Name: From Evaluation to Impact: How Oak Hill Found the Right K-12 Technology Partner
Uploaded: 2026-09-17T18:31:27.545Z
Duration: 57 min 48 s
Description: From Evaluation to Impact: How Oak Hill Found the Right K-12 Technology Partner

Transcript for "From Evaluation to Impact: How Oak Hill Found the Right K-12 Technology Partner": Hi, everyone. Thank you so much for joining us for today's webinar, From Evaluation to Impact, How Oak Hill Found the Right k 12 Technology Partner. A few callouts as everyone gets settled. The webinar audio will be broadcast through your computer speakers, so, hopefully, you can all hear me. As always, you will receive the recording to today's session about twenty four hours after the fact. If you need captions, you can hover over the stage and click the CC button on the bottom of the screen to turn your captions on and off. If you encounter any audio or technical issues such as the slides or your screen freezing, usually a quick refresh of your browser is the best way to get it working again. And worst case scenario, you can leave and log in again. Please click on q and a on the top right to submit any questions that you might have for our presenters today. If for some reason we're unable to get to your question during the live session, we will do our best to follow-up after the fact. You can adjust the settings by using the cogwheel at the bottom of the event space. And last but not least, next to q and a, you should see the docs area. Please click on this to access several links and resources. We pride ourselves on being more than just a software provider. And as a former educator, I have to say our resources are top notch. I've called out a few links in the docs area, but I really encourage you to give them all a deeper dive. Our k 12 blog is your go to source for best practices. Posts are written by a variety of voices featuring industry thought leaders, partners from the Blackbaud marketplace, Blackbaud product experts, school peers, and more. Speaking of peers, of course, we're going to hear from one today. But I also want to encourage you to check out our customer stories for a variety of perspectives, solutions, and mission driven success stories. You'll also see resources in the docs area related to AI, our total school solution, an upcoming webinar that will complement today's session nicely, as well as a brief, deck for you to take as a leave behind as well. So here's where we're headed. We will start with a brief introduction of Blackbaud for those that may be newer to our company, talk just a touch about our k 12 vision, and then we'll get to why you're here today. We'll have a wonderful conversation with head of school, Pete Moore. Kristen will talk us through their evaluation, and then we'll hand it over to Emily to talk about the impact that they're seeing today. We'll give some time for questions with Pete so you can use the q and a area. If we have time, we'll do a brief solution overview. If we run out of time, again, we'll have those slides for you to reference as well. So who are we? If you are new to Blackbaud, we are the leading software provider exclusively dedicated to powering social impact. We're honored to be recognized with the various industry awards shown on this slide, but what's most important is what they mean for our school partners. They reflect Blackbaud's ongoing investment in innovation and our more than forty years of experience serving private and independent schools and the social good community at large. Everything that we're working towards is designed to help your school work more efficiently, create better experiences for families, and advance your mission. A central tenet of our work is helping our schools achieve more with Blackbaud, powered by our solutions and supported by our consultative approach. The schools shown above are a small snapshot of our robust K-twelve community. Thematically, you'll see schools increasing connectivity and visibility, decreasing manual workloads and processes, and raising more money to help power and support their missions. We know that schools today are balancing ambitious goals with real budget constraints and timing matters. So we're excited to introduce a limited time offer for our k twelve schools. You can get your first year free on new Blackbaud k twelve products. This offer is designed to remove upfront barriers, making it easier to explore solutions that can help your school operate more efficiently, engage your community, and deliver stronger outcomes across every office. We'd love to talk to you about what this could look like for your school. And speaking of talking with your school, as we go through today's session, I invite you to schedule a personalized one on one discovery call by clicking on the button on the top right corner at any time during the webinar. It says request a discovery call. One of our specialists will follow-up after the event to schedule a time to connect to learn more about your school's specific needs. So our k 12 vision. Everything we do, every product decision, every investment we make is guided by our North Star, our commitment to a total school solution, a purpose built platform that spans the full life cycle of your school's entire community. We've been doing this a long time, and we're incredibly proud to say that Blackbaud was the first to bring the concept of a total school solution to market for independent schools. This means a single connected experience that supports your school from initial application to enrollment to the classroom to financial management and all the way through to alumni engagement and giving. The vision hasn't changed, but how we deliver on it absolutely has. Today, our vision is a modern connected platform enriched end to end with Blackbaud AI. And what that enables is some something fundamentally different, all working together powered by a shared data foundation. So let's talk just a minute about connectivity. Our research shows that schools spend days each month syncing data. And in fact, NSU University School says that they saved over four hundred fifty hours annually by switching to our total school solution. We're also committed to continuing to expand our ecosystem. National data suggests roughly one in eight private school teachers leave the profession each year, making it essential to help you simplify your tech stack, reduce staff burden, and maintain consistent high quality experiences across your school. We want to give you the flexibility to connect the tools you already trust and extend functionality where you need it most without having to worry about complex integrations. Because at the end of the day, it's all about helping you get more value from an open growing network of solutions that actually work the way you do. Teachers and staff spend over half their day on administrative work, and I probably don't even have to tell you that. But at Blackbaud, we're asking how can