Product Update Briefing

To improve the user experience when using Award mode to award applicants, we have redesigned the Applicant centric awarding functionality. With this new experience you get:

• Focused views of award recipients displayed in a modernized, dynamic grid.

• Faster page and data load times with a progress bar to indicate the grid data loading status.

• Expanded filter functionality, including the ability to filter on multiple scopes.

• Adjustments to fund balances and commitments that populate as award decisions are made, enabling you to act on commitments reliably.

Interested in participating in the EAP? Select this link.

To improve navigation and visibility into award performance and fund utilization, a new, optional Award cycle dashboard provides a centralized view of the full award cycle. The dashboard has sections dedicated to each stage of the award cycle with in-line help, analytics, and navigational links to execute tasks and monitor performance of each stage you are overseeing.

Interested in participating in the EAP? Join here.

To enhance the donor sign-in experience process on Stewardship Standalone sites, donor portals now have a Donor tab with Blackbaud ID (BBID) authentication sing-in direction, eliminating the need for invitation references to access their portal.

This change only applies to Stewardship Standalone clients who have single sign-on (SSO) enabled on their site.

To improve accessibility and compliance with WCAG 2.1 A standards for 4.1.2, we have made enhancements to name, role, and value by ensuring the proper use of ARIA roles, states and properties. This improvement enables interaction with custom controls for users of assistive technologies.

To modernize existing functionality in the solution, we are updating the look and feel of the applicant experience. This includes resurfacing all applicant-facing areas of their application and award experience, such as Applications, My applications page, Opportunities and Donor pages, and Account details.

Modernizing data grid views is a precursor required to create concurrent cycles. Beginning with the frozen opportunity grids, we will make improvements to system grids to add new capabilities, and enhance existing grid functionality. Improvements will include:

• Strengthened system performance, faster data load times, and a progress bar for status visibility.

• Broadened filter capabilities that include, in addition to the current single filter, select all, or an option for none.

• Preservation of column preferences as well as the ability to drag, drop, add, remove, and expand columns.

• The ability to download current grid view without creating a new saved grid view.

Expanded snapshot capabilities will provide you the option to unpublish a snapshot, keep past snapshots for historical data records, and resurface snapshots in Donor reports.

To ensure pages in Award Management and Stewardship Management work with assistive technology and meet the WCAG 2.1 A, and AA accessibility standards, we will continue to focus on improving our accessibility standards.

To improve the user experience when using Award Mode to award applicants, we have redesigned the Applicant Centric Awarding functionality. With this new experience you get:

• Focused view of award recipients displayed in a modernized, dynamic grid.

• Faster page and data load times with a progress bar.

• Additional filter functionality, including the ability to filter on multiple scopes.

• Fund balances and commitments automatically adjust as you make award decisions.

Interested in participating in the EAP? Select this link.

To communicate your privacy preferences about information being sold or shared, the opt-out signals, such as Global Privacy Controls (GPC), are recognized and recorded in Blackbaud Award Management and Steward Management.

Review the latest features and updates in Blackbaud Award Management and Stewardship Management on Global Privacy Controls and other data privacy compliance requirements.

To ensure clear messaging and readability of post-acceptance emails, the application URL links in the post-acceptance email template have been formatted. This formatting is set up with portfolio name as the clickable link and the URL as the second part: {{ portfolio.name }}":{{ post_acceptance_application_url }}.

Editing or removing the code formatting for the clickable link in the post-acceptance email can cause the URL to generate a long link rather than a shorter, concise link. While you may customize the custom copy, you must keep the URL coding intact to avoid creating longer URL strands.

To improve accessibility and compliance with WCAG 2.1 A and AA standards, we have made enhancements to Award Management and Steward Management. As part of this work, we have addressed proper use of names and roles to label user interface (UI) components, such as form elements, links, and images (4.1.2), and providing text alternatives for non-text content (1.1.1).

To improve navigation and usability, a new, optional dashboard is being created to provide a centralized view of the full award cycle for user-scoped opportunities. The dashboard will have sections dedicated to each stage of the award cycle with in-line help, analytics, and navigational links to execute tasks and monitor performance of each stage.

