You can “Give” your own way!

For me, one unforeseen consequence of working at Blackbaud is this now-frequent thought: I wonder how that organization is tracking their giving.

This thought immediately popped into my head when I discovered NBC’s reality show “Give.”

The premise is simple. A foundation or other funding organization has agreed to give a sizable grant to two nonprofit organizations. But the funding organization hasn’t decided how the money will be divvied up.

 A celebrity visits the two nonprofits under the pretense that they’re filming a news segment, miniseries, or PSA. After seeing what each organization does, the celebrity (with guidance from the funding organization’s staff, of course) decides how to split the grant. Sometimes, based on the site visit, the celebrity suggests other ways of supporting the organization, such as access to a local theater or time with an organizational consultant. Finally the celebrity returns to each organization and tells them the good news!

Because this process is so unique, I can only imagine that these funding organizations need to track details that are out of the ordinary. Not every grants management system can handle such complexity. But if those funders were using Blackbaud Grantmaking, they would simply need to create a few custom fields. And if they have the Blueprint module, creating those custom fields would be a breeze.

Even if undercover celebrities don’t perform your organization’s site visits, you might need to utilize the Blueprint module to track information outside of the standard set of Blackbaud Grantmaking fields. “Give” some thought to learning how to create custom fields in your Blackbaud Grantmaking system with Blackbaud University’s new Blackbaud Grantmaking: Blueprint course!