Blackbaud Offers Nonprofits Sharper Prospecting Tools

Blackbaud has enhanced its CRM app for nonprofits with completely redesigned prospect and research capabilities. It is the company’s second major release this year, Tiffany Crumpton, senior marketing manager for CRM solutions, told CRM Buyer.

However, neither release — the previous 2.93 or this newest iteration, version 2.94 — incorporated features from its US$275 million acquisition of Convio earlier this year.

“As we move forward, you will see our product road map incorporating Convio features, but this release was long in the works,” Crumpton said.

Other new features in this release include improved membership, event, data and integrated marketing management.

Managing Prospects

The centerpiece of the changes are the embedded tools developed to better manage prospects.

“There are tools that allows user to append outside data sources to the CRM constituent data file,” Crumpton explained.

Blackbaud’s research tools work with a variety of outside sources of data such as Reuters and Dun & Bradstreet. Blackbaud compiles these various sources into research notes and updates, which the users then tap as they please.

The new changes make it easier to trigger the work and allows users to search from within the Blackbaud system instead of moving to the outside source.

For example, to carry out additional research after meeting a possible prospect, all a user has to do is type in portions of the person’s name, and Blackbaud pulls up the relevant public information.

“Data tells a story, which is why it is so important for users to be able to access it and manipulate it in as many ways as possible,” said Crumpton.

Information that a person owns a second home, for instance, would make that individual a better prospect than a single-home owner.

Prior to this latest release, the tools were not as robust and the workflows not as easy to trigger, Crumpton said.

Organizing Data

Another key theme of the new release was its focus on better data management, Crumpton said. “Our users work with a ton of data, so we have given them tools to make it easier to manage and to get to the real work — to determine who the best prospect is they should be talking to and then reaching out to that person.”

These new features include a simplified data import process and a guided setup tool, configurable data hygiene standards to standardize contact information, advanced filtering tools for events management, and advanced donation forms with the ability to add custom features.