Communication via Email/Text SMS on Blackbaud

Nathan Ong

Hi,

Is there a way to send out mass communication on Blackbaud to parent emails and/or SMS?

We currently use Constant Contact but just wondering if there is any feature like that within Blackbaud for announcing things like field trips rescheduled, school getting cancelled etc.

Thank you!

Bryan Lorenzo

@Nathan Ong there is no native bulk texting tool. There are two Blackbaud Partners that provide this solution that integrates with your data from Core.

• https://brightarrow.com/
• https://www.ruvna.com/

Kelly Maddox

@Nathan Ong This is our second school year with Ruvna and we love it.

Amanda Polson

@Nathan Ong The pushpages work basically like Constant Contact, you can create templates for different types of emails. You need to create mailing lists, but it's pretty easy to create a mailing list that includes all current parents and teachers and it will auto update as people come to or leave your school. What I learned this year, our second using blackbaud, is that if I use the News functions in Core for each “article” in the bulletin, I can just pull them in with a thumbnail when I'm putting the bulletin together on Fridays.

In each user's profile, under Settings > Notifications, they can turn on notifications for announcements and athletics and other news, including adding a phone number to receive the notices via text messages. Then if athletics schedules change they will get either an email or text message. Or in News or Announcements you can choose to click the “Notify” button at the top and it will send a notice to the user via text or email. The parts that aren't so great about that are, first: the onus is on the user to turn on notifications. And second: For athletics it sends the message about what game has changed or what time has changed, but for all other text notifications the majority of the limited word count is taken up with the name and a link back to the portal, which in my experience often don't work.

Candi Roberts

@Nathan Ong
I've been exploring community groups for this option as well. If people select notifications for their community groups, it will send both text and emails (depending on their selection) that there is an announcement or news article. I found that if I created a group with just me in it, I could test it out with different amounts of characters for the headline (so they can see immediately what it is about), etc. The transmission when you create a news article or announcement is about 3 minutes.

Susan Hemingway

@Nathan Ong
We've been using BrightArrow Target for years. It's inexpensive and although the interface is a bit quirky, it works very well and reliably. Their customer service is excellent.

Mary Stanton

@Bryan Lorenzo You mention there isn't a native Blackbaud texting tool but am wondering if there are any plans for the K12 Educ Mgmt software to add emergency notification functionality (email, voice and text) in the future? We currently use Blackboard Connect for our emergency notifications but are looking at other options however, we don't want to implement a new app only to find later that Blackbaud is actually adding this feature.

Bryan Lorenzo

@Mary Stanton not that I am aware of. However, there is a Q4 2023 Product Update this month you can sign up at https://www.blackbaud.com/product-update-briefings

Lauren Marcus Eisenberg

@Nathan Ong For all of our texting needs, we use Connect (formerly Connect5 and purchased by Finalsite within the past couple of years). It is amazingly reliable. The UI is not so pretty, but adding constituents, building list, creating templates, and sending messages is solid. The principals, head of school, communications, and operations team are all confident users. We use it ICE (in case of emergency), for unplanned closings (weather issues, etc.), as well as for an occasional PSA (school picture day).

Brian Gray

@Mary Stanton - If you haven't already done so, take a look at Ruvna.com. They have several tools that integrate with Blackbaud

• Announcements (outbound emergency alert via text, phone and email)
• Accountability (student and employee attendance/check-in during on-campus crisis)
• Attendance (we don't use this one, so I don't know much about it)

They pull student and employee rosters from Blackbaud. You can use groups for targeting announcements. Some are automatic, and others can be managed via an Advanced List.

Mary Stanton

@Bryan Lorenzo Thanks Bryan! I had already signed up for that briefing - looking forward to hearing what is coming.

Mary Stanton

@Brian Gray Thanks Brian! Based on info I've seen in this community we already have Ruvna on our list to investigate. The integration piece, as long as it isn't too complicated to use, would be great. One of our other main requirements is that whatever tool we use has to be mobile friendly - based on your experience would you say that Ruvna is easy to use on a phone?

Brian Gray

@Mary Stanton - The integration to Ruvna is quick and easy. Your platform manager follows their instructions - just a few mouse clicks.

They have apps for both iPhone and Android. You can create templates for Announcements and Accountability on a computer, and they are immediately available on the phone apps.

Mary Stanton

@Brian Gray Thanks Brian! Good to know it's easy since I am the platform manager ?. I appreciate the input and am curious for the demo now so we can see more specifics!