Blackbaud News Year in Review

It has been an exciting year for us at Blackbaud, both from a technology and growth standpoint. The influence of social media, the election, and the economy have made it an interesting year for nonprofits as well. New strategies and products have been born to support a hybrid of traditional and unchartered fundraising practices taking place throughout the sector.

We started off the year by making The Raiser's Edge API available for free to NetCommunity customers and forming Blackbaud Interactive, a division focused specifically on Internet solutions and services. Version 5.5 of Blackbaud NetCommunity was released in July with Wave social networking along with several other major enhancements. Share your ideas for the NetCommunity roadmap at the idea bank. Stay up-to-date with all NetCommunity news at the Connections blog.

Oh yeah, forgot to mention, we launched 23 blogs this year. You can access them all here. Our foray into new media also included a new format for The Baudcast. Listen to all of our podcasts here.

We also launched NetWits Live, an event series exploring nonprofit Internet strategy that featured a few of our Baudcasters, as well as Holly Ross from NTEN. This was a great collaborative event and we plan on offering more of these sessions in 2009 with the first being held in San Francisco on February 10^th. Register here.

Some big news came in May when Blackbaud announced its intention to acquire Kintera, and in July, when the acquisition closed, our product development teams took off running. The first order of business from a technology side was the launch of a Sphere-RE connector. Once people were beta testing that, the teams moved on to where they could bring the most value to our combined customers--making Friends Asking Friends functionality available to NetCommunity customers. This also happened quickly, and one of the first nonprofits to take advantage of it will be The Kidney Foundation of Canada, who recently partnered with the company to implement a bilingual national website powered by a NetCommunity-Sphere combined solution. 2009 will be another great year of innovation for the Kintera Division and Blackbaud Internet solutions teams.

In July, Blackbaud hit the road in the midst of the US financial crisis, with an interactive seminar series called Blackbaud Delivers, which focused on fundraising during a recession. In 2008, Blackbaud Delivers began its mission to offer practical nonprofit management seminars presented by some of our brightest experts in a variety of major cities and on the Internet. You can download the presentations or view a recorded webinar at Blackbaud.com/blackbauddelivers. In 2009, Blackbaud Delivers will kick off in Houston and Atlanta on February 11^th with the theme of "Worry Less." The content will be geared towards helping nonprofits reduce their worries and putting the steps they need in place to keep fundraising on the upswing in 2009. Register here.

Another issue that is top-of-mind for nonprofits-or should be--is PCI compliance. In June, Blackbaud joined the PCI Security Standards Council and launched a PCI Compliance Blog and newsletter to provide ongoing updates on key issues facing the nonprofit sector. 2009 will be a pivotal year for PCI compliance. On October 1, 2009, everyone who processes credit cards will have to be PCI compliant and/or use PA DSS validated payment products.

Here are some more company highlights from 2009:

• We are very excited to partner with several nonprofits on Blackbaud Enterprise CRM projects, most recently The Salvation Army Southern Territory, the University of Oxford, and The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod.
• The Financial Edge, The Raiser's Edge and eTapestry won Campbell Awards for User Satisfaction.
• Blackbaud was named to Forbes Magazine's 200 Best Small Companies in America list and Software Magazine's Software 500 ranking of the world's largest software and service providers.
• eTapestry launched a Spanish version of its on-demand fundraising software and is marketing the solution in Mexico and Spain.
• Blackbaud's recent Conference for Nonprofits welcomed more than 1200 attendees for a technology preview of the company's new cloud computing platform code-named "Nimbus" that is currently in development. If you missed that, you can check out a replay here. The Blackbaud Developer Network Challenge saw some great entries, and the winning entry was announced at the conference and was recently posted to Blackbaud Labs. Save the date for next year's conference, which will be held in Charleston, South Carolina from Nov. 15 to 18.

The most exciting news for me, personally, was Blackbaud's increased focus on philanthropy in 2008. After all, that is what we are all here for-to help nonprofits make the world a better place. Our newly formed corporate philanthropy team created some great programs to support employee volunteerism, and as nonprofits continue to face difficult times, the company has really stepped up its efforts. Check back tomorrow to read about Blackbaud's philanthropy year in review.

We have some exciting plans in the works, so throw the Blackbaud News RSS feed in your reader to stay tuned in 2009!