Blackbaud Boosts AI and Reporting via Microsoft Azure and Power BI

New Enhancements Further Strengthen Performance, Scalability, Stability, and Reporting Power for Blackbaud Impact Edge Customers

Blackbaud, one of the leading providers of software for powering social impact, today announced the integration of multiple Microsoft products – including Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service and Microsoft Power BI – into Blackbaud Impact Edge, the company’s new data and storytelling solution that’s currently under development. The enhancements to the product architecture through Azure OpenAI Service and enhanced reporting through Power BI will enable Blackbaud Impact Edge corporate customers to rapidly produce more contextualized reporting on their social impact programs. Additionally, the company announced that Blackbaud Impact Edge will include the first release to a corporate audience of Blackbaud’s generative-AI chatbot, Blackbaud Copilot.

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Blackbaud Impact Edge enables corporate impact professionals to easily monitor, report on, and articulate the various aspects of their organization’s social impact initiatives. The software brings together an organization’s impact data spanning employee engagement programs, philanthropic programs, and educational initiatives—incorporating rich data from both YourCause from Blackbaud CSR solutions and EVERFI from Blackbaud community education initiatives—along with other trusted external data sources. Whether an organization needs to produce a global, unified view of their impact or dive into a granular local community initiative, Impact Edge instantly delivers data, insights, and AI-powered narratives, with best-practice security principles built in.

In collaboration with Microsoft, Blackbaud has integrated new features and solutions into Impact Edge that align with security best practices and expand the robust artificial intelligence capabilities and reporting dashboard.

The integration of Microsoft’s Power BI Embedded platform will enable better data visualization and put key outputs at the user’s fingertips. This integration will also allow Blackbaud to design a more stable and scalable reporting experience within the dashboard while increasing overall performance.

In addition to updates to Impact Edge’s dashboard, Microsoft engineers are supporting the development of key elements of Blackbaud Copilot that is being built into Impact Edge. The features being developed for this version of Blackbaud Copilot will allow Impact Edge to answer questions and generate content based on trusted sources of information, such as the company’s brand voice, information on their website, or other public-facing web domains. With future, more advanced Copilot features, Impact Edge will provide stronger data visualizations, the ability to ingest different formats of data, and improved access to structured data.

“The architecture we are building with Microsoft will help increase overall performance, stability, and scalability for our customers while helping keep their information secure,” said Dale Strange, president and chief operating officer, Corporate Impact, Blackbaud. “Microsoft is a leader in secure and scalable AI capabilities, and their strategic consultation and support have allowed us to build out the cutting-edge reporting and AI features of Impact Edge to produce this incredibly powerful platform that the industry has never seen before.”

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“Blackbaud has been using Microsoft services in an innovative, intelligent way,” said Eduardo Kassner, chief data & AI officer, Software & Digital Platform, Microsoft. “With the support of our engineering teams, Blackbaud has designed their architecture to enable a sophisticated generative AI, data access, and visualization experience, using Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service and Power BI solutions.”

Blackbaud is preparing for the next phase in the roll out of Blackbaud Impact Edge for Corporate Impact customers following a successful early adopter program. Limited availability of Blackbaud Impact Edge has begun with select customers. All features will continue to be enhanced and improved throughout limited availability, plus new features will be added, like data alignment to industry standards such as the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, the Community Reinvestment Act, and other globally relevant standards, as well as the ability to input and manage toward program goals. Blackbaud Impact Edge general availability is scheduled for the fourth quarter of 2024.

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