Blackbaud Extends Capabilities to Facebook Platform in Bold Move to Grow Online Giving

NEW YORK, Nov. 29, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Today Blackbaud (NASDAQ: BLKB), the world's leading cloud software company powering social good, announced it will integrate its cloud fundraising and engagement solutions with Facebook fundraising solutions. Blackbaud, Facebook and three enterprise nonprofits—JDRF, National Multiple Sclerosis Society and Susan G. Komen—worked closely on the pilot program that took advantage of the new Facebook Fundraisers API, which was announced at Facebook's Social Good Forum today in New York. Blackbaud simultaneously delivered features to automatically give nonprofits seamless access and control over their Facebook fundraising tools.

This announcement addresses an important requirement raised by nonprofits, which is to have an automated, cost effective and efficient way to leverage the reach of the Facebook platform to activate fundraisers while also managing, processing and recording those donations directly in their Blackbaud fundraising and engagement solutions. Prior to this announcement, nonprofits who leveraged Facebook Fundraising received the dollars, but donor information was not automatically translated to their CRM solution.

"As an organization that relies on people across the nation to raise funds to support our mission, innovation is critical in delivering an outstanding donor experience," said Graham McReynolds, chief marketing & development officer of the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, who piloted this new seamless integration between Facebook and Blackbaud TeamRaiser™ over the summer. "With this connection, our supporters can confidently take advantage of Facebook as another means to fundraise and see a full picture of their efforts. Ultimately, this allows us to expand resources to accelerate breakthroughs for everyone affected by multiple sclerosis."

By spring of 2018, Blackbaud will help significantly scale nonprofit adoption of Facebook fundraising tools by helping at least 500 of its nonprofit customers embrace its new integration. This will first be available in Blackbaud TeamRaiser, which supports some of the world's largest charity-led peer-to-peer fundraisers for walking, running and cycling events—like Susan G. Komen's Race for the Cure and JDRF's One Walk. Specifically, Blackbaud customized an integration that automatically publishes Blackbaud TeamRaiser fundraisers to Facebook, enabling event supporters to simultaneously solicit donations directly via their own social networks and their TeamRaiser webpages while helping nonprofits view and manage Facebook transactions within TeamRaiser. Over time, Blackbaud intends to expand integration capabilities to its entire portfolio of cloud fundraising and engagement solutions.

Blackbaud, which is the world's 24^th largest cloud software company and only provider of a cloud platform created exclusively and designed specifically for the social good community, emphasized that today's announcement is another example of its commitment to strengthening the social economy through radical collaboration, unleashing the power of data and catalyzing the impact of individuals. 

"We're proud that Facebook trusted Blackbaud as the global nonprofit software leader to build this very important integration, and we're honored to be the first software company to leverage the new API," said Mary Beth Westmoreland, chief technology officer at Blackbaud. "The beauty of Blackbaud's cloud platform is that it's not only designed for the unique needs and workflows of social good organizations, but also to be open and flexible. Our innovative cloud delivery model allowed us to rapidly find a creative solution to an expressed market need which will undoubtedly change the paradigm for how donors and causes connect and fundraise to drive global impact."

About Blackbaud
Blackbaud (NASDAQ: BLKB) is the world's leading cloud software company powering social good. Serving the entire social good community—nonprofits, foundations, corporations, education institutions, healthcare institutions and individual change agents—Blackbaud connects and empowers organizations to increase their impact through software, services, expertise, and data intelligence. The Blackbaud portfolio is tailored to the unique needs of vertical markets, with solutions for fundraising and CRM, marketing, advocacy, peer-to-peer fundraising, corporate social responsibility, school management, ticketing, grantmaking, financial management, payment processing, and analytics. Serving the industry for more than three decades, Blackbaud is headquartered in Charleston, South Carolina and has operations in the United States, Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom. For more information, visit www.blackbaud.com.

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Forward-looking Statements
Except for historical information, all of the statements, expectations, and assumptions contained in this news release are forward-looking statements that involve a number of risks and uncertainties, including statements regarding expected benefits of products and product features. Although Blackbaud attempts to be accurate in making these forward-looking statements, it is possible that future circumstances might differ from the assumptions on which such statements are based. In addition, other important factors that could cause results to differ materially include the following: general economic risks; uncertainty regarding increased business and renewals from existing customers; continued success in sales growth; management of integration of acquired companies and other risks associated with acquisitions; risks associated with successful implementation of multiple integrated software products; the ability to attract and retain key personnel; risks associated with management of growth; lengthy sales and implementation cycles, particularly in larger organization; technological changes that make our products and services less competitive; and the other risk factors set forth from time to time in the SEC filings for Blackbaud, copies of which are available free of charge at the SEC's website at www.sec.gov or upon request from Blackbaud's investor relations department. All Blackbaud product names appearing herein are trademarks or registered trademarks of Blackbaud, Inc.

SOURCE Blackbaud, Inc.

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