technology, especially enhanced with AI, reduce the burden so that you can spend more time doing what's most important, empowering student success and supporting your school communities. We're not just bringing your data together so that it's stored in a system of record. We aim to make your data more accessible and actionable as part of a system of intelligence that's delivered in a way that's trustworthy, human centered, and accountable. So that's our foundation, and that's part of what we'll talk about today. Oak Hill's journey for a connected modern platform with unified data, end to end capabilities, extended value through partners. So now let's get to the conversation that you all showed up for about what that really looks like in practice. In just a minute, I can't wait to welcome to the stage Pete Moore, head of school at Oak Hill School. I'll then bring Kristen Catasso to the stage to talk about their journey and partnership through the evaluation, and then we'll hand it over to Emily Heim to talk to us, about what they're experiencing today. And so with that, Pete, I'll have you join me on the stage. Elizabeth? Welcome, Pete. Thank you so much for sharing your your time and your experience with us today. Before I hand it over to Kristen so that y'all can can talk through your questions, tell us just a little bit about yourself, and then, of course, about Oak Hill School. You shared some great photos with us. Yeah. So I'm originally from Australia. I taught in a public school for four years, then I worked in an independent school in Australia for six. I was a director of technology law school teacher and then director of technology there. Moved to the Bay Area in 2008 where my wife is from, and then taught in the Bay Area for a couple of years, then became a lower school head, then assistant head in the Bay Area. Moved to Chicago, was... Did the same role there, lower school head, and assistant head, then became a head of school in, in North Carolina. And then this is my fourth year at Oak Hill, which is in Eugene, Oregon. So, yeah, Oak Hill is a pre k through eight school, here in, as you can see, beautiful, Eugene, Oregon. We're on a 72 acre campus here and have to worry about, wild turkeys and, blocking the driveway and, coyote spottings at at times. So, yeah, it's a beautiful place to work. Awesome. Fantastic. Well, with that, I am very pleased to welcome Kristen, to the stage. I'm gonna stop sharing the slides. I'm gonna let you all have your conversation. And, of course, Kristen would welcome and encourage you to, to tell us just a bit about yourself, and then I'll hand it over to you all. Sure. Thanks, Elizabeth. Good morning. Good afternoon, everybody. My name is Kristen Cataso. If you are in the k 12 field, education field, most people know me as KC. So I hope when we go through an evaluation together, you call me KC. I've been with Blackbaud for five years, and I partner with wonderful people like Pete Moore and help them go through an evaluation process at Blackbaud. So let's define evaluation and what that means. There is no cost. There is no commitment. It is a partnership. And if anyone is concerned about gaining more enrollment, revenue growth, decreasing expense growth rate, filling gaps, automation. Let us come in and help you with that and define better efficiencies, hand over the data to you so that you can make an informed decision going further. So with that, Pete, it's so great to see you. I'm still waiting for my wallaby from down under, but it's, we're we're we'll we'll get to that. I know my my son keeps asking for it. Going right into, that evaluation, right, and you coming in as a head of a school at Oak Hill. Before you even spoke with Blackbaud, what challenges were you seeing at Oak Hill that made you realize it was time to evaluate a different approach? Yeah. So when I first came to Oak Hill, I did what is, often recommended for head of school. You did... That you're listening to or I spoke to a whole range of of people in term... In terms of, employees, trustees. I had parent sessions, spent about fifty hours in conversations when I first came. And then there was three main areas that kept on sort of coming up for us as areas of growth, that we needed to improve as a school. One was the overall employee culture. The school had gone through a lot in a pretty short period of time, including COVID like everyone else. And then... But the other two that really came up was we needed to, improve. We we framed it as operational excellence. We just needed to improve the operations of the school. And the third one was improving the the customer experience. And so... And then... So they were the the broad buckets that we were really focusing on. But then part of that, I'd worked in independent schools in The US, for around twelve, thirteen years at that point and had worked at schools with an integrated system like Blackboard. I did Blackboard at two previous schools, and and it was just so fragmented. As I've shared with you before, we had 16 different, systems that we were using, and it... The the experience of a parent here was quite difficult. And even as my... I had two children there at Oak Hill, and now one's graduated, but is, it was just very clunky and complicated to even be sort of on... Enrolled and everything. I was like, this... There needs to be a better way, and so that's where... That's how The Us starting to look at an integrated system started. I love it. I remember when I was looking at things from a high level outside, I could see that there was eight systems that you were running. And then when you allowed me to look under the hood with you, it was 16. And. I find that, quite thematic through all of my schools. They're running multiple multiple not multiple disparate systems. Yeah. So, what was the catalyst that actually moved you from a conversation to an actual evaluation with me? Yeah. I think one of the main things that we did was instead of starting with... Okay. We need a new software. We do... That my technology director and I started it. We step back and said, like, what do we need? Like, we really try to look at ourselves as a school and saying, where are our pain points? What what are issues, are families having, like, walking through that enrollment journey and then the experience here? So before we even started thinking about software, it was just really about an evaluation of what what are what are the stories that we're hearing from families? What are the problems that they're having? What are some of the pain points during the admissions process that might cause people to drop off where we were having trouble with, with people paying their bills on time because we had a different system for that and tracking who... Where people were with that. It was very just complicated being here. And so, again, we try to look at ourselves, and then that's where we just started listing what are all the system that we that