insight and action to help you move faster from what am I seeing to what should I do next, whether that's prioritizing outreach, refining a move strategy, or understanding performance without running five different reports or more. It's also important to say this is a journey. What you're seeing today is not the end state. It's the foundation. We're intentionally building toward more and more sophistication over time. Layering in deeper insights, stronger recommendations, and tighter integration is both the technology evolves and as we learn how you actually use these tools in the real world. Our prioritization will continue to be driven by real usage, real outcomes, and real feedback. As new capabilities become viable and as we see where assistance is truly earning its place in your workflows, we'll evolve these experiences alongside you. Over time, what this creates is a more connected experience in Razor's Edge where assistance shows up inside the workflows you already trust, respects the way you work today, and helps you focus more of your time on relationships and impact. That's the direction we're heading: practical, human centered assistance that earns its place in your daily fundraising work. Of course, none of this works unless it's built on a foundation of trust. And these capabilities don't just magically appear in the product. They're enabled by deliberate platform decisions around security, privacy, and responsible AI. So let me show you how we're helping teams move from data to action, not just dashboards. With our new home page and custom tiles, you can now track your outcomes. One of the key outcomes many organizations care about is increasing revenue per donor. Instead of asking teams to hunt through reports, Razor's Edge surfaces this insight directly on the home page as a clear performance signal. In this example, the system shows how we're performing against that metric and how we're trending over time. Here, it's telling us that revenue per donor is below benchmark and declining month over month. That immediately answers two of your questions: Where are we underperforming, and is it getting better or worse? From there, AI translates that insight into recommended action. Based on peer benchmarks, it identifies the top priority, first stop the decline, then intentionally move donors up in value, and lays out practical steps the team can take using the tools they already have. For example, it highlights a group of donors who have the capacity to give more but currently aren't. That's a direct measurable lever tied to revenue per donor and helps fundraisers focus their time where it has the highest impact. The broader point is this. Instead of static metrics, Raiser's Edge connects performance benchmarking and action in one place. And with new customizable home page tiles, leaders can ensure teams stay aligned around the outcomes that matter most. So if you haven't logged in recently, I would encourage you to go check out many of the new custom tiles we have given to give you more insight into your KPIs. And what we're doing with Blackbaud AI chat is fundamentally changing how teams interact with data inside Razer's Edge NXT. Instead of asking users to learn where information lives or how to frame the perfect query, We meet them where they are already in the product and help guide them through toward the right questions and answers. The chat experience is context aware. It understands what area of Razor's Edge you're working in, and it tailors its responses accordingly. That means users don't have to guess what to ask. The system helps shape effective questions and deliver suggestions that are relevant to their current task. When answers are provided, we also emphasize transparency and trust. In many cases, the chat includes source verification links so users can see exactly where the information came from. That's important for confidence, especially when decisions or reporting are involved. And another key benefit is clarity. The chat experience is designed to reduce ambiguity by guiding users toward better questions and clearer answers, helping them move forward with confidence instead of second guessing the data. And looking ahead, we're continuing to reduce friction even further. With the upcoming AI prompt library, users will have access to curated prompts that help them ask the right questions faster, reducing guesswork and accelerating results, especially for newer or less technical users. The bigger picture here is this. Blackbaud AI chat isn't just about getting answers. It's about empowering users to make better decisions faster directly inside the tools they already use every day. And if acquiring new donors is a priority KPI, the challenge isn't identifying that goal. It's knowing where to focus effort to actually move it. Razor's Edge helps teams to do that by narrowing attention to the right prospects, not just more prospects. In this example, we're looking at prospect insights that surface individuals with high potential but low or inconsistent engagement. These are people who look strong like strong future donors based on capacity based on capacity and that they converted at the level that they would have expected. Instead of asking fundraisers to manually analyze profiles or rely on intuition, the system highlights these prospects automatically and explains why they matter. It shows estimated giving potential, likelihood to engage, and how that compares to similar donors so teams understand both the opportunity and the rationale behind. What's especially important here is that it isn't just a score. It's guidance. The platform recommends next best actions like prioritizing outreach, assigning the prospect to a fundraiser, or adjusting the engagement