New England Region Blackbaud Grantmaking User Group: Learning from Each Other

New England area grantmakers held a user group meeting on May 3rd hosted by the Endowment for Health in Concord, New Hampshire. Joining both in-person and virtually, grantmakers gathered to learn from each other on a variety of topics ranging from new staff training to the grantee and applicant experience.

Sue Fulton, Chief Financial Officer at the Endowment for Health, welcomed the group to share their ideas and network with peers. The learnings began with a demonstration of the Advanced Search feature led by Jill Zurborg, Blackbaud Sr. Principal Consultant. Jill shared tips for creating an expression, cross-record searches, and fixed vs. dynamic date searches, among many other helpful practices.

Brenda Noiseux, Blackbaud Product Team Leader, answered questions and shared the Q2 2024 Product Update Briefings with a focus on the new Applicant and Grantee Experience currently released in limited availability. The new experience includes new tools for managing submitted applications, an applicant-centric portal, and a new form builder. Brenda invited the group to sign up for Product Discovery to participate in the next limited availability wave ahead of general availability targeted for release to all customers in late Q2 this year.

Andie Hession, Grants Program Associate at Endowment for Health is participating in the early adopter program and demonstrated features of the new grantee and applicant experience. Andie walked through the new tools and techniques and showed the group how to use the port function to copy over existing applications to the new portal.

The session wrapped up with an open discussion where the topic turned toward recommendations for new staff training. Several members agreed to share learning plans with each other. Kathleen Ward, Blackbaud Principal Customer Success Manager, gave an overview of the Blackbaud University curriculum for Blackbaud Grantmaking, recommending starting new staff with the Fundamentals series based on the role-based learning path.

Are you interested in learning from each other in a user group setting? How about hosting a Blackbaud Grantmaking User Group in your region? We would love to hear from you! Please comment on this blog to share with our community members.

Come say hi and connect with me on my community profile!