we use and which of those connect with one another. And so once we got that really clear picture, we then started conversations with multiple vendors. My, my... Our tech director's amazing, Tim, and, you know, he's very clear, like, there's not one perfect solution for every school. Let's talk to as many as we can. Let's... And so that's that's really how the journey started with us. First, we looked at ourselves, what do we need, and then, started those conversations. I wanna go kind of goes in tandem with two big points that that you mentioned. And you talked about the end user, Uh-huh. which is extremely important. Right? Because parents are the customers. Parents drive enrollment. Parents influence retention. Parents generate participation revenue. So many schools unintentionally evaluate systems solely through the lens of administration and forget the parent experience. Yeah. I'm so glad that you had mentioned that. Tell me what thing stood out to you during our conversations that you were looking through the parent lens. Yeah. I think that the main thing was... Is that there was a real emphasis on the parent experience, and I'd experienced this as an as a parent at a previous school as well. We use Blackboard. And and so then removing everything else but just what that experience is like as a parent, and full disclosure, my daughter is now at boarding... Sao Edel's daughter is now boarding school, and they use Blackboard as well, and so I'm experiencing it as a customer. But is that if you wanna find information, you know where to find it. If you wanna look up... So we have a... When we first started here, our youngest was first grade. If you wanted to find parent information, you can look that up and you organize play dates. Instead of having to email people at at different times to find information. Information's available independent of time and space, and so I just like that that with the resource board, the real intentionality around the parent experience, And that was just that part of it. That was sort of the resource board and directory and things like that, let alone as we started learning more further on about tuition management, enrollment management, and all these other steps. So it was... That it was integrated altogether, but really about, like, if you are... If you, you know, walk through that journey, as a parent that it is that it is very seamless, and that's incredibly important, especially we're at a school that is beautiful. Like, the kids were having a wonderful experience, but we kept on hearing that the parent experience wasn't very strong, and so, could have been better. And so we just really tried to emphasize, let's think about that journey as a parent. And so... And clearly, Blackboard, when we had the initial conversations, we're thinking along the same lines, and so it felt we had a partner in that that way of thinking because often, it's not the way people think about it. They tend to think about, just the the educational side of things realizing that... And the teacher side of things are obviously incredibly important, but then sometimes the parents get left sort of behind a little bit. So I I heard... What what we were looking for was what you were talking about as we went through that. And thank you for calling us, a partner. I I appreciate that. I know we all strive, to be that. What was and I'm so glad that you and your IT director not only evaluated us, but benchmarked Blackbaud against other solutions. If you could choose three things that really solidified it for you as a partner in Blackbaud, Pete, what would those be? Yeah. I think probably number one would be that, the... I tend to move pretty quickly, and, and I think the implementation, the the the intentionality around implementation was really helpful. I think my initial thing was to bite off more than we could... Any school could possibly chew, and then, Blackboard, you know, you and other people I spoke with, like, I think you might need to slow down that little bit. Like, let's be very thoughtful, intentional. We can we can guide you through that. I would say that the the other one would be, there's multiple, so I'm just trying to choose. I would say just the the integration of data, which is... Was suddenly... We were we were always having to move things from system to system, and then families were getting pretty frustrated. They would say, hey. Like, I updated my email, say, in some system, and then it wasn't there, and then they were getting mailings to different places. And so the inter... Integrated data. And then I really like the the the onboarding solutions as well. We had these, these project managers that were able to talk us through. So as we were hearing that, it was, you know, really... I mean, again, using the term partners, but people willing to talk us through and, like, help guide us through this and then, a few other factors as well. And, you know, a price as well, which was, which was very important as well. Appreciate that. Well, in my last question before I turn it over to my wonderful colleague, Emily Heim, You as a head of school, if you could, reach all the other heads of schools, admissions directors, everybody that's on the call today, what would you say about engaging in evaluation now versus waiting? Yeah. I think that the... It's it's not as heavy a lift as you think it will be. If all you did is got the key stakeholders in the room, say your enrollment director, your tech director, the division heads, or whomever, carve out forty five minutes, and then, you know, you could do a post it note activity or something and just say questions such as, like, what are our big pain points? And just take three minutes to write them down. Right? What are possible... What what are our pain points for employees? Do that. What are pain points for, parents? And then, and then for students. And then you could then very easily, like, put them into categories, see what they are. And within, you know, probably half an hour, thirty five, forty minutes, you have a pretty clear picture of what of what your issues are and what you're trying to solve. But, unfortunately, I feel that sometimes we jump to solutions too quickly and meaning that just taking a short period of time to really just get clarity around what problem it is you're trying to solve. Because unless you know that, all solutions seem like they can appear because it can be overwhelming if... Especially if you don't have a tech background. They can feel somewhat similar, but then if you're very clear about what it is that you are aiming for, then you realize that there's quite a lot of variance between the different products and that sometimes you might be solving a problem that isn't really a problem at your school. And so that's what I would say to begin with is just carve out a short period of time, get the key players in the room. It might even add someone from your parent association or a