Name: From Veracross to Value: A Blackbaud Customer Panel + Demonstration
Uploaded: 2026-02-23T19:46:42.123Z
Duration: 59 min 24 s
Description: From Veracross to Value: A Blackbaud Customer Panel + Demonstration

Transcript for "From Veracross to Value: A Blackbaud Customer Panel + Demonstration": Hey, everyone. We are so glad that you could join us for today's session from their cross to value, a Blackbaud customer panel and demonstration. Just a few quick pieces of housekeeping. The webinar audio will be broadcast through your computer speakers, so, hopefully, you can all hear me. As always, you will receive a recording to today's presentation 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 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 the Blackbaud team. If we aren't able to answer your question during today's session, know that we will follow-up thereafter. Next to q and a, you'll see the docs area. Please click on this link to access several links and resources that you might want to access during today's presentation and save for future reference. You can adjust any settings by using the cogwheel on the bottom of the event space. I wanted to let everyone know that Sophie, one of our reps, is on the webinar today, and she is ready to message with you. Hey, Sophie. Sophie's here to help answer sales specific questions and further understand current pain points. Talking with her is really easy, just five to ten minutes over chat or the phone, and it's the fastest way to get information on how Blackbaud can help meet your school's specific needs. She can help get you connected with an account executive for next steps as quickly as the next business day. So if you have any sales questions, you can hover over that messages area, send a message to Sophie, and she'll help get you started. There's also a link to book a meeting with her in the docs area as well. Thanks, Sophie. So just a quick reminder that things can change. The majority of what we will end up showing in our quick highlight reel today is live and in product and or it's in development and nearing general availability. We want you to let you know though that while the detail some details might change, but our overall vision remains consistent. As shown in the visual here, with more than forty years of experience in private and independent k through 12 schools, Blackbaud offers a total school solution that connects every facet of your school. We have the essential software to connect enrollment and academics with your business office and development, all with a robust single sign on family portal, ensuring that everyone has the tools and information they need to drive student success. I wanna briefly frame what we mean when we talk about Blackbaud's total school solution because it's often misunderstood. When we talk about a total school, we're not talking about forcing every office onto one system or asking schools to replace everything at once. For us, a total school solution means connecting the offices that matter most to your school's mission and sustainability using shared data, role based access, and systems built for the specific work work that each team does. Some schools start with advancement. Others might start with the business office or or enrollment, and some move one department, whereas others might move several. So what you'll hear today are real examples of how schools identified a need and chose Blackbaud where it delivered the most value. The former teacher and me likes to give you a little bit of a road map of what's coming, so we're gonna start with a customer panel. We'll have a quick product demonstration, and then we'll wrap up with some key announcements with lots of good shout outs. So please stay for that. In just a minute, I am very happy and appreciative to welcome our panelists to the stage. We have Jim Bob Womack, Julia Martin, Bobby Crime, Glenn Waring. We'll round it out with Whitney Donnelly and Jess Creech. So I'm gonna stop sharing my slides and ask that our panelists join us on the stage. Awesome. Okay. So I kinda picked this up a little bit, but today's conversation brings together leaders from three different schools, different sizes, missions, and operating models who chose to transition either their school or a specific office to Blackbaud. I wanna set the tone for our discussion. Today's session is not about critiquing another provider, but really some of our panelists use Veracross for some parts of their school, and others use it for other things. All of them bring a deep respect for the technology ecosystems that they've worked in. Our goal is to understand why in their unique context, each school identified a need that Blackbaud was best positioned to meet and the outcomes that they're seeing today. So our discussion will talk about decision making, change management, cross office alignment, and the value that their teams are experiencing. Each school is different, so you will hear diverse perspectives rooted in real problems, real constraints, and real opportunities. So before we begin, I wanna thank our panelists for sharing their time and insights with us today, especially with some Northeastern weather. And let's start by having each of you briefly introduce yourself, your role, and your school. So, Jim Bob, we'll start with you. Thank you, Elizabeth. My name is Jim Bob Womack. I'm the assistant head of school for advancement, in San Antonio, Texas at Saint Mary's Hall in San Antonio, Texas, and the weather here is 61 degrees and sunny. So I'm I'm winning, but I won't be winning this summer. So if that's just any consolation. Saint Mary's Hall is a pre k three through twelfth grade coed day school. And in my role, I oversee our admissions, communications, and, fundraising development advancement functions. I'm really excited to be here. Fantastic. Thanks so much, Jim Bob. I will kick it over to the team from Tilton, and we'll start with Bobby. I'm the assistant head for external operations at Tilton School. Tilton is a nine through postgraduate boarding school in Tilton, New Hampshire, where we are just far enough north where it's not snowing here today. Great. I'm Glenn Waring, director of finance and operations here at Tilton School. It is not 60 and sunny, but as Bobby said, it is also not snowing. So we're the southern part is. I've been here a little over five years. With Blackbaud, we've we just transitioned within the last twelve months for both admissions, enrollment, and now getting ready to move over to tuition management, and we've been on razor's edge for a while. Thanks, Glenn. And, Julia, we will round it out with you. Well, I'm home with my kids on a snow day just outside of DC. I am Julia Martin. I'm from Green Acres School. We are a small progressive pre k three through eighth grade