strategy. That creates a direct line from the KPI, which is new donor to acquisition, to daily activity. For leadership, the value is focused on consistency. Teams are spending time on prospects is like most likely to convert, not just the loudest or more more or most familiar names. And because this is built into Razor's Edge, it scales across teams without requiring custom reports or specialized expertise. And once we've identified the right prospect, the next challenge is knowing exactly what to do consistently and at scale. This is where razor's edge AI moves beyond insight and into action planning. In this example, the AI analyzes everything it knows about a specific prospect, their giving history, capacity indicators, engagement patterns, and current opportunity, and then generates a personalized action plan tailored to that individual. Instead of a generic best practice, the system recommends a sequenced set of actions designed to move this prospect forward. That might include outreach timing, suggested engagement strategies, and the most appropriate next steps based on where the prospect is in their journey. What's important here is that the plan is contextual and explainable. Fundraisers can see not just what to do, but why those actions are being suggested, grounded in the prospect's profile and behavior. And for leaders, this creates consistency without rigidity. Every fundraiser benefits from AI informed guidance but still applies judgment and relationship knowledge where it matters most. This helps reduce variability across teams while raising overall effectiveness. The broader scale value is scale. This approach makes it possible to deliver thoughtful, individualized strategies across hundreds or thousands of prospects, something that simply isn't feasible manually. The result is a clear line from prospect insight to tailored action to measurable progress, all embedded directly into the workflow teams already use. And the final step is making sure great plans actually turn into meaningful engagement. Once AI has helped identify the right prospects and generate these tailored action plans, Raiser's Edge focuses on execution, making the next best action clear, timely, and easy to act on. In this view, fundraisers see what's coming up next with all the relevant context already assembled for them. Instead of preparing from scratch or piecing together information from multiple places, the system brings together recent interactions, recommended actions, and prospect highlights in one place. What's especially powerful, here is the guidance, is practical and immediately usable. For each upcoming engagement, the platform summarizes the situation, suggests the talking points or follow-up actions and explains why those actions matter. So fundraisers are confident walking into every interaction. This reduces the cognitive load and variability, experienced fundraisers save time and newer team members benefit from built in coaching that reflects best practices without needing constant oversight. For leadership, this is where the strategy becomes reality. You can be confident if the priorities you care about acquisition, upgrades, and retention are consistently reinforced through clear guided engagement activities, not just dashboards or plans. The result is better preparation, more meaningful conversations. And once you're executing consistently, the next question leaders ask is how do we know what's actually working? And this slide shows that we connect performance outcomes to real fundraising results by embedding AB testing directly into the online giving experience. On the left, see performance outcomes tied to the KPIs organizations care most about: recurring giving, average gift, and donor retention. These aren't abstract metrics. They're directly influenced by the decisions we make in the donor experience. On the right, you see an example of a tested experience. In this case, we presented the option to give monthly as a default. Rather than assuming what donors will respond to, we test variations in a controlled way and let donor behavior tell us what works. The value comes from the learning. In this example, AB testing showed that devolting to monthly giving increased the number of monthly donors without negatively impacting overall conversion. Even more interesting, donors who declined the monthly option still increased their one time gifts, driving lift across multiple KPIs, not just one. And that's the power of experimentation. Small, intentional changes create insights that compound over time. Those insights then feed back into product decisions, AI recommendations, and best practices across the platform. And moving all GIF processing to WebView is more than modernizing the interface. It's about improving speed, consistency, and confidence in how GIFs are entered and processed. To drive adoption successfully, we're focused on a few clear priorities. Parity plus improvement, the initial phase of WebView batch gift entry delivers full parity with the current form view while also introducing meaningful quality of life enhancements. This ensures teams don't feel like they're giving something up to move forward. They're gaining speed, efficiency, and a more modern workflow. Second, productivity and ease of use, is important. WebView is designed to be faster and more intuitive. Keyboard driven interactions, a cleaner grid layout, and streamlined workflows reduce the friction. Trust through user driven design is third on the list. Your your users and your team has given us a shape by customer feedback from town halls to the idea bank and product update briefings, And that feedback loop is critical for adoption because users can see their input reflected in the product, building