trustee who's also a parent who experiences it, and you spend that time and then, you know, collate that data, then suddenly you have, in a very short period of time, a very clear road map, and then you're able to work with... You... You're able to do the demos with that very clear picture in mind. I love it. I love how you you you you painted such a a great picture. Thank you for that, Pete. I think that's just super value valuable advice for our k 12 schools. I'm gonna invite to the stage Emily Heim, my colleague. And she's a very important part of the Blackbaud ecosystem because what we pride on our ourselves is customer service. And I know you talked about that, Pete. Right? Thinking through things thoughtfully. I I know I slowed you down a couple times so that you wouldn't bite off more than you could chew. Right? And post implementation, we still are there for you. Blackbaud remains with our k 12 schools throughout the duration of your contract, so we never leave. So Emily and I work in tandem with each other, and now she is taking over your account. And, I'm going to turn over to her and have conversations about what that has looked like now post implementation. Thank you so much, Pete. Of course. Thank you for the intro, Casey. Appreciate it. Hey, Pete again. And, hi, everybody. My name is Emily Heim, and I am a Blackbody Con executive currently supporting Oak Hill School along with many schools across the Bay Area, Oregon and Washington. I live here in Portland, Oregon, and I worked in independent schools for the past fifteen years, including being ahead of school through the pandemic. Pete and I have connected about that. We, are both on the other side, thankfully, along with you all. And I just wanna pause and say thank you so much for everybody joining us today. I know how busy your times are, and, you know, this is really to focus on how we can support you all, by talking with Pete about his experience. And so now, I'm gonna just explain a little bit and chat with Pete about post implementation and kind of afterwards. And so, one of my roles that I love to do is I love to support schools who currently have Blackbaud, and I talk to a wide range of people from heads of schools, tech directors, advancement, and I've enjoyed supporting Oak Hill School. And so, Pete, I'd love to talk a little bit and learn from you about, you know, what has changed for you all the most after implementation? I know that you've talked about the parent experience, but I'd also love to hear about the administrative experience as well. What what outcomes are you seeing now that you're a couple years past that? Yeah. I think that the, I mean, I've talked about this a little bit, but just the the integration across the school is just really helpful. Like, the... If if a teacher's entering data that's going to our, going to our front office, it feeds into enrollment management in in terms... So that has been incredibly helpful. I think that the other thing is... And so much of this is... Happens behind the scenes. Like, any well run organization, you don't see the the, you know, the the... What's really happening. And so one of the biggest improvements for us has been around, tuition management. So we, outsource our... We have worked with an outsource accounting firm who are amazing based here in Oregon, Kern at Stokes. And they, are now our CFO, and we have this wonderful team that help us through this. And they we onboarded them about six months after we started working with Blackboard, and our tuition management system was just a mess, how we're collecting, payments and everything, clarity for parents. And so one of the the biggest changes for us is, from a financial point of view, is just to be able to note... Make sure that it's very easy for parents to sign up for what payment system works for them. It's very easy for us to... There's... And I won't go too much in the details, but the the system then sends out reminders. We have to do much less on the back end to ensure payments are in on time. Blackboard helps us with that follow-up, if there if there needs to be that. But also, again, as a parent, that's, that's very... It's much smoother as well. You can log into the account and change your your details and everything. So so much is behind the scenes is better. The enrollment management again, what's that experience like when you first inquire at a school, and then how does that help with your... Then your onboarding as that happens as well? And the, for our teachers, it was it was an adjustment because it was a different system as well. And so... But now, instead, if parents are looking for information about their children, they can log into the system. They can see the grades. In our middle school, very easy... Easily, you can then, log in and see that we did a map test, the map data, the previous reports. And so instead of having to parents like, I don't know where to find this, they're able to to do that as well, but they were able to find that on their own. But probably one of the biggest ones was the, the way that we use forms. So we still use a lot of paper for field trip permissions and all of these different things. And now we have a terrific front office manager, and so she's done a lot of work making sure that, reducing paper, getting information going into the system correctly, and then just cleaning up our data. So there are a few things that have helped. It's sort of really the the overall running of the business. And for our families, I I feel it's a much more professional experience that they have when they when when they they are onboarded through Blackboard. And I'm jumping around a little bit, but I I should... One of the things I did wanna mention... And so we were at this... Oak Hill was in a pretty tough position when I first came to the school, and we did... Collectively did a lot of work with our trustees and everything. And we've we've we've had a lot of success over the last three years, so enrollment is up 48% in three years with, where... It's up 25% in one year, and a lot of that is to do with what's the experience of the families. And I I probably might sound like I'm overstating that, but often with this... O'Keeffe was very good at getting families in, but they wouldn't always stay because there wasn't that emphasis on the family experience. So there's a... So the results we've seen of improving systems like Blackboard is increased retention, because of the the experience of of using, of using an integrated system. Yeah. I love to hear that, and congrats. I recognize. Thanks. that the landscape of enrollment is ever changing and challenging across the country. And that's one of the things that I love to talk to schools about and support schools in is how actually looking at your systems and overhauling systems can significantly improve, the overall experience of the admissions process, and then also the importance of retention. We keep hearing that