The Development Agent, designed to help personalize donor engagement and grow giving at scale, is the first-ever expert agent to be embedded in a dedicated social impact platform
Blackbaud, the world’s leading provider of AI-powered solutions for social impact, announced the general availability of the Development Agent, Blackbaud’s first Agent for Good™, to Raiser’s Edge NXT® customers in the U.S., with availability internationally and in other products to follow. Building on its leadership trajectory as the category creator for systems of record in the fundraising market, Blackbaud is now defining a new category of agentic AI for social impact: one where expert digital teammates are native to a sector-specific platform, making them the first agents of this type able to execute fully autonomous social impact workflows under human supervision.
With the Development Agent, Blackbaud moves the sector beyond bolt-on agents, which can introduce data gaps and security risks, and AI assistants that offer insights but don’t meaningfully add capacity. The Development Agent – operating autonomously, but with human oversight like any team member – can identify, cultivate and engage donors with individualized, timely, and brand-aligned outreach at a scale fundraising teams could never achieve alone.
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“I believe the social impact sector has a monumental opportunity to benefit from the advancements in agentic AI,” said Mike Gianoni, President, CEO and Chairman of the Board at Blackbaud. “If used responsibly and effectively, agentic AI has the potential to completely redefine what’s possible when people unite around shared purpose. Together, the social impact sector could unlock the greatest advancement of purpose-driven missions in human history. We are all in on supporting our customers as the world’s most trusted and powerful AI engine for social impact.”
The Development Agent is embedded within the trusted Blackbaud solution, which leverages decades of proprietary philanthropic data and deep sector-specific contextual intelligence. Customers can be confident in the Development Agent’s ability to operate within the ethics, behaviors and judgment patterns that shape real-world decisions, which is critical to maintaining and strengthening donor trust. Delivering individualized outreach and building donor trust at scale has the potential to grow revenue exponentially.
“The Development Agent can steward all donor relationships, but I know many of our customers are going to be particularly excited about the potential for cultivating mid-tier donors,” said Paul Goldstein, Senior Director and Head of AI Growth at Blackbaud. “Mid-tier donors are a high-potential group because these individuals are often affluent enough to give more, but don’t necessarily have a deep enough personal affinity with the organization to inspire them to do so. The challenge is, fundraising teams rarely have the capacity to personally steward or engage this large donor segment the way they do major givers. The Development Agent changes this, offering those teams the capacity to tap into this massive potential to build that authentic personal connection to the mission and grow giving.”
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Brian Otis, Vice President for University Advancement at the University of New Haven, which participated in Blackbaud’s Early Access Program for the Development Agent, noted, “We’re using the Development Agent to accelerate donor connections and make those connections more impactful in a shorter period. This will help us accelerate fundraising across all levels.”
Blackbaud plans to expand The Development Agent next to Blackbaud Enterprise Fundraising CRM™ and ultimately introduce other Agents for Good across its product suite. Blackbaud Agents for Good are just one element of a broader strategy to transform what is possible for social impact with AI. The company will expand Agents for Good across core business needs for social impact teams; introduce more ways to expand optionality of access to Blackbaud intelligence; and continue its rapid expansion of Blackbaud AI capabilities, including Chat for Blackbaud AI. Blackbaud customers have never had so many options to leverage AI-driven technology to support their outcomes.
