The Buzz: Season of Giving (December 2023) Edition!

Hi Community!

December is upon us and we have a lot to cover, so let’s get started.

Vote for the Blackbaud Community!

Beginning with a HUGE honor for the Blackbaud Community. For the second year in a row, we’ve been nominated for a CMX Community Industry Award for Best Customer Support Community! It’s a true reflection of the value of this amazing community, driven by the best practices you share and the connections you make on a daily basis. Public voting weighs heavily on the final results, so we need your help! Cast your vote today for the Blackbaud Community and let’s win big this year! Voting ends on December 31st.

Season of Giving:

It is officially the Season of Giving and we are ready to give back to YOU in the form of an exclusive Season of Giving badge.

This year, we launched monthly challenges, each with their own exclusive badge you could earn. To end the year strong and give you an opportunity to earn any badge you may have missed, we are RE-OPENING all our challenges for the year!

There’s also a handy page featuring all of the challenges and the members who earned the badges.

Here’s a quick glance at all the challenges we’ve had this year:

• Update your community profile with a link to one or more of your social media profiles. Here’s how!

• Introduce yourself in your product community. The link to introduce yourself is still located in the scrolling block on each product page.

• Submit an idea to improve or enhance the Blackbaud Community.

• Level up in one or more activity badges.

• Did you attend bbcon? If so, let us know why it was valuable to you and/or let us know what bbcon sessions were you most excited to see listed and why.

• Answer a Just for Fun Question or add your own!

• Take these three actions for a triple play.

• Welcome five new members.

• Watch the latest Blackbaud Product Update Briefings and leave your feedback!

If you complete the challenge(s) you may have missed out on by the end of December, you’ll earn the corresponding badge(s)! And since it is the Season of Giving, if you participate in this month’s challenge by earning a badge you previously missed out on, you’ll also receive this month’s exclusive badge!

We’d also like to take a moment and congratulate the two community members who have earned all of the badges each month: JoAnn Strommen and Vicky Lopuchowycz. They’ll be the first to receive the Season of Giving badge.

Community Tip of the Month

We love showing off our members! Bookmark tour featured members to see all of our members who have completed our monthly challenges. This is a great resource for starting to grow out your connections in the community. These members are actively participating and are friendly faces to add to your connections list. We also feature a rotating cast of Community Member Spotlights we’ve published throughout the year. Members like...

Meet Cassie Chilcutt with the Grand Canyon Conservancy

Check out our latest Community Member Spotlight on Cassie Chilcutt, a prospect research manager with the Grand Canyon Conservancy. Find out more about her love of travel and true crime podcasts, and how she utilized AI to help major gift officers at her organization. Bonus: you get to see her favorite picture of the Grand Canyon!

End-of-year Fundraising

Are you ready to tap into the generosity of the last few weeks of the year? Blackbaud’s Ultimate End-of-Year Fundraising Toolkit can help you maximize your revenue with templates and tips on topics including:

• Optimizing your online donation form

• Email and social templates

• Securing major gifts

• Stewardship—including sample phone and email scripts

Download the toolkit for free here!

How are you preparing for end of year giving? Join the discussion happening in Organizational Best Practices!

Need more help? Check out this Engage Blog post about the five actions you can take right now to end the year strong.

You can also access this great repository of on-demand webinars from fundraising experts that weigh on topics from “The Past, Present, and Future of Online Giving” to “End of Year Giving Starts Now.” You won’t want to miss this series!

Events:

Check out these upcoming events that will help you maximize your impact:

Grantmaking Webinar: The Path to Centering the Applicant Experience (December 7th at 11am est)

User Group: Microsoft Power BI Users (December 13th at noon est and December 19th at noon est)

Product Tour: Introduction to Raiser’s Edge NXT ® and Blackbaud Grantmaking ™ (Thursday, December 14th at 1:00pm est)

December Birthdays:

Happiest of Birthdays to our Sagittariuses and Capricorns (that’s me!) If you are celebrating a birthday in December, let us know in the comments below. We’ll give you a birthday shout-out!