over and over over the past many years. Right? But there are clear ways, and that's one of the reasons I work at Blackbaud actually is, because I get to support schools like you all and hear these pieces and help other schools, kinda continue to improve their processes. Thank you for sharing all this. And I love how... I know you jumped around a bit, which is great because there's. so many... I feel like schools are complicated places, and I love that you kinda connected about change, because I do hear or I hear that, especially when I talk to, like, CFOs or, like, tech director. They're like, oh, my teachers don't wanna change or, like, even if it's a pain. But I love how you have really just kind of, like, taken that on. What kind of advice would you give to, folks who are maybe in an environment where there might be some, you know, worry about change? You really... We've had this conversation where, like, you and I as leaders have kinda taken change on, but that can be scary too. How do you view that? How how have you kinda helped with the change management of this? Yeah. I mean, I... There's multiple things, but I think one of the most important ones when it comes to something like this is that you're not implementing a new technology. You're planning institutional change. And so if you come at it from that point of view, then you... What tends to happen is you then step back and say, okay. What do people need in successful change management? Right? In whatever organization, whether in schools or hospitals or like, a car dealership or whatever. Like, what do people need? Like, they need, they need clarity. They need, it to be unfolding at a pace that feels comfortable to them. They need support if they hit roadblocks. They also need to, like, feel a sense of accomplishment and and success. And and so just coming about, it's just like, okay. We're gonna... We're not embarking on a new software system. Right? We are embarking on institutional change, and just that bit of that change in mindset, can really help. And then it's also... I mean, the age old thing is that, like, is how do you then... You're supporting people, but then if people do, retire or they take other opportunities, then how in your onboarding of folks that... Or you're hiring, are you looking for people who are excited about change? So that's a that's a further down the road one, but it's really about recognizing that you have a a span of comfort with change. Some people, you know, we all know get so excited and jump in and I just... I can't wait to try this. This is gonna be amazing. Whereas other people on the other end of the spectrum might be really reserved, but also there's there's truth in all of it. And some of those people who are more reserved can help you go at a pace which is appropriate. Spot the spot the issues that other people might be having. And so I just think it is about just being, again, being intentional about the change management aspect of it. And... Because sometimes because of the the use... The ubiquitous use of technologies, sometimes we can push them a little bit too quickly rather than saying if we're going to do a new curriculum or something like that or we built a new building and we're moving everyone into it, then you'd probably slow down a little bit. And so that's what I would say is just the... It's... Don't think about it as a technology change. Think about it as an institutional change, and go at that pace that you would with other huge, well, other larger change management situations. Yeah. Thank you for sharing that. And I think that part of what Blackbaud aims to do is also help our... The folks that we're working with to evaluate, like, build that value, like, show you an experience of what you actually need, and how we can actually come in and support your whole team with that process. Yeah. I loved how you talked through how, you know, Casey kinda slowed you down with the implementation planning because, you know, you can only take so much in with the staffing that's happening. So we're happy to partner, to do that. So we've chatted about enrollment, and we've chatted about billing, which I love that y'all are, like, actually making more money using our systems because you don't have to chase as many people to pay your bills. That's. a great feedback. I love it. We've talked a bit about... Or quite a bit about the kind of family experience. We haven't touched yet on advancement. I know I've chatted with your advancement, folk, and, you know, we'd love to hear a little bit about you with kinda how has, you know, the process from admissions has improved. But I do know that you also have a great story kind of around your giving changes too with that razor's edge. Could you just speak to that side of things too? Yeah. So we'll... I'll... That was... We introduced, thankfully, with good guidance, the razor's edge later on, but I just wanna step back a little bit. So we didn't really have a robust, development office at all. We had this amazing teacher who, had a degree in finance and went to Harvard and was working part time as a math teacher. And I approached her, and I said, I think you could be great in development. And so... And then... So then she took on the role part time, then full time, and she's been exceptional. And what we've realized with that, so we were, using a program called Little Greenlight, actually parallel to Blackboard at first because, we were conscious of what... How many systems we are implementing. But then it is, it was about... So we then... And, fundraising went up a lot, and we... Rachel's done an incredible job. We've, got a lot of support from our community. And so then it was... One of the things that we spent a lot of time on is just, like, cleaning up our data. And, again, like, as we were going through the implementation, phase of of Raizer's Edge, it... The people were really good at helping us. Like, don't rush into this. Make sure you're getting your data in there, and so that it's clean. So then you can use it for multiple years because we had all these... This alumni data on, on different spreadsheets, and it was it was all over the place. We had some Salesforce information, little green light information, things on spreadsheets. So we're earlier on in that implementation now, but the... But, really, what I feel the work that we've done now has set us up for, for future success. And we we... Because we've taken the time to make sure we have the information, more correct... Correct. And it doesn't... It's not the most glamorous work that you can do, but it's also sort of multigenerational work. Like, if you clean that up now, you make sure you're getting your alumni data right, your... If you're alumni parents and things like that. So we've got a lot of support in that implementation, and so we're really at the earliest stages of that. Yeah. I loved connecting with Rachel and hearing her story too. And that's another thing