A New Cloud Solution for Higher Education Unveiled

This year’s bbcon was full of surprises; from the Integrated Cloud Initiative to the partnership with Points of Light, Blackbaud had one more thing up its sleeve. The leading nonprofit cloud software company has been offering education management solutions to the K-12 market for a number of years now, which has generated over 200 million logins per year.

At bbcon, it announced the Cloud Solution for Higher Education, which introduces a brand new education management portfolio tailored specially for high education institutions.

NonProfit PRO sat down with Tiffany Crumpton, director of business strategy and solution management, Information Delivery Management, at Blackbaud, and Tim Hill, president and general manager, Higher Education Solutions, at Blackbaud, to discuss the announcement.

The new education management solution now allowed higher education institutions to manage the full student lifecycle, which is an innovative break for the sector. Tracking the entire student lifecycle allows institutions to build a connected campus, which delivers a better, more improved student experience. The education management solution includes student information, recruiting and enrollment management, school website systems and learning management. “Our [long-term] vision is to really impact every aspect of the income stream for institutions. When you’re fundraising, that’s income, right?” Hill said.

In addition, the education management solution also includes the following, according to the press release:

• Blackbaud Stewardship Management: Making it easy to collect quality impact statements and share them with donors
• Blackbaud Guided Fundraising: Providing the tools, automation and project management capabilities that annual giving teams need to scale a multichannel, person-to-person fundraising strategy.

“What we've been working on the last couple years (quietly) was factoring this in for the higher education market, so we could meet the needs of things like degree audits that are not specifically in K-12, but are in higher ed. What's exciting about this is that we've always wanted to get involved earlier in the process. And now with the integration, being able to attract students as donors and engaging them, is really exciting,” Crumpton said.

To learn more about the Cloud Solution for Higher Education, click here.