confidence in the direction we're taking. WebView becomes the preferred way to work because it's faster, clearer, and built around how users actually do their jobs, not because they're forced to change. And adoption doesn't happen because functionality exists. It happens when the product is easy, fast, and intuitive. This slide highlights improvements to reviewing constituent records, it's a good example of why usability is one of the strongest levers we have to drive adoption of WebView and Razor's Edge overall. From customer research and user experience surveys, we know the ease of navigation, learnability, and performance are directly correlated with satisfaction and usage. When those improve, adoption follows. When they don't, even powerful features go underused. In fact, recent Razor's Edge User Experience Survey results show statistically significant improvements in navigation and learnability when usability improves, while also reinforcing that working across multiple interfaces creates friction and slows adoption. That's why the constituent record refresh is focused first on performance and usability, not just new capabilities. The goal is to make the most common workflows like reviewing giving history, understanding relationships, and seeing recent activity faster and clearer at a glance. What you see here is a more streamlined layout, improved information hierarchy, and reduced cognitive load. Users don't have to hunt for context or jump between screens to understand a constituent. They can orient themselves quickly and act with confidence. This matters because constituent records are one of the most frequently used services in Razer's Edge NXT. Improving usability here has an outsized impact. It shortens onboarding for new users and increases self-service for less technical ones. And one of the fastest ways to slow adoption is to make people work harder when they should get access to their data. Data extraction is a daily mission critical task for many razor's edge users, Historically, it's been one of the most confusing. Users had to understand the difference between query and export, create multiple artifacts to get the same result, and mentally translate how data would appear once it left the system. This initiative reimagines that experience with a simple principle, one path from question to data file. In WebView, users choose the result layout at the moment they create a query, whether it's a single row export ready or a multi row analytical view. That eliminates the need to create a separate export and removes decades of learned confusion between tools, an issue cited as a source of friction for users. The impact on adoption is significant. First, it reduces cognitive overhead and users no longer need to remember which tool to use to get the outcome. Fewer decisions, fewer steps, and fewer mistakes mean people feel more confident working in WebView. Those are just a few examples of how the insights are shaping our roadmap. Our timelines have not changed. We're still planning on a full unified view in 2027. Our commitment to a unified view remains strong, and that is why you will see our road map focused on core business functions in 2026. Now is the time to start planning for the transition. Ask the right questions, explore your workflows, and get ready to make the most of the unified experience. And as we presented in the November product update briefings, our roadmap remains focused on the most important areas to move forward to drive the most of value to you and your team. In the next product update briefing in April, we'll provide progress towards this overall roadmap. We've streamlined our road map for easier viewing. We want to make sure that there's no disruption as you're transitioning to the unified view. There are a lot of resources to help you with change management that you can leverage to plan. If there are critical gaps not covered in the roadmap that would prevent you from making the transition, please let us know. You can provide us feedback via the survey at the end of this webinar, the idea bank, the community, or your Blackbaud advocate. While we expect those functions to move, there may be times that workflows and business processes may need to be updated to take advantage of more modern functionality. Your feedback is critical for a smooth transition. And with that, I'm going to turn it back over to Kimberly to close us out. Awesome. Thank you so much, Trit. That was really amazing, and thank you all for your engagement and your questions throughout. Sorry. I'm really bright here. We're we're doing our best to to keep up with that. I'm going to launch a survey for you all. You will see it over, sort of over that engagement console, so where the chat and q and a are. We would love your feedback. We want these sessions to be as valuable for you all as possible, and finding all the ways we can to share these resources with you. So please take a moment to fill that out. While you do, I will just highlight again to check out the docs tab kind of in the middle of that engagement console. You'll find some great links. The Blackbaud Razors Edge NXT resource center is a relatively new resource we've launched. It's kind of like your one stop shop for all of the great resources. So check it out if you haven't already, bookmark it, and thank you. Thank you everyone for taking the time to join today. We hope this is helpful. If you would like a copy of your executive impact report, please reach out to your customer success manager. If you don't know who that is, go to blackbaud.com, log in, go to the admin port portal, and you will, find your CSM there. We would love to connect with you on this. Thanks, everyone, and thanks, Trit. Have a great day, folks.