bbcon 2025 Recap: Updates for Raiser’s Edge NXT and Beyond

After spending several days in Philadelphia, I’m thrilled to deliver the newest innovations and feature releases announced at bbcon 2025.

Connecting with other Blackbaud partners at the conference, seeing innovation firsthand, and exploring how organizations are applying various tools—old and new—to tackle challenges and improve fundraising results was invaluable.

The biggest news centers on Raiser’s Edge NXT (RE NXT), but there are also relevant announcements for other Blackbaud products. Let’s dive into what caught my attention.

Chat for Blackbaud AI

Artificial intelligence continues to be the hot topic around the world and bbcon was no exception.  During the opening keynote, Blackbaud unveiled a massive array of over 70 new embedded AI capabilities across its product portfolio.

They introduced Agents for Good™, a new agentic AI suite designed to act as virtual teammates for organizations, automating complex workflows in areas like fundraising and finance.

AI Coalition for Social Impact

To promote responsible adoption and build sector-wide skills, Blackbaud also convened the AI Coalition for Social Impact. This coalition will offer a free AI certification course to help nonprofit professionals understand leverage AI effectively. These innovations aim to make the promise of AI a reality for mission-driven organizations, setting a new standard for what is possible in the social impact sector. 

Members of the group will collaborate on the launch of the AI for Social Impact Certification Course—a free, platform-agnostic program focused on foundational AI skills and principles tailored specifically for the social impact sector.

Join the Early Adopter Program

Blackbaud is looking for Early Adopter Program participants for their Chat for Blackbaud AI feature. This is your chance to shape the product before it rolls out widely and get hands-on experience with the technology.

Contact your Blackbaud Customer Success representative to sign up or get more information.

Query API

Blackbaud debuted the Query API endpoint back in May 2025 and many folks have taken advantage of this new and exciting way of getting data out of RE NXT. 

While Blackbaud has official connectors with Microsoft’s Power Automate and Power BI, some ingenious folks like Nick Marchese, Director of Academic & Strategic Technology at the Emma Willard School and founder of Collar City Consulting, have successfully used Google Apps Script to automatically populate Google Sheets and Google Looker Studio with data from Raiser’s Edge NXT, Financial Edge NXT, and Blackbaud Education Management. 

If you’re looking to eliminate manual data extractions, or if you’re still relying on database view’s RE Queue module to automate data exports, now’s the time to sink your teeth into Power Automate or Google Apps Script to replicate those processes with unified view-friendly technology.

Constant Contact Integration

You’ve no doubt seen the pop-up window telling you about the newly launched integration with Constant Contact. I sat in on a demo, and it looks like a game changer. 

Constant Contact is the industry leader in email deliverability. Better deliverability means more of your messages actually reach donor inboxes—and that directly translates to more engagement and more donations.

What’s Included

Constant Contact isn’t just email—it’s a complete multi-channel marketing platform that includes texting and social media capabilities. The integration comes loaded with features right out of the gate:

• Over 50 mapped fields between Constant Contact and Raiser’s Edge
• 10 additional custom fields you can map based on your organization’s specific needs
• Daily automatically list syncing between RE NXT and Constant Contact, with the ability to refresh lists manually whenever you need
• Free Canva integration if you use Canva for your graphic design

You can log into your existing Constant Contact account or sign up for a free trial in RE NXT by going to Communications > Constant Contact.

Up Next for RE NXT Web View

If you’re a database administrator, you’re likely thinking about how your day-to-day processes are going to look and feel in the unified view (also known as web view only) coming in the first half of 2027.

The Luminary Super Session for RE NXT gave attendees a preview of what’s next on the roadmap.  The session served as a live Idea Bank session where attendees voted on which features they’d like Blackbaud to prioritize. 

Upcoming Enhancements

Some of the upcoming enhancements include:

• Prospect Insights Enhancements: Helping you be more proactive and responsive to donors, including notifications for new constituents and significant score changes.
• Page Designer for Online Giving Forms: Customize the giving pages on your website beyond embedding the standard or optimized donation form.
• Gift History Log: See the complete history of changes made to each and every gift record.
• Online Data Review for Event Registrants: Streamline the review process for event participants.
• Address Accelerator in Web View: Bringing this database view feature to the modern interface.
• Web View Only Fields in Query Module: Adding the ability to query on fields that only exist in Web view.

Start Preparing Now

According to Blackbaud’s product update in May, Blackbaud will sunset the self-hosted Raiser’s Edge 7 (RE 7) product and transition to a unified web view for all customers in the first half of 2027. While that might seem far away, strategic organizations are already preparing for the transition. Begin familiarizing yourself with web view workflows now, identify any custom processes that will need adaptation, and stay tuned for additional roadmap announcements.

Want to learn more about these new updates and features and how they can benefit your organization? Contact us for guidance and recommendations on making the most of the latest RE NXT innovations. We’ll help you prioritize what matters most for your team and create a roadmap that turns these exciting announcements into real results.