I wanna emphasize is that as an account executive or, as Blackbaud, we don't just partner with a tech director. We don't just partner on one system. But, you know, we really wanna be talking with, and that's one thing, Pete, that I feel like you're getting more support and engagement because you're engaging with us. And that's. the... One of the pieces of advice I would love to share with the folks who are here is if you're not talking with your black boy people, like, reach out. We are here for you, and, you know, we can connect with different, areas and help. That's what we wanna do. And I love how you've really. Sorry. seen that. Yeah. Go for it. Sorry. Just very quickly, something I I I should have said is we've also just started the... On the wealth, the the wealth... The the data collection. I forget the name of the title. Sorry. Elliot? The the the the. Blackboard Wealth Management. Sorry. What is it? Sorry. Advanced Wealth Analytics. So it's. your actual, Advanced, screening Analytics. of donors. doing that work, which is an exciting. project. Yeah. And that... We've just started that, and that... It's pretty incredible, the data that we're able to now access. And, again, we're... We have another sort of implementation call next week with with a, with one of the, project managers to help us who's been really good. But, again, it's like a... It's not something we originally were gonna use, and... But then through different reasons, a a k... Opportunity for us to do so, and that that... Where... That's our most recent, implementation, and it's pretty incredible the the access to data that we get through that and why it's gonna shape our, our fundraising department going forward. I love how you brought that up. I just hosted a meetup here in Portland, Oregon, and I know Rachel wasn't able to go, but I followed up with her on details. But we had all of the Portland area schools, added that use Raiser's Edge, and we are talking a lot about, different tools for prospecting, AI, how we are, you know, how much is coming into our world, with these new pieces, and that's an area that we haven't touched on yet. AI is a hot topic, of course, but that's one thing that, has probably changed a lot actually just in our systems what... From when you evaluated to when you implemented to what is happening today. So I love that, you know, you are getting to experience even a better platform than the one you evaluated two. years ago. You know, how is your school considering or thinking about, you know, these additional pieces? Are you, using any of them yet? I know that some are just coming in. We've got future plans. Where is your school at with that? Yeah. I think that that you mean the more the more recent implementation of the the data analytics and things like that? Yeah. Or if you've seen any of the a little AI chat feature or I know... Yeah. And it... Yeah. So we haven't used the Blackboard's AI features very much at the moment. However, one thing we have been doing, similar to what I said before, is our middle school director and our tech director have been very deliberate about... We're trying the... What... How we're gonna be using black black... How we're gonna be using AI, what's our approach, what's that mean for teachers? What that means for. kids? And, again, I'm like a card carrying geek. Like, I got my, my first, Apple two e back in the eighties and I just love technology and was a technology director. So, again, it's something that I'm having to be... Like, are you... I I I really enjoy some of the features of AI and how that can, really help productivity in the way that we do things and think about things. But, again, we're we're slowing that down as well and saying, how can we be more intentional? So that... We... AI features we haven't used too much of, because we're just really trying to get... In terms of Blackboard, we're trying to get clarity around what that looks for us and how we wanna use that differently for kids and parents and administration and things like that. Absolutely. And I think those are some awesome conversations that I love to have with schools. I'm hearing... Yeah. Like, schools are on such a different spectrum, and even people within the same school are. But I really appreciated learning, a lot about it as an... A Blackbaud employee. and how we're viewing it really responsibly and and having these conversations to learn what people want, what they're needing. So it's been a really cool process to be on. So last question, before I kinda pass it off. I would like to know just... Is there anything that surprised you or that you didn't expect, like, a win that maybe wasn't obvious previous to, that you're experiencing now, today? What would something. be? I would say there's two. The first one is, that there were additional features and, products that were available through Blackboard that I wasn't really aware of or thought that we would use. And so the, the the data analyst is one of them for development. So that would that would be one is that... And there's even more and even as you're talking like, oh, man. I need to learn more about Blackboard's AI. Right? Like, there's there's... And it feels like there's other things. Yeah. And so I think that that is... You go in like we did with, like, we're trying to solve a very specific problem, but then over time, your horizons get get broader, and you're like, oh, wow. There's that solution and that solution, and so... Which is... Which was really great. So that's b one. And kind of the one... It's not very glamorous, and I've already mentioned it, but it's just the forms and checklists. So onboarding new families, getting that data instead of us chasing forms, just the banner at the top that says, you know, you have x amount of forms due. The amount of work that has saved, we're a small school. We're only 200. We have a very lean administrative team very... That we just lean across the school. And so having anything like that where parents can can implement the data for them, they can make the changes and and just, the updates across the system. So... Yeah. So really two. Like, one, the the broader spectrum of of solutions that I wasn't even aware of, and the other one is just checklists and forms. Like, it's it's amazing how good that has been. Yeah. I love that. many as well, but there are two that, like, top... Yeah. That really. come to mind. there's always new product updates happening. We've got our product update briefing coming up in November, and I just feel like even compared to last year, this year, Blackbaud has really ramped up in. what we are doing, in the systems, and that's something that I feel really proud of. And, it's fun for our, our partners, our clients to be able to see that too. So. thank you so much. It's been great to chat with you, and I'll follow-up on AI with you as well. But I'm gonna. pass it off. to, to Elizabeth again, to continue. And thank