school, again, just outside of Washington DC. I was an elementary educator for about twenty years before coming to my role as the assistant to the head of school. And as an alumni of Green Acres, I am a parent, my two non at school students, and now I work there. So I wear a lot of hats, which has been really interesting. We transitioned to Blackbaud starting in January 2024, and we actually moved everything, business, advancement, student learning, enrollment, admissions, and I actually had the privilege of moving it up and setting it all up. Awesome. Thanks, everybody. So to start us off, and Julia kinda touched on this a little bit, but I wanna explore the moment when each of your schools began reevaluating what you needed from your systems. So, Jim Bob, what capabilities did you decide that the development office needed as you considered Saint Mary Hall's Saint Mary's Hall's advancement goals for the future, and how did that point you towards Razor's Edge NXT? So I started at at Saint Mary's Hall in, July 2020, and I was coming from a razor's edge school. And and so just candidly knew that and had that in my background and came here, and we were using as a one school solution. And as I kinda dove in, I I just realized how limiting it was for our development work. And I I don't know that it was limiting for everybody, but from the development lens. And, actually, my head of school, we have really big ambitions coming into both of our interviews. He also started in July 2020. You know, lot lots of talk around campaigns and the work we would need to do and and really going from good fundraising to to really great systematized fundraising. And I just I I found that we were limited, and he he actually asked. He said, are do you have the tools you need to be successful? And the answer was no. And what I saw quickly was we didn't have notes on donors. We had done a campaign in 2015, but I didn't have anything other than just kind of gift tables and things that were showing me names of donors and what they had given. And there was really no stewardship program and just nothing was being done. I I think we were running a really good annual fund through through our system at the time, but if we had ambitions for a campaign, I knew we needed to do more. So I spent about three years talking to our sales rep, at at Blackbaud and just got phenomenal partnership there, trying to really understand Andy Gov took me through this and and trying to really understand what we needed and and what our limitations were and trying to content consistently, solve some of those problems for us and show what we could if there was increased, functionality. So for us, I think what we really had to analyze so that we my my number one goal was how to build a real major gift operation. Right? I think we had good art art, but the science didn't match it, and we needed to systematize. So they that historic, historically strong philanthropy, which is kinda back in the napkin. Right? So, wanted to to up our systems there. We shifted. We're now in our second year. It's been about six months transitioning. F y twenty five was our first year in the in the in Razor's Edge, and this is our second. I think we've been able to already, and we'll talk more about this too. But, right now, we needed to analyze how we could build pipelines, how we could do moves management, and how we could do stewardship in the right way. Fantastic. Thanks. We definitely will dig in in a little bit later. Julia, for Greenacres, what sort of pressures or sustainability considerations made a platform change necessary for your school? were trying to right size our entire, You know, the programs and the systems that we needed for 350 students was very different than for 200 students. And, obviously, 200 students, that's a different amount of money and and a budget to have. So that was a big part of it. We found that we, you know, through through all the normal reasons, we were losing a ton of knowledge to staff departures. And, oh, this is how it works and so forth. And so we really were finding that to try to rebuild we needed to start fresh, to rebuild, and then have a chance. One of the big pushes budgetarily that helped us to drive us towards Blackbaud was when we were with Veracross, we had a technology based software specialist who was a consultant and who did all of our database management and very technical role and as a consultant charged as you would expect. However, we were able to move our entire system, and now it's being run by somebody who is an elementary educator. I I have more technology than probably your typical teacher, but we were able to do that shockingly with few tiers. And now the system, you know, matches the size of our school and our programs and and so forth. Fantastic. The former teacher in me is very proud of you. Bobby, looking holistically at Tilton's operational goals. So financial sustainability, clarity in your enrollment data, cohesive institutional reporting. What made a unified Blackbaud ecosystem the right fit for Tilton? Great question. Similar to Julia, I think when I started in the 2024, we we were using multiple systems and the one learning and admissions platform that we were using, which was Veracross, there were two people in our whole employee body that understood how to pull data, how to pull reports, and sort of how to accurately report data. And that was really hard for me because I'm a systems person. I love databases. And I I think the conversation about shifting to Blackbaud had already begun. Full transparency, the director of enrollment at the time and I both had experience with Blackbaud, so we were sort of pushing in that direction because we had experienced sort of the use of it, the communication side for for parents and also prospective families. So we understood sort of how the system worked and so so we knew if if we went in that direction, we would jump right in. In terms of just general one system throughout, it it's just so much easier because everyone is on one platform. And so everyone knows where to go for information from parents to faculty to students to prospective families. And then even alums know that the platform and then the the board members were chomping at the bit in January to get on, so we've added board members as well. So it's just a really, really interesting and, you know, with resource boards, you can provide information to only one constituency or have it be multiple constituencies. So it's just really it makes it so much easier to be able to provide information and also to collect data and have it be consistent. So it's not well, depending on how you pull the data, like, you know, it's 20 it's 20 students off or it's $3,000,000 off. Like, we're all on the same system, and we're all looking at the same reports, which