Introducing Premium Features for Blackbaud Raiser’s Edge NXT®

Kathryn Hall · February 17

We recently began to release the first in a series of premium features for Raiser’s Edge NXT. These features, many powered by AI, are designed to help you get the most out of your day by automating workflows and delivering advanced analytics to inform strategic decisions.

We know how important it is for your fundraising tools to keep pace with the way you work and that so many of you are eager for continued progress toward a fully unified, modern Raiser’s Edge NXT experience. That remains one of our highest priorities, and our teams are deeply focused on that long-term transformation.

At the same time, we have an obligation to continue evaluating and incorporating emerging technologies into Raiser’s Edge NXT in transformative ways. That’s why, alongside our ongoing work on the unified view, we’re introducing new, AI-powered features that offer immediate, practical support to help streamline fundraising work. Some AI capabilities, like Chat for Blackbaud AI, have been released to all Raiser’s Edge NXT customers globally. Others will accrue to customers with the most advanced subscriptions. The latter, labeled “premium” capabilities, will fit seamlessly into current and emerging workflows, whether you’re planning strategy, managing portfolios, or preparing for your next meaningful conversation with a donor.

Introducing intelligent assistance capabilities

The new premium features incorporate AI-enhanced intelligent assistance, designed to help you work more efficiently and strategically—without taking the human out of the loop. Intelligent assistance in Raiser’s Edge NXT reduces effort by surfacing strategic insights along with suggestions for how to act on them. For instance, triggering the Cultivation Assistant (a premium feature) will help you:

Create an “optimized” opportunity for major gift prospects
Schedule a series of cultivation actions to help secure that gift
Prepare for donor meetings with Action Strategy briefings

Who will have access to premium features?

Customers in the United States and Canada who subscribe to either “Raiser's Edge NXT Complete” or the “Raiser’s Edge NXT Pro for Higher Education” package will automatically receive access to the premium features available in their region. If you’re not sure, here’s how to tell if your organization has access to premium Raiser’s Edge NXT features.

What are some of these new premium features?

Strategy Assistant informs your fundraising plans (U.S./Canada)

Tap into data-driven benchmarks that help you understand your organization’s performance compared to peer organizations and quickly turn these insights into action. As part of the initial release of Strategy Assistant, we’ve added new benchmarks as tiles on the Raiser’s Edge NXT home page, focusing on these areas: ‑driven

Revenue growth
Active donor growth (acquisition, retention, and recapture)
Revenue per donor
Sustainer performance

These benchmark tiles link to premium capabilities within Chat for Blackbaud AI to guide your next steps in turning insight into action, explore untapped segments, and create focused constituent lists. (Note: Sustainer growth data append and metric available only in the United States)

Prospect Insights Pro helps develop a healthy long-term major giving pipeline (U.S.)
All U.S. and Canadian customers get access to Prospect Insights as part of their subscription. U.S. accounts with access to premium features were upgraded to Prospect Insights Pro the week of Feb. 9, 2026. Prospect Insights Pro builds on Prospect Insights by adding deeper predictive intelligence and prescriptive guidance that helps fundraisers act on suggested donors. In addition to core prospect identification and ranking, Prospect Insights Pro unlocks more advanced model scores and queues, adaptive (organization-specific) predictions, and AI-driven recommendations to help teams prioritize, tailor asks, and move prospects forward faster.

Cultivation Assistant helps simplify major gift workflows (U.S./Canada)

Move smoothly from identifying prospects to taking meaningful action to secure a major gift. The initial release of Cultivation Assistant helps open a new major gift opportunity informed by what you know about each donor. It then generates a thoughtful cultivation plan for you to review, adjust, and approve. It’s designed to save time by automating repetitive tasks, helping you stay organized and proactive in every donor relationship.

As you prepare for donor outreach, save time with AI generated Action Summaries and recommendations (U.S./Canada).These concise, up-to-the-minute donor briefings that highlight recent giving, event attendance, appeals, and other meaningful moments in a donor’s journey help you prepare confidently for calls and meetings and build stronger relationships. Action Strategies can also help you decide whether to proceed, pause, or adjust your outreach.

Why is Blackbaud releasing premium features when many customers are still waiting for the unified view?

We are deeply committed to our roadmap for core usability, unified workflows, and user experience improvements, which is why development of the unified view remains foundational. We also know that today fundraisers are balancing more work with fewer resources than ever before, and we have an opportunity to support this work in new ways with AI tools that reduce administrative burden and deliver insights faster. Premium feature work runs in parallel to the unified view roadmap. These features are developed by complementary teams with different roles and expertise, allowing us to make progress on multiple fronts at once.