you. Awesome. Thanks, Casey. Thanks, Emily. Pete, thank you. I could listen to you talk for quite literally. hours and not just because your accent is phenomenal. Yeah. I'm gonna let you hop off and and take a quick sip. I will let everyone know that if there's a question for Pete, please feel free to put it in the q and a. We'll see if we have a couple of minutes. But with that, I do wanna welcome my colleague, Amy, to the stage. We weren't sure if we were gonna get to this, but Pete teed us up, beautifully, I think. We're just gonna go through what is really just a quick highlight reel. So for those that are on, this is not meant to be a demo by any stretch. We really would love to have that discovery conversation with you, start that evaluation here, and see what's most important to you and your community so that when you get to a proper demo with Amy or one of our wonderful colleagues, then it really will be tailored to exactly what you need. And Pete talked so much about the forms, and I don't think we even have those in here, Amy. So they're gonna have to schedule some time with you. But, Amy, Yes. I'm gonna hand it over to you to lead off with the resources area, and then I'll hop back up to close this out. Alright. Thank you so much. So one of the things that Pete said is there were so many features we didn't even know about, and I wanted to just give you all a chance to see a sneak peek into some of those features and how they can have an impact on your school. And I want to start here with the resource board. Now there was a question earlier. Hey. How did you get those pretty little icons? That is going to be customized for each school. Everything that you're gonna see today is our demo environment, but your school is in control of your look and feel. So we're gonna give you a platform that really speaks to the soul of your school. These are things that you can build out. As a quick note, I built these in Canva, and as long as you keep them all the same size, it's gonna be nice. Now the resource board is meant to be a digital bulletin board here for your families. They wanna go ahead and find information consistently. We don't want them searching. We want them to get to it. So this can be single sign on links. This can be information. This can be a direct link to that tuition management. Now in addition to the resource board, one of the next places we know families go is your calendar. You can have as many calendars as you need for your school. I know my kids always ask first thing in the morning, what's for lunch today, mom? My school posted up on a piece of paper on the bulletin board, and I check my kids off at the drop off line, so I have no idea. You can put this kind of information in your parents' pockets. This is all mobile responsive. They can subscribe. You can show things like early dismissal days, admissions events, alumni events so that everyone in your school community knows what's happening. Now if you have Blackbaud's learning management solution, you can also put on your calendar children, student, parent, faculty member, schedules. Where is my kid? What are they doing today? Their assignments, athletics, games, and practices so that parents know what's happening. Informed parents are happy parents. Happy parents are evangelists for our school, and that means better enrollment and better engagement for everyone. Now that happens automatically, all of this schedule and assignment. Your faculty members just put it in once, and it publishes everywhere. Now not only are they gonna be putting in assignments, I guarantee you your faculty members are already sending information home to parents, whether those are announcements or news stories or photos. Blackbaud gives you a platform to do that where, again, you create it once, publish it multiple places, and parents can consume it in a way that works for them. We offer these new streams, again, mobile responsive. I know that I'm not logging into my school's website, but I've always got my phone in my pocket. This becomes like your school's social media stream. I'm gonna see information that is relevant to me and my children. What are they involved in? What do I need to know? Stack rent. So once I get down to something I've already seen, I know I don't need to scroll anymore. Now all of that keeps me informed and engaged, keeps me coming back to the Blackbaud portal, but what we really want here is for parents to pay their bills on time. And Blackbaud does have two complete end to end tuition management and billing solutions. One is called tuition management, one is called billing management. They both allow you to reduce the delinquencies and give your parents clarity into their billing details. Tuition management is gonna be a single sign on, same username, same password. Parents do not need to have another username or password that they're managing. For them, it's just another tab on their browser. Billing management is fully embedded into our core platform solution so families don't need to navigate anywhere else. Now this gives them a convenient way to pay, reduces those phone calls to your school, those in school payments, and reduces confusion for parents. Now for parents, that's great, but we also wanna give you clarity into your financial solution. So, again, tuition management, billing management, each gonna give you a look into delinquencies, aging. You're gonna be able to add charges. You're gonna be able to manage your tuition. You're gonna be able to manage payments so that you have everything in one place. These both serve as a subledger to your general ledger, come over as a fully balanced set of information, reducing the amount of time that it takes your school to share the information between offices. And the better we share, the better we all work together. Now tuition, school policies, admissions, all come together here in a contract. Now if you are a continuous enrollment school, you can set up one contract. If you need families to sign one every year, these integrated contracts, either integrated with tuition management or billing management, automatically pull in the correct tuition, the correct required fees, and any optional fees for that family. You can also display financial aid if you're using Blackbaud's financial aid solution for both need based and non need based aid. Student discounts, faculty staff permission, state vouchers, all of that displayed in one cohesive place so that families know what they're paying, what the value of their education is, and how to make those payments. Now contracts are one of those forms that Pete talked about. We do, of course, have other forms that you can deploy, profile update forms, emergency contact forms. And families are gonna be able to see this when they see the holistic view into their child's experience at your school. So with Blackbaud student information system, you can choose what families can see. They can see report cards, progress reports. These