makes it much easier. Fantastic. And, Glenn, we're gonna get to you in just a minute. But before I move on, anything else that you want to add to what Bobby shared with us from your finance and operations perspective from Tilton? The only thing I'll add quick is, what we've seen is just the efficiencies of the system, as far as much easier to use, much easier for folks to learn. So, therefore, the the training implementation time is much quicker, as well as information being able to pull with a little bit of training can get down to the to the level of, the closest user that needs the information and doesn't require, as as Julia had had referenced, you know, a full time database manager just to, hey. I need this report. So great efficiencies in that regard. Fantastic. You teed me up perfectly. Julia, I don't wanna make you relive it too much. But when you think about your transition time and now being in year two, Mhmm. what the biggest differences in how the school has functioned before and after y'all moved to Blackbaud? So I moved all of our systems in six months. I might not recommend doing it on that short of a timeline. Not that my health and support wasn't great, but it might be better to go a little slower. But just like everybody is saying, you know, we were able to reestablish systems, building them from the bottom up. I've gone through, and I make a workflow for everything. Somebody's like, how do you? And I'm like, don't worry. I have it. So now we are also developing that record so anybody could walk in and be able to access and be able to pull that report. We integrated RE and FE and then also RE to our core data and just having all of the data flowing correctly and accurately between the systems, as Glenn was saying. It just it cuts down on errors. There's just kinda no other way to put it. We are able to as I said, we're able to function across all of our solutions with me, a, you know, a non non deep tech person running the system. We do a report cards, enrollments, contracts, admissions, building our schedule, all of the course information. As Bobby was saying, having those resource boards, aside from the fact that people ask me a question and then they just chorus back to me, it's on the resource board because that's my answer for everything. It is great. My, you know, my trustees, my admin team, everybody has a different board. And, yes, there's certain things that are viewable across board. But like our students, they have they have their own so that they can go in and find their student service learning hour form. Nobody else needs that but them. The one of the really nice things that we have found is how we use the same system now from pre k through eighth grade. And so as a parent, myself, with a lower school student and a middle school student, I'm going to the same place. I see the same thing to check on what's going on with each of my my children in their class or or whatever information. Using the analysis tools that are that are built into the system and then what you can build yourself into the system, it's coming out with this clear, concise data instead of a lot of eye crossing and, you know, really having to get somebody who can write code to be able to get your information out. Here, you're just, you know, using your filters, your your your normal your normal tools to access your data. Consistent database is for our core, we have approximately a 100 families. But for Razor's Edge, we go really, really, like, fifteen years deep worth of people. And then somebody had said, how do I document workflows? I have a variety of of methods. There's a good old, like, Google slide that I because, again, elementary ad, and it's really pretty. But I do that. I have spreadsheets with a lot of, you know, turnover policy and, you know, what are my steps that needs to be completed? But that's a whole other conversation. So speaking of workflows, because we do all love workflows, Jim Bob, can you talk us through how your team is approaching your major gifts or campaign processes now in Razors at GenXT? Yeah. And I I wanna start by just saying we are a work in progress. This was a dramatic change for what we were able to do. But along the way, as we were implementing, my DBA at the time decided and and just said, listen. I I'm not sure I can stick with this. I'll help with the transition, but it's time to retire. And, and we lost a gift processor who had a a change in life and had to move and things like that. And so we we have gone through some some some, hick had some hiccups along the way, onboarding new folks and all those kind of things. So we're a work in progress, and I'm just really proud of the work that we're able to do now and and largely because of the partnership that we've had through the this new functionality. You know, we we had a we had a, conduct a feasibility study last year to get us ready for this comprehensive campaign. We we did that feasibility study successfully. It was a successful feasibility study, but, honestly, the process of doing a feasibility study felt like a mini campaign for about a year or six months to a year and and and actually is is a good test for for our capacity as a team. So we were able to use, razor's edge, in our first year doing that then launched our comprehensive campaign July 1. And so we're in the leadership phase of that. So so immediately, we've seen an impact and an ability to use that. I would've been running that out of Excel, had I not, had I not been able to use it in Raiser's Edge. And so we're we're now just a couple of things we're doing on the regular now. We have a bimonthly moves management meeting that is new to us that we're using the system for. We're strategically, using kind of proposals, actions, notes, and all of that's just funneling into the work center. So I'm able to log in and look at exactly what I need to do as a major gift officer and so does the rest of my team. Right? And so we're we're really tracking and managing our work versus it being kind of a passive Excel spreadsheet, which I have managed campaigns out of Excel spreadsheets before too. So we're we're no longer doing you know, managing donor pipelines that way. We're doing it in the right way, and we're capturing notes and actions to make sure that not only we have the proposals, but we know exactly what needs to happen. And and I think the thing that's the most important that I feel really good and confident about is we're we're I we're gonna find success. We've already found some success in this campaign that we've built, and we're gonna find success over the coming years. But I think what we're really doing is we're setting our school up for decades to come. Because when I got here and arrived, there there was just none of that continuity that was was carried through. And so