In case you are a grantmaker, you know the way necessary it’s to have a dependable and environment friendly software program system that may provide help to handle your grants, monitor your influence, and collaborate together with your stakeholders. You in all probability additionally know that the world of philanthropy is altering quickly, and your software program must sustain with the brand new challenges and alternatives that come up.

Over the previous 30 years, Blackbaud Grantmaking™ has been serving foundations and nonprofit grantmakers with software program that continues to evolve with you.

Analyzing The Previous: Historical past and Timeline of Blackbaud Grantmaking

Consider it or not, what we all know as Blackbaud Grantmaking has been round because the Nineteen Nineties in a single type or one other. MicroEdge was established again in 1985 and launched their Grants Administration Software program “GIFTS On-line” in 2009. Blackbaud acquired MicroEdge and inherited what we now know as Blackbaud Grantmaking in 2014.

As a path blazer within the social influence house, Blackbaud had already been serving a big selection of nonprofit and public sector organizations. It was now trying to increase their companies even additional to assist resolve the ache factors of grantmakers. Since MicroEdge was acquired, there have been a big selection of modifications to the product interface and performance to maintain up with the wants of recent grantmakers.

In 2020 Blackbaud Grantmaking made the complete transition to Blackbaud SKY. Blackbaud SKY is an built-in open cloud platform uniquely constructed for the social influence group that many different progressive Blackbaud options run on, together with Blackbaud Raiser’s Edge NXT and Blackbaud Monetary Edge NXT.

With Blackbaud SKY got here a streamlined, trendy consumer interface and an built-in expertise, bringing collectively Blackbaud options, best-in-class third social gathering options, and the Blackbaud Accomplice Community. This additionally meant making it simpler for Blackbaud to ship progressive product enhancements on an accelerated schedule and provides prospects entry to industry-leading cloud companies to make sure their knowledge is backed up and safe. At this level, Blackbaud’s imaginative and prescient of a completely built-in suite of merchandise constructed for nonprofits, academic establishments, hospitals, foundations, and different social influence organizations was nicely on its means.

Flash Ahead to the Current: Onwards and Upwards

Since Blackbaud Grantmaking transitioned to SKY view, Blackbaud has continued to prioritize fixed enhancements and modifications to offer a fully configurable GMS that may be constructed round a corporation’s distinctive processes and workflows. It’s a system that’s intuitive sufficient for the typical consumer to make use of however will also be modified simply with out intervention from builders or needing to name Blackbaud’s help each time a change is required.

We’ve heard from prospects that Blackbaud Grantmaking has already saved them hours of time to allow them to deal with what’s necessary—their mission. Among the newest updates we’re enthusiastic about embrace new doc administration capabilities, new methods to delete knowledge in bulk, a totally reimagined applicant-centric portal, and the introduction of SKY API®.

The artwork of organizing: From chaos to readability

By means of collaborating in discovery calls with grantmakers, we have now discovered that administrative duties like managing paperwork and coping with massive quantities of information is a big time suck for his or her organizations. Grantmakers have been coping with cluttered recordsdata filled with paperwork that they needed to continually re-download to view or make modifications to. That’s the reason we’re making it doable to view and edit Microsoft paperwork straight inside Blackbaud Grantmaking. What’s extra, these paperwork are tied on to your contact information, so your workers members can have all the things they want at your fingertips.

Delete with function: time to declutter

Along with the sheer quantity of things to maintain organized, we discovered that worldwide prospects had a growing must take away knowledge after a sure interval to respect native privateness legal guidelines. We knew we would have liked to make it simpler to handle massive knowledge units so we added new choices that make it simpler to delete request and get in touch with information in bulk. We additionally added new search fields, together with “Declination date” and “Contact final up to date” to assist additional slender your outcomes

Empower candidates and grantees whereas saving time internally

Our recent applicant and grantee expertise will carry with it thrilling new updates in three completely different areas:

1. New methods of managing submitted functions

We hope to avoid wasting grantmakers much more time by offering intuitive search capabilities and the flexibility to control columns to simply discover what you might be on the lookout for and keep organized.

2. A reimagined applicant-centric portal

Filling out grant functions might be an all-consuming course of for people and nonprofits which are in search of funding, and as a grantmaker you play an enormous function in making that have as clean as doable for potential grantees. The quantity of care you set into crafting an equitable utility course of will straight affect your potential to create and domesticate constructive relationships together with your grantees. Not solely will it save your candidates tons of time, however your grant workers may anticipate to obtain increased high quality and error-free functions in return. It’s a win win! Because of this we have now optimized the applicant portal to avoid wasting candidates time by making it simpler than ever for candidates to submit an utility and monitor its standing.

Pondering past the thrilling new items of performance, one distinguished shift is that with the introduction of this new applicant portal we have now additionally added Blackbaud Grantmaking to the listing of Blackbaud options that makes use of Blackbaud ID. Which means that organizations can register utilizing one login for all their Blackbaud options and examine each utility that was submitted utilizing a Blackbaud answer in a single place.

3. A streamlined type builder

We’ve got decreased the time it takes to construct a single utility type and the variety of varieties wanted by introducing conditional logic. It’s even simpler to handle model controls and format your type, so it isn’t solely visually interesting, but additionally simply is smart. For our world viewers, we have now launched type translation capabilities that may translate varieties into 30 completely different languages, together with French, Spanish, and Welsh simply to call a couple of!

Increase what’s doable with integrations and companions

SKY APIs are industry-standard REST APIs that make it a lot simpler to amplify the facility of Blackbaud Grantmaking™ permitting prospects to combine and prolong the product’s capabilities with different options of their grantmaking ecosystem. Endpoints for Funds and Organizations are already obtainable at the moment, with extra thrilling information to roll out via to the tip of the yr. Keep tuned!

The Future Is Brilliant: The place We’re Headed Subsequent

Seeking to the long run, we’re continually conserving a watch out for brand new AI use instances for grantmakers that may assist resolve actual and significant challenges. Keep in mind that amidst all of the hype round AI, Blackbaud has been incorporating AI into its merchandise for a few years. For instance, our Knowledge Intelligence portfolio already permits our prospects to faucet into billions of {dollars} of unrealized income. As a pacesetter in important software program for social influence, Blackbaud’s Intelligence for Good® technique acts as our framework to make sure that we create AI that’s accessible, highly effective, and reliable.

With the introduction of SKY API and new endpoints being added on a rolling foundation via till the tip of the yr, we can be closely centered on constructing extra out-of-the-box integrations and including companions to the Blackbaud Market.  A few of our most extremely requested integrations embrace a deeper connection between Blackbaud Grantmaking™ and Monetary Edge NXT™, DocuSign, and Microsoft Energy BI.

Is there something you wish to present suggestions on? A use case that you simply really feel may very well be made extra highly effective or productive via new performance or AI? Keep updated with the newest product enhancements and supply suggestions to our product crew by becoming a member of Blackbaud Grantmaking’s group group and don’t neglect to register for our Product Replace Briefings!