Highlights from bbcon 2024

That’s a wrap on bbcon 2024—and it was one for the books! We had a great time at Blackbaud’s annual conference, where we got to catch up with our customers, mingle with partners, and hear the latest from Blackbaud. In case you missed it, here are our top highlights from Seattle this year.

Building Connections, IRL

We had a blast seeing some of our customers and hearing first-hand how they’ve been using Omatic to streamline data flows across email marketing, fundraising, and other third-party tools into Blackbaud. It’s always a treat to catch up with contacts as they stopped by our booth for some tips, demos, and—of course—signature Omatic swag.

Amy Barker, database administrator at Pine Street Inn in Boston, shared some thoughts on her use of Omatic.

“I love Omatic because it makes my job as a database administrator so much easier. It helps my gift entry team enter gifts faster and more accurately. It also frees up their time to do other things.” – Amy

We also caught up with Carlene Johnson, a career nonprofit professional turned nonprofit consultant.

“I’m proud to say I’m one of the original Omatic fanatics,” said Carlene. “I demoed Omatic at Perkins School for the Blind. Since then, I’ve negotiated for it at every other job I’ve had. I tell employers I have to be able to buy the tools that I need to do the job, and that includes ImportOmatic.”

Expert-Led Speaking Sessions

Omatic has been in the business of helping nonprofits connect their systems with Blackbaud products for more than 20 years. We loved the opportunity to share some of what we’ve learned throughout this time on making the most of their investment in Blackbaud.

During our first session, Best Practices for Building a Data Integration Strategy, we talked about one of the most important concerns that nonprofit data professionals have: the challenge of moving data where it needs to go while maintaining freshness and integrity.

We polled the audience about their progress on a data integration strategy—and a whopping 40% of the room admitted they did not have any kind of strategy. After that, 30% of the crowd was in the process of building a strategy and the remaining 30% had developed a strategy. No one polled felt they had a complete data integration strategy. This group had come to the right place: we spent the remainder of the session discussing the changing technology landscape, why integration is more important than ever, and nine tactical steps that nonprofits can take to develop an integration strategy from the ground up.

Missed the session? We’ll be hosting a webinar recap on Tuesday, October 8. Register today to save your seat!

—

During our second session, Omatic Cloud & Raiser’s Edge NXT: Let Web View Work for You!, we were thrilled to talk through scenarios in Raiser’s Edge NXT that come up frequently and best practices for using this powerful platform. We also covered how Raiser’s Edge NXT has evolved over the years to meet the needs of growing nonprofits. Omatic was excited to share how database administrators can get more out of Raiser’s Edge NXT with the latest updates Blackbaud has rolled out, including more features than ever in web view.

In this talk, we also covered how our own solutions have evolved to help nonprofits save more time, get the data they need to make smarter decisions, and focus on the work that truly matters. It’s never been a better time for Blackbaud users to get the most out of their tools with Omatic solutions.

A highlight from the talk was sharing updates to Omatic Cloud’s features around Pledges and Payments in Batch, Tributes, and Query API. Our product and engineering teams have worked hard since last year’s bbcon to adapt our products and increase functionality as Blackbaud updates occur.

If you couldn’t make our second session, we’ll be hosting a webinar this month to talk through the latest feature updates in more detail. Check our webinars page and register to secure your spot.

Hearing About the Latest Innovations from Blackbaud

Learning about Blackbaud’s latest innovations is one of the main reasons for convening each year. As leaders in the nonprofit tech industry, Blackbaud’s solutions support the success of nonprofit organizations around the world.

Throughout the keynote speech, leaders at Blackbaud emphasized two words that guided their product development: connection and context. The team at Blackbaud spoke about the many ways they shaped their technology to create more engagement between nonprofits and supporters and surface relevant information to make strategic decisions. A major highlight was Blackbaud’s plan to move the most popular functions in database view to web view by mid-2025. All critical functions will move to web view by the end of 2025 for a complete web-based experience. Pledge and Batch functions will be some of the first functions to migrate.

When these changes roll out in Raiser’s Edge NXT, Omatic will be here to support you every step of the way. For over 20 years, we’ve worked with Blackbaud customers to get their data where it needs to go, and we are here to integrate all your systems so you can have all the data you rely on at your fingertips in web view—seamlessly. As Blackbaud users get more opportunities to leverage Raiser’s Edge web view, our team at Omatic will be releasing new features in parallel to make the most of this powerful platform.

Surveying the Nonprofit Tech Scene

It’s always good to catch up with friends. That’s why we were happy to see fellow Blackbaud partners including NPact, Doing Good Digital, GiveCampus, and many more that build tech tools to help nonprofits maximize their impact. We were in great company at this conference, and were pleased to join the partner summit where we explored how to work together to help nonprofits strengthen relationships and secure support.

Sharing Our Swag

If you’ve ever been to a conference with Omatic, you know we take pride in our swag. We handed out our popular “Talk Nerdy to Me” t-shirts, pickleball sets, and other fun items all conference long.

Spending Time in Seattle

We simply couldn’t get enough of the Emerald City. From the stalls at Pike’s Place Market to the incredible views of the Puget Sound, we were taken by the funky culture and scenic beauty of Seattle.

In short, bbcon was an inspiring gathering that left the team at Omatic more energized than ever to continue helping nonprofits drive mission impact. We loved soaking up time with customers, colleagues, and collaborators at Blackbaud and hearing about stories of the real-world impact that social good organizations make every day. We networked, shared advice, got insights into the ever-changing nonprofit tech landscape, and had a whole lot of fun. Let’s keep it going—if you missed our bbcon sessions or want to chat, sign up for one of our webinar recaps. Or, drop us a line!