now when it comes to our major gift prospects and ensuring that institutional data is captured, the the person who's sitting in my seat next will will hopefully be well equipped with just the years of work that's been poured in by our board, by our our teams, and all the other things that are happening. So really just proud of the changes that we've already been able to enact. Fantastic. Glenn, from a finance and operations lens, what inefficiencies or blind spots did Blackbaud Solutions help eliminate for Tilton? Where did you gain more clarity across the board? So it's, we didn't necessarily gain, but we realized it was going to cost us a lot more had we stayed with Veracross. So we we implemented Veracross, on the billing side first, and then we moved admissions and enrollment. And we saw it first with, with the billing side that, what you what I had a, in essence, a full time employee of mine, was going to take all of her time to just manage the process of tuition billing through Veracross. So when when the the thought of, hey. We're gonna we're gonna move away from this, at least on the tuition billing side, that was my decision first. We moved back to fax, and there was an efficiency or was it a an efficiency savings of of labor cost, to not continue with Veracross. Come a year now, we're starting to implement tuition management, and I'm already seeing that this is a system that can easily be managed, within the same time frame much much easier than with with than it was with Veracross. So we're not gonna have an increase in labor cost. This is going to be much more streamlined, especially where now that it's fully integrated, we'll be fully integrated with admissions and enrollment. Very similarly, on the admissions enrollment piece with Veracross, we saw the same thing that it was it was very labor intensive just to process an application to to an enrollment and move it through towards tuition billing. We're again, with Blackbaud not seeing that at all. This is, this is much more, hey. With the current team we have, we can still do all of the other things that we have under our our job description under our hat we're doing, and we can very easily use this system, to to gain the efficiencies of not only shared data, accurate data, and timeliness across all of our departments. Bobby, I see you nodding, and I know that this is some of your wheelhouse. You know, tell us about how, you know, the ability to maintain this data across the offices, how that's helping you support better institutional decision making and really strengthening Tilton's overall brand. For me, as a former director of enrollment, I wanna speak to sort of the tuition, the partnership with the business office and what that means. A lot of times, if there's any enrollment directors listening, you know, we're pulling data at like nine or 10:00 at night. We were preparing board reports and we're trying to figure out what our tuition revenue is. And and when you're on different systems and you need somebody from the business office to pull the data for you so you can have a report, you have to do it within a certain amount of, you know, hours. And this way, we're all looking at the same data, and I've said that already. But, you know, we can pull net revenue at any time and figure out whose contracts are in, whose contracts are outstanding. It's just so much easier to be able to all communicate in the same direction and from the same place. True also for our academics office who can pull students who, you know, if if somebody has a note in their in the system, we use it for adviser notes. You know, we're we're using internal notes consistently about phone conversations we're having. So everyone is informed all the time. Eventually, we, like Jim, it's it's Jim Bob, it's it's sort of a work in progress. You know, we're trying to get everybody to use the system instead of email so that you don't have to search the name of a student in your email to see all the communication around that one student. You know, it's all right there in their profile. So it just it just makes it a lot easier, and it's sort of a one stop shop immediately when you're on the phone or immediately when you're trying to get information that you need. You can find it in the system, which is such a gift. Fantastic. So I know people are curious, of course, about support and and other services and things along those lines. Jim Bob, when we were talking, Blackbaud University, BBU, and advisory plus came up. Can you tell us a little bit about what your team has found valuable from both of those engagements and support resources? Yeah. Absolutely. And and, Elizabeth, I was kinda looking at some of the questions. I think somebody asked me one specific. So I I can answer it now or later. So you you give me guidance there. You can answer, and then we'll we'll circle back to BBU and advisory plus. Just wanna wanna watch the time for y'all. Well, they they dovetail nicely. I I you know, I mentioned that our my DBA retired, like, as we're transitioning, gave me a long enough runway for replacing, which was really, really excellent. Our person who's doing Git processing left, and we've been onboarding somebody. And I'll say this, that BBU is is a starting point has been really great because anybody who's new to our team can go and do an incredible amount of training there. And in fact, my DBA does things like, well, I'm gonna I'm gonna sharpen this skill. And this is somebody who's new to us and is new to Razor's Edge, has a data background, but, you know, consistently trying to sharpen. So I think that's been really positive. And the advisory plus services as well because I think that's a deeper level of training, and that's something that I think we needed, to make sure that not only do we have team training upfront, but, you know, our our database manager who's also handling all of our moves management, like, there's a lot there to figure out, especially given that they are new to, Raiser's Edge specifically. So there was a lot. So we've been able to utilize those. And the way that the the advisory plus has worked is they'll do deep dives, on on specific topics. Right, to kinda have the the the portfolio of items they can cover. But if you wanna know more about gift processing or, standing operating procedures, they have a whole, you know, path for towards just us getting our standard operating procedures, which when we started this, we had none. And so that's just been a really great solution. The the question that came up that kinda dovetails with this is the functionality pieces, that that I I have seen from Razor's Edge. I'd say one that that is small, but it's really, really powerful, is the connection between Razor's Edge and, Microsoft. And I and I Elizabeth can can tell us or or maybe, we can