The work behind premium features uses models, data, and AI capabilities that do not replace or compete with the engineering required for the unified view. By working on parallel paths, we are able to move quickly toward the goal of giving you a more powerful, modern Raiser’s Edge NXT experience.

How do I access premium features?

Premium features are integrated throughout the platform and will appear as you work in Raiser’s Edge NXT. For example, some updates appear in the navigation structure—like the automatic upgrade for Complete customers in the United States from Prospect Insights to Prospect Insights Pro. Others will show up as tiles on the home page, like the premium Benchmarks that fuel the initial release of the Strategy Assistant. And many premium features interact with the capabilities of Chat for Blackbaud AI—like the Cultivation Assistant that automates aspects of opportunity creation and cultivation plan creation via the Chat interface.

What’s next?

As Raiser’s Edge NXT continues to evolve, our focus remains on supporting fundraisers in their work to strengthen their communities. Premium features represent one part of a broader journey, providing near-term enhancements while our teams continue advancing the core improvements many of you rely on. We remain committed to delivering a unified, modern web experience.

If you have questions or want to learn more, you can:

Join the conversation in the Community. Add a question or comment on this blog post or start a separate discussion thread to share your thoughts.
Attend our upcoming webinar on strategic benchmarks. It is designed for customers who want to learn how to use peer benchmarking as a strategic planning tool. We’ll cover how to translate metrics you have available to you in Raiser’s Edge NXT into targeted strategies for 2026. We’ll also introduce the new premium benchmarks that form part of the Strategy Assistant.
Follow What’s New. As we begin to deliver premium features, we’ll share this information in What’s New—both inside Raiser’s Edge NXT and in Community blog posts. Going forward, premium features will be called out separately in What’s New documentation, to help you quickly understand which new features you can access in your account.

As Raiser’s Edge NXT continues to evolve, our focus remains on supporting fundraisers in their work to strengthen their communities. Premium features represent one part of a broader journey, providing near-term enhancements while our teams continue advancing the core improvements many of you rely on. We remain committed to delivering a unified, modern web experience.

Karen Diener · February 18

My comments are not going to surprise anyone, but I feel like they are not being heard. I know I am not alone because these are the complaints I hear most often from the nonprofits I work with, whether they are struggling with Raiser's Edge or selecting a new fundraising database.

What are the related costs for premium features? Transparency in pricing is critical. Lack of clarity wastes everyone's time. Continued name changes / bundling of "enhancements" is confusing.

AI isn't always the answer to a lack of resources and working efficiently. One of the heaviest administrative burdens that I see Raiser's Edge customers dealing with is generating acknowlegement letters / receipts. This activity is fundamental to nonprofits yet is being ignored by Blackbaud, and customers are being encouraged to explore third party options that cost extra money. This is completely at odds with your statements about being deeply committed to your roadmap for core usability.

Lee Grisham · February 18

😕Le sigh… Agree with @Karen Diener and the other nonprofits she consults.

NOT AT ALL an area where we need new features. Please upgrade the security settings, business rules, document generation, and workflow and we could do this without the need for an AI to "optimize" something for us. I'm tired of Blackbaud telling us what we should be doing and let our organizational processes that are based on our staff and constituents dictate what we do.

Suzie Capps · February 18

@Karen Diener I agree with everything you say here! Thank you for sharing your thoughts - it's good the community can feel 'heard' by each other, even if Blackbaud can't hear us…

Abby Lau · February 18

Also agree with @Karen Diener. Acknowledgement letters/receipts has been one of the most important features taken away with the transition to NXT, even with the third party options most of them pales in comparison to the functionalities before.

Furthermore, having tested the AI chatbot it is clear that their AI model is not even ready yet with extremely limited functionalities and consistent errors. It is a quick cash-grab attempt to boost shareholders' trust while AI is still a hot topic.

Kathryn Hall · February 19

@Karen Diener @Abby Lau @Suzie Capps @Lee Grisham - Thanks for your candid feedback—these concerns come up a lot, and they’re fair. I understand why this announcement raises concerns, especially when there are core workflows and settings you require for your daily work that aren't yet where you need them to be.

On acknowledgements specifically: We are actively rebuilding that workflow. You’ll hear more about it in the May 5 Product Update Briefing when we'll give more details of tangible progress there. We’re continuing our work toward a fully unified web view experience. That remains a top priority — and the teams driving that work are separate from the teams exploring new technologies.

Our responsibility is to both finish and modernize essential workflows while also investing in innovations that will shape how fundraising work evolves. Some of those ideas will fold directly into the web view experience; others, like early AI capabilities, are intentionally exploratory.

AI chat in particular is still very early. We don’t expect it to be perfect or complete today, and we know it will evolve in ways that aren’t obvious yet. As with most features, user feedback (in this case received in the app) will help shape where it goes—and just as importantly, where it doesn’t.