can be narrative. They can be standards based. They can be a letter. They can be numerical grades, they can be a combination of all of them. They're gonna see their child's enrollments in classes, activities, athletics, their assignments, their graduation progress. Engaged parents support their children better. Supported children have better outcomes. And engaged parents mean, again, happy parents. Now for parents, we wanna make this as seamless and as easy as possible, but we also wanna do that for our faculty members. Our faculty members are going into the same portal. It is a role based solution. So, again, we don't need different passwords, different usernames, different websites. Everyone sees what they need to see. For our faculty members, we've made it easy for them to get to the information that they need on a daily basis. What's my schedule? Can I take attendance? Can I do it on my phone? And the answer is, yes, you can. They can access contact reporting, shared rubrics. They can access their grade books. They can access their rosters, student information, including that important medical information, especially if they're taking them off-site. So our parents have easy access. Our faculty have easy access. Our staff has easy access. That keeps everyone engaged and everyone happy. And as we know, happy parents are parents who are philanthropic. So Pete also talked about moving into fundraising, empowered fundraisers, those who know what's happening at your school raise more, engaged parents give more. With Blackbaud's total school solution, information from your student management system flows directly into our fundraising system. All of that wonderful demographic information becomes available for your advancement team. As those students graduate, all of that alumni information transfers over. So we're not sending information in bulk Excel files. We're all talking to the same parents in the same way from the perspective of a total school. Now these are some of the things that Pete talked about that Blackbaud is already doing, but Blackbaud is constantly innovating. So what you see today is gonna be just a portion of what you see in the future. And one of the places we're doing a lot of innovation here is on AI. Now this is not new to Blackbaud. We've been talking about and working with AI since 2001. So when you invest in Blackbaud, you're investing in a trusted AI partner. We are seeing things here like chat with AI, autonomous things like admissions agent. You get to decide at your school what is the appropriate amount of AI. We have candidate insights. We're taking a look at all of that data and synthesizing it for you. We've got that AI chat where you can ask natural language questions. I need a report of students who are absent today, and it can serve that up to you. We've got those assistants. So maybe I've got trouble with delinquencies, and I want collections assistant to help me draft an appropriate email to a family who's delinquent. We've also got autonomous AI like that admissions agent that can help manage those admissions for you. Now all of this comes together in Blackbaud's total school solution. And if you are interested in seeing how this would work for your school, we can set up a tailored demo for you, and I would be happy to do that and chat with you more. With that, I'm gonna turn this back over to Elizabeth. Thanks, Amy. That was phenomenal. I know that we are close to the top of the hour, but I did want to follow-up with a couple of key resources. We have talked so much about the value and importance of a partnership, and this is how we continue to partner with our schools and potential schools. As Amy mentioned, as Pete mentioned, you know, AI is is there. And what we're seeing is fascinating. About 85% of education and nonprofit professionals are already using AI in their work, but only about 10% right now feel confident that it's actually delivering transformative value. And that confidence, of course, changes as our schools and organizations mature in how they use it. This speaks exactly to what Pete was saying. We believe that true AI transfer transformation will lead to real outcomes, and the opportunity in front of us and in front of y'all as educators is how we use AI to find the time to focus on strengthening relationships with students, families, alumni, and donors. So as such, I wanted to highlight the AI Coalition for Social Impact. This brings together organizations, experts, and innovators to help remove barriers to responsible AI adoption. You'll see some familiar names here, including ATLAS, the Association of Technology Leaders for Independent Schools. This coalition is offering a free certification program designed specifically for the social impact community, including our private and independent schools. It gives your teams a practical way to build foundational AI skills grounded in security, trust, and responsible use. You won't wanna miss this opportunity to learn from some of the leading minds in this space. You can scan the QR code or check out the links in the docs area to learn more and register. Course one is available now. We had a fantastic time this July in Boston with our k 12 customers and partners. Across three days, more than 600 attendees experienced exciting keynotes and joined over 80 sessions that were focused on the future of school technology. I encourage you to check out the docs area where you can read more about the biggest announcements that came out of the UC in the newsroom article. And for those that are anxiously waiting, we are close to being ready to announce what's ahead for the return in July 2027. If you want to see and hear those announcements instead, there's also a link to an on demand, webinar that we held with leaders across Blackbaud K 12 called from insight to action, the next generation of k twelve school technology. Emily mentioned it. You won't want to miss our virtual product update briefings. So across solutions, our product managers will highlight recent releases and upcoming enhancements in greater detail than Amy was able to get to today in her power session. Save the dates on your calendar November seventeenth through nineteenth. Registration opens in early October. Wanna leave you with one more webinar. Hopefully, you enjoyed today as as much as we enjoyed having you here. Coming up on September 29, Will Redway will join me for a session called is your school ready for what's next? How to know when good enough technology is no longer enough. So we heard from Pete today we heard from Casey and about you know their experience and we're gonna continue to walk you through some of the key things, to help support you in your conversation and or future evaluation. So, Amy, thank you for your time. Casey, Emily, Pete, thank you so much. Thanks to those that joined us. You will receive the recording to today's session, and we hope you have a great rest of your day. Thanks.