Blackbaud announces acquisition of Kintera

A few hours ago came the official public announcement by Blackbaud of our plans to acquire Kintera. You can read the press release and corresponding details here. I am expecting a lot of speculation, blogging, tweeting, and other online opining about this announcement. But there are some different circumstances involved this time that people should understand.

Because both Blackbaud and Kintera are publicly traded companies there are very specific Federal Trade Commission rules about what can be said and done until the deal officially closes. This may take as many as 30 days and until then both companies will perform as separate units, competing with each other as they did prior to this announcement. (Who knew that Master’s thesis in Online Investor Relations would ever come in handy?)

What I can say is that this is very exciting news for many reasons including:

• Blackbaud becomes the leading provider of online solutions and services to the nonprofit industry with over 4,500 clients
• Both Kintera Sphere and Blackbaud NetCommunity are strong Internet solutions that largely serve very different segments, including The Raiser’s Edge, Team Approach, eTapestry, and non-Raiser’s Edge customers.
• Blackbaud plans to continue to support and invest in both products.
• Kintera’s other offerings, FundWare, P!N and certain capabilities within Sphere (e.g., Friends Asking Friends) are well-recognized and respected in the marketplace.

I am sure that this announcement will bring with it a lot of questions. Wherever possible we’ll try to answer them, but please understand that in certain instances that might not be permitted until the deal officially closes.

Also, I’m sure some other vendors in the market will use this as an opportunity to exploit the situation. I will let you judge for yourselves what that says about them and who really has the client’s best interests in mind.