The Buzz: April 2024 Edition

Hello Community and Happy April,

There’s a lot going on this month in Community and across Blackbaud. Read on for all the exciting updates.

Earn April’s Exclusive Badge:

We are so inspired by March’s exclusive badge challenge asking members about their sources of inspiration! 55 members commented on this Inspiration Station post. If you need a boost of inspo, you should read through the thread and add your own.

For April’s challenge and exclusive badge opportunity, we are turning our focus to literary inspiration. In order to earn this month’s exclusive “Bookworm” badge, post your favorite book of all time in this Just for Fun discussion post. You can also share a favorite quote from your prized prose.

Bonus point opportunity: along with your favorite book of all time, share your favorite professional or personal development book and I’ll award you an extra 200 community points.

Community News Kudos:

We are always blown away by the level of engagement from members of this community every month. Here are this month’s kudos:

Alex Wong responded to 149 discussions in the month of March. Thank you for always being a helping hand, Alex!

Our top likers in March were Christine Roberston, Elizabeth Johnson, Austen Brown, Jennifer Kluh and Christine Newman with more than 300 likes given between the five of them. We love LIKES!

Christine Robertson and Carlene Johnson sent 4,545 connection requests in March. Way to welcome new members and build connections!

bbcon News

Early bird registration is now open for bbcon 2024, happening September 24-26 in Seattle Washington! Now is the time to secure the best pricing available for this year’s conference, so register now. You can see all the early bird pricing details including for our All-Access Pass that includes pre-conference workshops, like our popular Blackbaud University Day and skill-building Developer Workshops, on the bbcon website.

And this year, Blackbaud University Day will have a new exciting format: Unsessions! You can learn more about the new Unsessions in the various discussions happening across Blackbaud Community, and even suggest and vote on the topics you’d like to see covered:

• Blackbaud Raiser’s Edge NXT®

• Blackbaud’s K-12 Education Management Solutions

• Blackbaud Financial Edge NXT®

• Blackbaud Luminate Online®

• Blackbaud Award Management™

We’ve also created a special graphic that you can use as your community cover photo to show that you are attending bbcon. Just right click on the image and go to your profile page and update your cover photo with the new image. We are excited to see you in Seattle!

A New Way to Find Answers in Blackbaud Knowledgebase:

We recently announced that our Knowledgebase is now harnessing the power of AI to generate answers based on your search queries, saving you time and effort and getting you the information you need quicker. Read this blog post for more information on this update and to get tips on how to optimize your search to yield the best results. If you’ve used the new AI experience in the Blackbaud Knowledgebase and loved the results, let us know in the comments! We will pass along your valuable feedback to our team.

Blackbaud Product Update Briefings:

You won’t want to miss the next Product Update Briefings happening April 30-May 2! This semi-annual virtual conference showcases recent innovations and future roadmap direction in our solutions and help ensure you are up-to-date on the latest in your product. Learn more and register here today. And look out for a special exclusive badge earning opportunity coming later this month in the Blackbaud Community for Product Update Briefing attendees!

Blackbaud Community Tip of the Month:

Many of the updates and innovations covered in the Product Update Briefings are fueled by YOUR ideas. You can submit and vote on suggestions for new product features and updates in the Idea Bank within each product community (find yours here) – just click on the “Ideas” tab in the top navigation. Ideas are regularly reviewed by members of our Product Management Team and your votes matter. Important note: the Ideas Banks require a separate log in, which can be found on the left-hand side of the page at the bottom of the filter block:

In Person Workshops: Learn How to Build a Power Automate App or Power BI Report

We are excited to announce an upcoming in person workshop on April 19th in New York City! If you are a low or pro code developer, you won’t want to miss this amazing opportunity to meet and network with your peers and get great ideas for more automation and app projects. If you can’t make the New York in person workshop, there are several other locations and dates happening this year. You can learn more here. Act now to reserve your spot as space is limited!

Events:

• User Group: Microsoft Power Automate Users (Tuesday, April 16th at noon EST)

• Grantmaking webinar: How to Minimize Risk with Your Grantees (Thursday, April 25th at 11am EST)

• Blackbaud Product Update Briefings: April 30th – May 2nd. Registration now open!

Birthdays:

Happiest of birthdays to our Aries and Taureses! Did you know you share a birthday month with the Blackbaud Community? That’s right! Our community turned nine years old on April 8th. We are almost at our decade milestone! Thank you to everyone who has been a member since the beginning, and we hope those with April birthdays have an awesome trip around the sun.