What's New (June 2)

Check out the latest features in Blackbaud Church Management!

Classes
Building on recent improvements to room booking, you can now view which rooms are available from the Select rooms option when you add or edit classes. Previously, you selected View all rooms to check availability and then selected Select room to book a room.

Email designer
From the email designer, you can now preview the format and font styles you apply to merge fields for all messages including new, existing, and copied versions. Previously, you could only view styles for merge fields in sent messages.

 

Gifts
Amend a recurring gift's amount or payment information -- To help you accommodate congregants' requests to make changes to their recurring giving, you can now amend a recurring gift in the web view! Amendments let you add and track changes to a recurring gift’s details over its lifetime. When you amend a gift, details about the change, such as any previous values and amended values, appear in the recurring gift’s history.

You can amend a recurring gift from its record:

• To upgrade or downgrade the gift, select Amend gift amount from the top of the record, then increase or decrease the amount.

• To edit the payment information for the gift, select Amend under Payment information, then enter the updated information.

When you amend a gift, details about the change, such as any previous values and amended values, appear in the recurring gift’s history. Any changes you make apply to future installments; recurring gift payments that have already been processed remain unchanged. For more information, see Recurring Gift Amendments.

Note: In future releases, you’ll be able to add other types of amendments through the web view, such as to update a recurring gift's payment schedule.

Improvements to Add batch gift (for more of you) -- Previously, we improved the way you enter a gift's details when you add a single gift. Now, we added the same improvements when you add a batch of gifts.

From Gifts, Gifts management, create or edit a batch. Each time you add a gift to the batch, under Gift splits, you can now directly enter details into the fields that help your church track gifts — such as the campaign, fund, and appeal. For more information, see Gifts.

Note: This feature is available to a limited number of churches and will be released in waves to others in the upcoming weeks.

Workflows
To easily communicate with your congregants, you can now create a workflow to send an automated series of emails from Blackbaud Church Management. This allows you to have a truly automated workflow, see how many people received your emails in the workflow, and view statistics on each email sent.

From Marketing, Email, select Workflow designer emails, then create an email from a blank layout or from a template. In the Email Designer, under Set the purpose, select Use this email for a workflow. Enter the rest of the details then publish your email. Continue to create and publish emails for your workflow, then navigate to Workflow Designer.

Create a new workflow and add an email as the first step. Select one of the emails you created, and then add an action or condition as the next step.

Tip: When you set conditions, make sure to space emails out over a few days to prevent your constituents from receiving too many emails too quickly.

After you create your workflow and you’re ready to send the first email, activate it. To see how many recipients received your workflow, select the active workflow name in Workflow Designer.

To see email statistics, select View workflow from the workflow’s menu, then select View stats on an email step.

For more information, check out this video or see Workflows.

Blackbaud Marketplace
The new Blackbaud Marketplace features applications by Blackbaud and Blackbaud partners that enable you to extend the functionality of your Blackbaud solutions. All Blackbaud environment users with a Blackbaud ID can access the new Blackbaud Marketplace to browse what’s available. Admins can still access the Applications page from within Blackbaud Church Management to manage connections, including manually adding apps that aren’t in the Blackbaud Marketplace. Also, the Applications page will now only show apps that are compatible with Blackbaud Church Management.

Quickly navigate to the Blackbaud Marketplace from the Solutions menu in the upper left of your Blackbaud-ID supported solutions.

Key features include:

• It’s easier to discover solutions that will benefit your organization.

• Filters help you find which applications are compatible with your Blackbaud solutions.

• Enhanced security ensures only admins can connect or disconnect applications.

• See at a glance which applications are connected to your Blackbaud environment.

• Get updates when new applications are added!

Ready to learn more about an application? In the Blackbaud Marketplace, select an application card to see key highlights, support links, and contact the application owner for more information.

Receipts
To help you find and resolve emailed receipts that failed to deliver, the number of bounces — and reason for each bounce — displays in Gift receipting and Consolidated receipting under Email tasks. Select the number of bounces to review the bounce descriptions for each congregant. For errors you can resolve, such as a misspelled email address, resolve them and resend the receipts. You should also resend receipts for temporary network errors. For more information, see Bounce Errors.