hear more about this, but they're they're one of those preferred partners, I think. So I'm actually able to take a major gift email that I send to somebody, whether it has follow-up or a part of an action list, and actually directly add that and just immediately sync that up to Blackbaud with just a click or two. And I found that to be really invaluable as I'm trying to capture when did I reach out to this person. Did I reach out to this person? I can't remember. So that's been a huge piece. I would say just kind of I would lump together a lot of pieces, like tracking and managing a really complicated comprehensive campaign, and Raiser's Edge has been, has been seamless. It's difficult. You gotta learn how to do it, and then we're learning a lot, but but the functionality is there. So managing our actions and our and our news management pieces and for all of our proposals has been huge. I found that I could not do that in my in my previous solution. I just I it just wasn't possible to get that detailed and that complicated. And then, the the final thing I love is we're onboarding on the base as a partner for our alumni program, and that has a direct sync up with Razor's Edge from a data standpoint, data management standpoint. And that's really huge for us, for our alumni as we build our program there. So, anyways, I went longer, but I tried to get, tried to get some of those pieces in there. So, hopefully, that's helpful. Yeah. No. That was fantastic. And if if our panelists wanna take a look at some of the other questions and help answer them, happy happy to do that. I know we probably have about two to three more minutes until we wanna let y'all get back to to your day jobs. Sure. I I'll feel the one about, fax because I I'm the one that raised it, so I'm sure it was, it was addressed to me. And the question was why we didn't go with Blackbaud Billing and went with fax. So, we are going with tuition billing through Blackbaud right now. Like I had mentioned, we had transitioned onto Veracross, December '20 I believe it was December '24. We went live with Veracross billing. January 31, thereabouts, we were live Veracross admissions. And by March 1, we signed an agreement with Blackbaud to move admissions and enrollment to Blackbaud. And, certainly, by March 31, I was off of, Veracross, billing. And we if I had said we were gonna go to to, Blackbaud tuition billing at that point, my AR clerk would have either either shot me or quit, and neither of those was an outcome I wanted. So we we postponed the Blackbaud billing to, to get admissions up and running, and now we're we're going through and and putting in tuition billing. And like I like I mentioned, the the first part of the the implementation of that is, is light years ahead of where we were with with that other system. I'll stop naming it. And, and Blackbaud is, this implementation is going fantastic, and I would strongly encourage everybody to go through it when, when their timing is right for them to make that transition. I see somebody. Oh, go ahead. about integrating RE with FE. So was it complex? Yes. It was absolutely complex. But that being said, before you start every system integration, they kind of give you a a diary type book, and it asks all of the questions that they will need to be able to build the system your way and and the way you want it. And so, yes, it takes time to get that information into this document. But by providing the consultant who you're working with with the information, then it's suddenly not nearly as complex. Of course, we decided to totally redo all of our GL codes in the middle of this transition. So, you know, you don't need to change everything at the same time. But to get RE and FE working together, as long as you you sort of put in some time and work into what you're providing, the consultants, it you come out on the other side with a functioning system that communicates and will help you with your own workflows across both of those departments. Fantastic. And I answered a few. There were some questions about the alumni solution that Jim Bob was talking about, and that is AlmaBase. They are one of our partners, and I will go ahead when I can and update the docs area so that y'all can find some information there. Likewise, if you message Sophie, she can also get you connected with a little bit more of that. I know that we have some questions that are unanswered. I think we could probably sit here and talk for hours, days, at least much longer. I know Julia has some kiddos at home. Glenn and and Bob, you're fighting off a snowstorm, and I wanna let Jim Bob get back to his day as well. So a sincere thank you to our panelists. We appreciate your time and and your perspective and your insights. And without further ado, I'm going to welcome Whitney Donnelly to the stage and let him grab the ball, say thank you to our panelists. And I've given Whitney, if you've ever attended a webinar with me before, I haven't asked him to show absolutely everything, but I have asked him to take us through some highlight reels of some differentiators in terms of our solutions. So, Whitney, I'll let you come off mute and grab the screen and let you take it away. Alright. Let's see if I clicked all the proper buttons and things look like they're working. We, sure do. this is not meant to be a comprehensive everything that Blackbaud has to offer. I it's meant to be sort of a a skipping stone highlights reel of of different areas. I'm gonna touch on on many of the themes brought up by the panel today. I'm starting off with that parent perspective. Brookfield School is our pretend demo school. Peter Abel is a person, like many of our panelists, who has many roles and relationships and responsibilities at the school. It's also convenient for me to be able to represent all of those because he, like everyone else, has a single constituent record, single username, password to get to all the places he's allowed to go. So we're gonna see that in place today. But starting with that parent view and sort of that communication aspect, there there's sort of two sides of communication. One is, yes, the school communicating out to the parents, but also here's an opportunity for parents to communicate to you. So if they need to report an absence, the system's going to know who, their children are, and they can mark them up and send that in. They don't need to send that as email or phone messages. That goes right into the school. It records that straight from there. And then the other aspect is, you know, most schools are family schools. If one child is going to come, the next one's going to come along. And if you already have that child's name in the system, it knows who that next child is. It makes it very easy and and, transition for families to be able to get their next child