Charleston’s Blackbaud Strengthens Relationship with NetHope as Founding Partner of The Center for the Digital Nonprofit

CHARLESTON, S.C., July 11, 2018 /PRNewswire/ — Blackbaud (BLKB), the world’s leading cloud software company powering social good, and NetHope, an organization that unites the world’s largest nonprofits with technology innovators worldwide, today announced that Blackbaud has expanded its role in the NetHope community as a founding partner of The Center for the Digital Nonprofit. Through this expanded partnership, Blackbaud and NetHope will help accelerate and scale digital transformation across the nonprofit sector through collaborative innovation, best practice adoption at scale, and technical expertise.

“As a longtime philanthropic and collaborative supporter of NetHope, Blackbaud believes in NetHope’s mission to foster collaboration between the world’s most innovative nonprofits to drive digital transformation, elevating their collective ability to create positive change in the world,” said Jay Odell, president and general manager, Enterprise Nonprofit, at Blackbaud. “Through our new partnership with The Center for the Digital Nonprofit and our expanded relationship with NetHope, Blackbaud continues to advance our work to strengthen the social economy, while also giving back to the nonprofit community at a global scale.”

NetHope, a consortium of 56 nonprofits that account for over 60 percent of all annual, non-governmental international aid, launched The Center for the Digital Nonprofit (CDN) in October 2017. Through collaboration, The Center brings together the expertise of the technology sector with the on-the-ground experience of nonprofits to create a foundation for forward-looking organizations to deliver aid, relieve suffering, and build hope. By providing the expertise, resources, tools, guidance, and grantmaking needed for digital transformation, The Center helps nonprofits achieve the efficiency of tomorrow today.

Leveraging Blackbaud’s unmatched data set and deep nonprofit expertise, the partnership will drive collaboration to build platforms that dramatically improve efficiency and effectiveness across the nonprofit sector; establish programs that enable NetHope members—and the nonprofit sector at large—to imagine, design and execute best practices proven to drive impact, such as gifts-in-kind lifecycle management; and expand support and digital expertise that advances the progress of NetHope’s working groups, including the Enterprise Architecture Working Group and the CRM and Data Working Group.

“This partnership with Blackbaud has powerful implications for digital transformation in the global nonprofit sector,” said Lauren Woodman, chief executive officer of NetHope. “NetHope and Blackbaud share a common vision for changing the world through technology and collaboration. As needs outpace available resources to solve current global issues, we are excited to work together with Blackbaud to help the nonprofit sector successfully navigate and scale digital transformation—both to improve efficiency and to stimulate worldwide momentum in achieving the Global Goals.”

Blackbaud joins Microsoft and Okta as founding partners of The Center for the Digital Nonprofit. Each company has committed to partner with NetHope and The Center to apply their expertise, resources and networks to advance innovation and collaboration that support The Center’s strategic objectives.