Blackbaud Expands AI-Powered Innovation for Social Impact at bbcon Sydney

Blackbaud (NASDAQ: BLKB), the world’s leading provider of AI-powered solutions for social impact, announced new innovations for social impact organisations across Australia and New Zealand this week at bbcon Sydney. These included developments for Blackbaud’s Agents for Good™, like the new Data Health Agent and expanded access to the Development Agent, enhancements for core products including Blackbaud Raiser’s Edge NXT® and Blackbaud Enterprise Fundraising CRM™, and the announcement of Blackbaud Marketing™, a new AI-assisted, digital multichannel marketing platform.

Bringing it all together, Blackbaud introduced Platform for Good™, its new unified operating system that connects data, workflows, AI and a broader ecosystem of solutions and partners. With this shared foundation powering Blackbaud solutions, context is carried forward from one interaction to the next, creating more connected workflows for organisations and more connected journeys for their supporters.

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Additionally, Blackbaud shared its plans for Lantern™, the first domain-specific language model purpose-built to optimise fundraising intelligence. Developed through a strategic collaboration with Databricks, Lantern reflects the language, practices, and dynamics of how fundraising works, informed by Blackbaud’s deep sector expertise, fundraising context, and philanthropic intelligence. Starting in 2027, Lantern will begin powering select experiences within the Platform for Good, giving social impact organisations tailored intelligence to help them raise more so they can continue solving society’s most pressing challenges.

“Across Asia Pacific, organisations are continually looking for new ways to deepen engagement, improve efficiency and expand their impact while staying true to the people and communities they serve,” said Kevin Sher, president and general manager of Blackbaud’s operations in Asia Pacific. “With these innovations, we’re focused on helping customers put trusted data and AI to work in practical ways, giving their teams more capacity and more connected ways to build the relationships that advance their missions.”

Blackbaud Advances Connected, Intelligent Fundraising
Blackbaud announced a range of innovations at bbcon Sydney that showcase how it’s helping social impact organisations drive their missions forward:

• Expanding access to Agents for Good: The Early Access Programme for Blackbaud’s Development Agent is underway for Blackbaud Raiser’s Edge NXT® customers in Australia and New Zealand, as well as the UK and Canada. The Development Agent is designed to expand fundraising capacity through personalised, brand-aligned agentic outreach, with interactions captured in Raiser’s Edge NXT, while fundraising teams remain in control.
• Introducing the Data Health Agent: The newest addition to Blackbaud’s Agents for Good portfolio, the Data Health Agent, helps organisations put trusted data to work. The agent is a continuous data steward designed to detect and address data issues through review-and-approve workflows, proactively identifying common data issues and recommending corrections so teams spend less time maintaining their fundraising data and more time acting on it. The Data Health Agent is being launched in an early access programme in the US now, with international expansion planned after early learnings are implemented.
• Announcing Blackbaud Marketing™: Blackbaud Marketing is a new AI-assisted multichannel digital marketing platform designed specifically to connect fundraising and marketing teams. Because it’s built within Raiser’s Edge NXT, supporter engagement remains connected with the constituent information fundraising teams rely on, while AI can assist throughout the marketing workflow with planning, content creation and optimisation. Blackbaud anticipates releasing Blackbaud Marketing by the second quarter of 2027.
• Advancing Raiser’s Edge NXT and Blackbaud CRM with more modern, intelligent fundraising experiences: Blackbaud continues to bring the fundraising lifecycle together in Raiser’s Edge NXT, with expanded capabilities available in the unified web view experience, and enhanced embedded AI capabilities, like Blackbaud AI Chat—which provides a conversational way for fundraisers to work with fundraising data, generate content and access best practices—and Intelligent Tags that help fundraisers stay on top of important actions in major gift work. For organisations with more complex fundraising needs, Blackbaud is also investing in a more modern, intelligent experience for Blackbaud Enterprise Fundraising CRM™, including a refreshed and streamlined interface, and work to bring Blackbaud AI Chat to the enterprise solution.

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Celebrating Customer Impact
At bbcon Sydney, Blackbaud celebrated the Asia Pacific winners of the 2026 Blackbaud Impact Awards. These organisations and individuals are translating technology and innovation into tangible outcomes for their organisations and communities:

• Vision Australia, Asia Pacific Changemaker Award: Recognised for working with Blackbaud to co-design accessibility enhancements across Blackbaud Enterprise Fundraising CRM and payment experiences, helping remove digital barriers and improve the experience for people who are blind or have low vision. The initiative created accessible digital entry points, made the CRM environment more inclusive for staff and contributed accessibility improvements to Blackbaud’s broader capabilities.
  • Sam Ovais, Fundraising CRM Manager at Vision Australia, Asia Pacific Rising Star Award: Recognised for championing accessibility across Blackbaud Enterprise Fundraising CRM and Blackbaud Internet Solutions™, combining fundraising and technical expertise to help advance inclusive system design.

• Australian National University, Asia Pacific Futurist Award: Recognised for leveraging Blackbaud Enterprise Fundraising CRM and Perplexity AI to build a CASE-aligned, 100-point engagement score across 300,000 constituents, support more than $70 million in philanthropic income in 2025, and deliver the university’s most successful alumni engagement campaign.
• Adelaide University, Asia Pacific Silo Buster Award: Recognised for consolidating two established Raiser’s Edge NXT environments into a single advancement platform as part of its university merger, achieving 100% pass rates across testing and deployment and bringing together Philanthropy, Alumni Relations, Prospect Research, Finance and IT.

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