February InsideTrack: FAQ Recap on Chat for Blackbaud AI

Kathryn Hall
Kathryn Hall Blackbaud Employee
Tenth Anniversary Kudos 5 Name Dropper Participant
edited March 2 in Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT® Blog
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We designed Chat for Blackbaud AI to make it easier to work with information you already have, and to help you move from question to understanding more quickly. During our February InsideTrack webinar that focused on the Chat for Blackbaud AI roadmap, we received dozens of thoughtful, candid questions about the content.  

The team put together this FAQ to add context and address the most commonly asked questions. But first, some context:  

At its core, chat is a conversational experience, a new way to interact with your database. It can help you explore information, generate draft content, summarize context, and bring together data in ways that reduce friction in day-to-day fundraising work. Some capabilities, like on the fly summaries, aggregated views, visualizations, or drafted language, are intentionally delivered inside the chat experience, because they’re most useful in the moment you’re thinking something through. 

Chat is not a system of record. The underlying Blackbaud product continues to be responsible for data integrity, permissions, calculations, and authoritative outcomes. 

A simple way to think about it: Chat can help you create, combine, and explain—but your core systems remain the source of truth. 

Now, to your questions:  

1. Is Chat for Blackbaud AI replacing core functionality like Advanced Search or Database View? 

Short answer: No. 

Chat for Blackbaud AI is not replacing the core tools and workflows you rely on today. It’s designed to complement them. 

In many cases, chat provides a more natural way to get information or insight that already exists in the product. In other cases, chat introduces new assistive capabilities—like synthesized summaries, list aggregation, or visualizations—that don’t exist elsewhere in the product in the same way today. 

Those chat-native capabilities are intentionally focused on exploration and sensemaking, while the underlying product continues to govern records, permissions, and outcomes that need to be authoritative. 

2. Is Chat for Blackbaud AI included, or is it a paid add‑on? 

Chat for Blackbaud AI is included for all Raiser’s Edge NXT customers globally. There’s no separate license required to access chat itself. 

Some examples shown during webinars may reference premium features (such as Prospect Insights Pro). Those examples are meant to show where things are headed and how chat can support advanced workflows—not to suggest that basic chat access requires an upgrade. 

3. How accurate is chat—especially for summaries, lists, and charts? 

This was one of the most common questions we heard, and it’s an important one. 

Not all chat outputs serve the same purpose. When there’s a single, deterministic answer, the chat experience is designed to rely on the underlying product systems rather than generating a response. 

When chat produces things like summaries, aggregated lists, drafted language, or visualizations, those outputs are assistive by design. They’re meant to help you understand patterns, orient yourself, or move faster—not to replace verification when accuracy is critical. 

Where possible, chat provides context so you can review and confirm results against the underlying records.  

4. What should I do when a response doesn’t seem right?  

Even smart tools can miss the mark sometimes. If something doesn’t look quite right, try: 

  • Rephrasing your question with a bit more specificity 
  • Adding context about what you’re trying to do 
  • Asking a follow-up to narrow the scope. 

You can also use the in product feedback options with the thumbs up / thumbs down, adding notes for context. This feedback is reviewed regularly and helps improve the experience over time.  

If you believe you’ve run into a product defect, access issue, or security concern, you should use standard Support channels. 

5. Where does our data go? Is it stored or used for training? 

Enabling Chat for Blackbaud AI does not change your existing privacy agreements, and Blackbaud does not use customer data to train foundation AI models.  

Because privacy and security reviews often require very specific, up-to-date details, the Blackbaud Trust Center and Blackbaud AI Terms and Conditions are the best source of truth for information about data handling, retention, and safeguards. 

6. Which AI models does Blackbaud use?  

Blackbaud’s generative AI capabilities may use multiple enterprise grade model providers, and those choices can evolve over time as the technology changes. 

Current details about model providers and governance are maintained in Blackbaud’s official security and compliance documentation. 

7. Can we control who uses AI—and test it safely? 

Yes. AI features are opt-in at the organization level and governed by user permissions. This makes it possible to start with a small pilot group, learn what works for your organization, and expand access over time. 

If generative AI isn’t enabled, those features won’t appear in the product. 

8. Is Chat for Blackbaud AI a reporting tool? 

Chat is best thought of as an assistive experience—a place to explore, summarize, draft, and analyze. 

For formal reporting, audits, compliance, or operational decisions, results should always be validated in the appropriate governed product experiences. 

9. Why are you adding AI features now? 

A lot of questions and comments touched on the topic of why Blackbaud is developing AI features now when so many prioritize rapid progress toward a fully unified, modern Raiser’s Edge NXT experience. The unified view 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. Our responsibility is to both finish and modernize essential workflows while also investing in innovations that will shape how fundraising work evolves.  

AI work represents a complementary track, not a detour. These innovations are designed to explore ways to deliver more near-term value inside the workflows you already use, helping reduce manual effort, surface insight faster, and support better decisions, without waiting for every foundational piece to be complete. 

10. Where can I learn more or get started? 

We shared a number of resources to help you get comfortable with Chat for Blackbaud AI, including.  

 As a closing thought: Chat for Blackbaud AI is designed to support human expertise, not replace it. It’s there to reduce friction, surface context faster, and give you new ways to think through your work—while the core product continues to do what it does best. 

You don’t need to adopt everything at once, or at all. For many organizations, the next step is simply understanding what’s available and where chat can responsibly make everyday work a little easier. 

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