Blackbaud for Gmail

Kristen Jaoui

Hello!

I hope you are all doing well. Has anyone used the plugin Blackbaud for Gmail? My Director of Development was asking about it. I installed it and it looks like the only benefit is you can look up constituent details in Gmail? It takes forever to load so I don't see the value in this plugin. What am I missing (if anything)?

Thanks!
Kristen

Jennifer Wyss

Hi Kristen - I installed this a few months ago and I find it really useful in creating an action out of correspondence on Gmail. If the plug-in is installed correctly (and I recall I had to do it twice before I figured it out), then on the right side of the screen when you open and read a message, you will see the BB for Gmail icon. When you touch it, a screen opens up in which the action is prepared from the correspondence and the likely constituent is selected. You can also search for another constituent name on whose record you can include the action (e.g., if the email was forwarded to you, BB won't be able to find the right constituent to match to). Below you can see the right side menu with the green BB for Gmail icon. I hope this helps!

Shane Littleton

We use Blackbaud for Outlook, which is very similar. I recently launched it internally to our teams, and they have found it helpful. Like Jennifer mentioned, it's mainly used to create an action from an email - either a completed action, or an open action to be followed up on. Because of that, it mainly only has functionality for grant managers, solicitors, etc.