enrolled, in the school. And I see this annoying button here, and I'm gonna get that to go away, but it's gonna make my browser jump around. So, so, you know, that resource board was mentioned a couple of times. You are able to manage and control what's seen by different people in different places. But also, rolling back to that idea of being able to send information out to families, that can be done by teachers. We like to set our system up so that the people closest to the information are the ones communicating the news or the information. And rather than having families run around and look at all the different teacher class pages, we're providing the opportunity to aggregate all that information that gets put into the system and target it so that in this recent activity view, I'm seeing things that relate to my children and the classes that they're in, and it's all being put into one place in a chronological list. So, my child's in the physics class, and I'm seeing this, news about the championship. And, also, I remember last time I was here, I saw the in news about the varsity swimming. And so very quickly and easily, rather than looking through all my different children and all their different class pages, I can see aggregated and delivered to me here information quickly and easily so that I remain informed. We talked quite a bit, in the panel about contracts. I wanted to give a quick view of that. You're able to have forms and files for parents to sign. But, from that contract perspective, integrating, and I'm talking about now integrating with billing management. Just to be clear, Blackbaud has two student billing platforms. One is tuition management, the other one is billing management. Today we're going to talk about billing management. It's been available in Canada for some time now. It's just now becoming available and released to schools as an option in The United States. So I wanted to talk about that a little bit more directly here, building those out. The contract is built in enrollment management, and it's pausing now as it looks at billing management to find out exactly what the tuition is, required fees, any optional fees, credits, so that that bottom line number of what the family is expected to pay is set up. And then it moves to the next page where the system again is looking at billing management to see what options of payment are being offered and also what are any charges or requirements around that. You'll see that as a school, you can charge a fee, whatever you want it to be, and that comes directly to you. It doesn't come to Blackbaud. And typically, it's gonna be an auto enroll so that they can put in their bank account information. All of this part of the contract is provisioning that billing management component so that, the school doesn't need to configure or enter in the payment plans. Upon signing the contract, it's gonna move them right into becoming an enrolled family as well as setting up that so that they can see what their payments are going to be. And billing is built onto the core of the system already so that in the navigation, they're able to go and see that billing record right from the core system. I can see the children that I have, what the recent activity is, all in the same place that I'm getting all that other information and communication from the school, and including if I need to make a payment for any incident fees that I want to along the way. So that's, you know, a great sort of connection and and tying together for the parents. But if I shift and now move my hat over into the administrative side of billing management, Billing management is integrated fully with Financial Edge NXT. It is a full subsidiary subledger. It is going to post. It's going to manage your deferred revenue recognition automatically as you set that up from the different accounts and the interfund transfers. But it is also going to call out for you any things that need attention that have come into the system. And because it is tied in with academic component, if I need to add charges, incidental charges, I could do that by athletic team. I just charge the football team, you know, equipment fees or the drama club, you know, custom fees. I can do that all in bulk from here. But it is going to integrate and come over and post to the GL. I can run that. You'll see that it's got full balance debits and credits moving from one fund into the next, recognizing the revenue, moving it out of deferred revenue based on the schedule that you've set up from there as well. The other piece that's nice is that it now ties in with that student three sixty degree view. So this is that more traditional view of Janie as a student, you know, her ID, residence hall, contact information, what her schedule is. But you'll notice now with billing management, there's a whole billing tab right next to her grades and progress that are allowing those people, again, through security privileges and rights, it's not every grade manager is now going to see billing information, but it allows them to manage what those charges are and who's going to pay what. So this is much more granular than it is available in tuition management. Parents can inform the school, no, parents don't get to decide for themselves, but you can enter on their behalf the charges and the percent of charges they're going to pay. So when you enter a charge for Jane, the system will automatically divide that 35% and put it on Petersville and 65% and put it on Marion's bill. You don't need to do the math and make two separate entries. It also allows for exceptions because nothing is simple when it comes to that. So however those families have agreed to have that in place, you can do that. And certainly if you need to document that, you can attach a document there. Excuse me. It is snowing, but it's also cold season here in New England where I am as well. So that's going to be a part of that billing component, and details where you can manage that much more closely from that perspective. And then all along within here, there was discussion about lists and reports. We have those built in. Student lists are built much like online shopping, as I like to refer to it, you know, just using a bunch of filters. Who do I want to see? What students? What grade levels? You can click and produce that in a pretty straightforward fashion from there. Looking more holistically at the system, you have the ability to also create dashboards which were mentioned by the panel. Right? These dashboards are gonna be more on the academic side, built into the system. It's out of the box. School can drag and drop, put them in place for the ones that matter to them. You know, a big important one is grade distribution. Clearly at Brookfield School we have a grade inflation problem. We seem to give out