Highlights from bbcon 2024: RE NXT Updates and More!

We’re back from bbcon 2024, excited to share the latest updates and innovations after spending a few days in Seattle talking about all things Blackbaud.

We loved the opportunity to meet other Blackbaud partners, see innovation in action and experience how organizations are utilizing new and old tools to overcome challenges and boost fundraising performance.

Most of these are updates to Raiser’s Edge NXT (RE NXT), but some sprinkle over to other products.

Here are some of the things that have us buzzing.

Blackbaud Copilot

Be on the lookout soon for your new personal assistant in your Blackbaud environment – one that will interact with data in plain language (“Hey Copilot – How many new donors did I have last year?”). Copilot can help plan cultivation steps, identify and log actions and help strategize ways to engage with donors. We have a few questions around how copilot uses our data to train its models, but we’re excited to see this in action.

New Web View Batch Functionality

Not only is Blackbaud working to move batch functionality to the web, they are also including the ability to import transactions into batch (can I get a hallelujah?).

Web view batch will roll out in phases and have most of the features currently in database view batch. Expect to see this in late 2025. Heads up that there are a few things we’ll have to be patient for like seeing constituent details in batch and organizing batches in category folders.

Sky Add-ins

We were really impressed by what the Fred Hutch Cancer Center in Seattle is doing using Sky Add-ins to surface data from a data warehouse into RE NXT for review and evaluation.

They’ve created several custom tiles to support their Grateful Patient prospecting program, successfully weaving security features, wealth screening and constituent matching capability into its design. The result is real time data rendered into custom tiles on the constituent record and home page to track patient encounters and identify prospective grateful patients for assignment or follow-up.

This takes some technical skill and planning but is a great example of emerging opportunities available to integrate with external data sources and customize interface design. Color us impressed with their results.

Integrated Applications

Each year, the marketplace is growing with applications designed to extend the capability of RE NXT. Some of the opportunities that caught our eye include:

Data Moose

For those of you who want that full copy of your RE NXT data to feed a data warehouse for reporting and more, this may be a new option to consider. Data Moose solutions produce a regularly refreshed SQL database that mirrors the existing Microsoft Azure database in Blackbaud NXT solutions.

Feathr

Feathr is a Nonprofit Marketing Platform that unifies email marketing automation, digital advertising, web analytics, and social campaigns. Feathr maintains a native integration with RE NXT that includes 2-way sync of constituents and gifts.

Automate Genius

Prenger Solutions has developed some seriously cool automation flows built using Microsoft Power Automate for RE NXT that simplify so many things and are saving time for fundraisers and database admins. Creativity seems to be the only thing holding organizations back from exploring the use of automated flows to help manage their day to day RE NXT work. Plus, Blackbaud announced 6 new certified Microsoft Power Platform connectors coming to RE NXT.

Omatic Cloud

As Blackbaud releases new functionality in web view, Omatic is keeping up by adding new functionality to their cloud-based tool. The ability to import pledges and pledge payments, and tributes (in one single pass!) is now available, as is the ability to extract data from RE NXT for use in other tools such as MailChimp using the Query API.

Sharing the Buzz

We’re excited about the potential of these new features and updates to transform the way organizations engage with their donors. From streamlining workflows to enhancing data insights, these advancements offer valuable benefits for fundraisers and database administrators alike.

Want to learn more about these new updates and features and how they can benefit your organization? Contact us for guidance and recommendations on making the most of the latest RE NXT innovations.