nothing but As. Or maybe we just have awesome students and awesome teachers and so of course everybody deserves an A. Or you know, my favorite, what's the smartest team on campus? You have visibility into that. Or what's the easiest course, every student has an opinion but the data will tell us exactly which courses those are going to be. But a little bit more seriousness, right, from a curricular perspective, what is the overall average across grade levels? Is there a huge change in pitch to that from a parent's experience as they have children going through the school? And also, we can now tie in admissions data, where students are coming from and how they're thriving at your school, and you can start to look at the differences around that because admissions and academics are all in the same place. So that's one dashboard. You can also look at it from an admissions perspective. Similar kinds of things. Right? It's just gonna give that same view of your funnel. Where are you getting the students from and how do you how do you wanna contact them? But what I find most interesting is, yes, where are they coming from? If they're not coming to your school, where are they going? And is that what you expected as your primary competition? And, yes, guess what? The admissions office can be on the same page as the academic office because they can see that data as well. And maybe they want to consider their acceptance and strategies from from the different schools as well. So, again, putting all the data all in one place for everybody to see all at the same time helps with that consistency and communication along the way. So that's sort of on the academic side, but certainly we're gonna talk about the financial side, looking at this and the different dashboards as we've been looking at sort of that general ledger and the journal entries, posting over from billing, those are going to come into the system as well. You're able to drill in and see those from here as well. Or I can open up and see that full record right from here. Much as we saw, right, it's gonna be mirrored exactly what we saw on the other side where we're seeing that tuition revenue, deferred revenue being recognized, credits and balances, and any notes along the projects from that. So that's also going to tie in with the Financial Edge and Razor's Edge are going to tie together in exactly the same way, looking at all of those different ways that those are going to connect. And then the last thing to look at here from that reporting perspective, we have lots of reports that are built into the system. You can make use of those. And, also, you know, click on these. You can have them generate as a PDF or generate as Excel. They're gonna run here on the side to save time. I have that sort of preopened. And it does, as, was mentioned, we are closely partnered with Microsoft. So those reports open up preformatted within Excel here. And it also gives me the ability to drill down. So any of those numbers that I have questions about, I can simply click on that, and it's going to turn and go back to Financial Edge. It's going to open that exact account, and I can drill in and see all of those numbers. So quite consistently letting us see that. This is also letting me know that it ran that other one for me, and I could open that up as well. So all of that puts that in play for me here. And the big one that many people want to talk about is Razer's Edge NXT. So from here, right, looking at Razer's Edge NXT, as we come into this, we can land at the home page here, but I can also go online and, look at the work center, which Jim Bob mentioned. This is where it's going to give me a nice overview of all the things that are in play. So action items, people that need attention, but also all those opportunities that are being worked and that pipeline that they're wanting to look at, managing the moves, management from that perspective as well. And then also here we have, dashboards from the fundraising perspective as well. So I can look at dashboards, again, built into the system that will give me a nice overview. This is a simple campaign summary of where things are going. And what I like about this is as I'm looking at this, questions may pop into my mind and, you know, I can ask questions. Built into the system is what we call Blackbaud's AI chat. So it's going to give me prompts and ways that I can help, or if I have that question that I wanted to ask about, maybe I can type that in. And since I'm a slow typer, I saved it as a copy and paste. But how many donors have given to the campaign in 2025? Let's see if it comes up with the same answer it came up with when I did this before. You know, it's a little scary doing this, live with AI, but, it is going to go through that process and keep me informed of what it's doing. So here it's come through, and it told me it's, 2,200 GIFs, 2,200,000. And I may want to know, well, all right, that's a lot of people. Maybe I want to focus on who's the top 10 donors. So I again have my question pre prepared there. Who are the top 10 donors? It's going to go ahead and answer that question and let me know and fill that information in, except now that I tried to do it in front of you. So maybe I'll have to try again later. But the idea is it would give me a similar list around that. I could try it again just for fun. But along those lines, we can do that, or I can have it generate email to somebody for me, along the way. There we go. So here now maybe I wanted to make it write an email to doctor Hernandez. I could ask it to send a brief or not to write a brief email. What's coming next that we're very excited about is, what we call agents for good, and that's going to be the AgenTic AI where Blackbaud agents are actually doing work for you that you give instructions to do. So it will actually generate that email and send it out for you. So those are some of the fun things and features that I wanted to share with everyone today. But I also want to be mindful. I know my colleague Jess is going to come in and talk about. some more fun things as well. So let me stop sharing my screen and hand it off to her. Thanks, Whitney, and thank you for for fighting through, cold and and flu. season. You did a great job. as always. Jess and I were nodding and smiling behind the scenes as you were showing, the AI. It's always just really neat to see. So, Jess, I'm gonna hand it over to you. One of the questions was, can you tell us a little bit more about advisory plus? So you are the expert. So I will hand it over to you to tell us a little bit more. I absolutely can. Thank you. And I promise I will just take a a hot second to go through it, and then, of course, we can we can chat with anybody more in-depth if you'd like to. But advisory plus is a personalized consultation engagement. So what happens with advisory plus is we partner you with a product expert. So if it's Ari you're interested in, then that is all that person does. If it's Effie, that's all that person does. If it's education management, same thing. That's what I do. I'm an education management advisory plus consultant. And so what I do is I work with schools really on the things that are most important to them. It is completely personalized. Even though we do have a catalog, you're not bound to that. It's a great starting point for ideas. But, essentially, what we do is we sit down. At the beginning, we'll do a review and audit of your database to really get to know kind of what it looks like, how it's set up, to kind of give us some ideas for, for things that we might wanna work on. And then we'll do a lot of listening, and you'll tell us, hey. We're report cards are not working. That's a big priority for us. Or we really wanna implement the common records engine that's coming out. Let's make some time for that. And then we come up with a plan. We call it the annual action plan because we do it annually. This is a long term partnership, and it's something that is designed to meet you where you're at. So if you are a brand new school, if you have just implemented these tools, or if you've been using them for ten years and somebody other than you implemented them and you kinda wanna start to untangle and figure out the the best way to set things up for you now, We're gonna meet you where you are, and we're gonna work with you to get you to a point where the system is working as well as it can be for you. You can go to the next slide if you want to. Thank you. So we do that annual action plan. We do the assessment, which is that audit audit. We have the catalog. Like I said, it's a starting point. And then the other thing that you have as an advisory plus customer is access to workshops and roundtables. We are able to put together meetings with our smaller groups of advisory plus customers to meet with product owners, to meet with product managers, to get a little bit of an insider, scoop on things that are coming, to ask questions of those product managers. And so that is a that is a great advantage as well. And the way to answer the question, that came in about advisory plus versus Blackbaud University, the way that I like to explain it is your subscription to your Blackbaud tools is your gym membership. You've got this fantastic array of machines that you have access to. You've got a service desk that you can go to and ask kinda basic questions. This treadmill is not working quite right. How do I fix that? That's your support team. You also are gonna have access to the classes that take place in your gym, and that's Blackbaud University. Those are all as a group. They're gonna be done, you know, from one instructor facing the group, but not personalized to you. So you're gonna get information. You're gonna be able to take advantage of those things, but our Blackbody University courses are done in a sample database, and and they might not address all of the very unique questions and specific questions that you have. Whereas, you know, or, Blackbaud advisory plus is gonna be your personal trainer. So that's the person who is gonna say, alright. You wanna run a marathon? Let me see where you're at right now. What can you do? Hey. You might wanna use this machine, or, hey. We have a new machine coming, and that one's really gonna be helpful for you. So this is your one on one expert who is gonna help you get where you wanna be a lot faster and more efficiently than you might be able to do on your own. And it's also a lot of fun to work one on one with schools, and so we really, really enjoy all of the consultants really enjoy our work, and we love solving problems. And, and it's a it's a great it's a great option to look into if you are looking for that personalized, relationship with a product expert. Not too bad. Four minutes, Elizabeth. Not too bad. Pretty good for me. Fantastic, Jess. Thank you so much. Thanks. I know that there are a handful of questions that we weren't able to answer on today's session, so rest assured we will pass them along to the appropriate team members to help triage and answer. And just a couple of quick announcements, and then I will wrap us right on up. So Whitney showed you, of course, Blackbaud AI chat, and I just wanted to reiterate that our intelligence for good strategy is our next generation strategy for harnessing the potential of new AI technologies in Blackbaud solutions and in partnership with third party tools. We are focused on making sure that our investment is accessible so that it's available within your Blackbaud solutions or through a partner to augment your daily work, powerful so that it's applied in the most helpful way so that it's the right data to drive the outcomes that you're looking for and responsible. We are being proactive so that your data is safe, bias is minimized, and you have control over its application. One other thing that I wanted to make sure that I called out is the AI Coalition for Social Good. You'll notice that Atlas, one of our industry partners, is a member of the coalition, but we are offering in partnership with some of these other notable names a free certification program for foundational AI skills. So you can learn more if you go to blackbaud.com/ai, and that's also in the docs area. This is my favorite announcement. So if you've stuck with me, thank you. If you haven't heard, the k twelve u c, the user conference is coming back. We will be in Boston, July. We are thrilled to welcome back Peter Barron. He is a notable name to some who have been with us for a while and perhaps a name for those of us, that are newer, but he is going to do one of our keynote sessions. Early bird registration is open through March 10. We have a high level agenda here on the screen. We've got role based learning tracks. It is open to everyone across all of your offices, admissions, academics, leadership, IT, finance, advancement, you name it. We'll have partner showcases, some developer sessions, unmatched networking, time with our product managers. If you've been and you know, the UN conference is returning our last morning. And if you don't know, it's really a unique portion of the conference where your questions and topics are really driving the content. And I just wanted to call out that we do have some group registrations. So if you register five, you'll get the sixth for free. I have it linked in the docs area. And if you have any questions, you can email k12conference@blackbaud.com. And so with that, we are right at the top of the hour. I wanna say a sincere thank you to you all for joining us, to our panelists, and I hope that everyone has a great rest of your day. Thanks.