To modernize existing functionality in the solution, we are updating the look and feel of the applicant experience. This includes resurfacing all areas an applicant touches during their application and award process, such as Applications, My Applications page, the applicant-facing Opportunities and Donor pages, and Account Details.

As an admin user, you can choose labels that better align with industry terms and the code's intended purpose. We are introducing the ability to customize the name of the code fields used on portfolio records for Fund Code, Auxiliary Fund Code, and Project ID in the Custom Label Text section of your site's settings.

Stewardship Management offers you the option to unpublish a snapshot with the ability to keep past snapshots for historical data records, and resurface snapshots in Donor Reports. Previously, if you wanted to remove a snapshot from the Donor Report, the only option available was to delete the snapshot permanently.

To ensure pages in Award Management and Stewardship Management work with assistive technology and meet the WCAG 2.1 A, and AA accessibility standards, we will continue to focus on improving our accessibility standards.

To strengthen the security of customer information, all locally authenticated users are now required to log in to Blackbaud Award Management and Stewardship Management sites using Blackbaud ID (BBID) with multi-factor authentication (MFA).

Those logging in via an institutional single sign-on (SSO) are unaffected by this change. For those users with an institutional SSO, BBID with MFA will only be required for any locally authenticated users that do not use your SSO to access your site (such as references, reviewers, or donor contacts).

We've added a Delete Settings button to the administrator's Email DMARC DNS Settings page to allow administrators to easily reset their DMARC DNS settings without experiencing reduced downtime. To access this button, see DMARC DNS Setup under your email settings.

Ongoing updates to ensure that we meet data and security requirements, including infrastructure improvements, library upgrades, and logging and monitoring enhancements. New updates have been made to increase security measures and to reduce risk and provide a safe, secure environment for you and your end users.

Award Management and Stewardship Management are compliant with the GDPR, New Zealand, Australian, Canadian, and current US data privacy laws (where applicable). Additional functionality will be enabled on your sites to recognize and record global opt-out signals, offering users another way to notify you of their privacy preferences.

The applicant-centric awarding functionality is being enhanced to fully load qualified applicant pools and improved filtering capabilities to empower you to make decisions and act on commitments.

We will continue improvements to our accessibility standards to ensure that Award Management and Stewardship Management pages work with assistive technology to meet the WCAG 2.1 A, AA standards, including name and role of user interface elements (4.1.2), providing reading sequences for content presentations (1.3.2), providing instructions for operating content (1.3.3), and naming labels with the text that’s visually presented (2.5.3).

To improve navigational intuitiveness, a new, optional dashboard is being created to clearly define steps needed to administer the full-awarding cycle for user-scoped opportunities. To ease solution usage, the system will surface data and workflow steps.

To allow for greater cycle flexibility to manage your programs, we are simplifying how award cycles are defined in the system. These changes will allow you to name your own cycles, clearly define when a cycle starts and ends, and will allow you to introduce multiple cycles simultaneously without the interruption of cycle management.

Enhanced Award Management and Stewardship Management pages to work with assistive technology to meet WCAG 2.0 AA accessibility standards. Elements such as focus order, toggles, skip navigation, arrow key navigation and controls such as drop-downs, tooltips, and date pickers were enhanced so they’re now operable with the keyboard.

We take a global approach to data privacy compliance to help you reduce risks and maintain constituent trust. Our solutions support your compliance with GDPR, New Zealand, Australian, Canadian, and current US data privacy laws (where applicable). Review the latest features and updates within Award & Stewardship Management to meet these evolving requirements.

Improved visibility and usage of funds across the solution in multiple ways. You can now identify if there are existing fund snapshots for a particular fund or a subset of funds directly from the fund grid to prevent individual fund reviews; snapshot formatting now delineates between fund sections to improve information consumption; fund descriptions are now surfaced on snapshots for both the donor portal and reports.

To strengthen the security of your information, Blackbaud ID (BBID) will be required within the next two to four months for all locally authenticated users (admins, applicants, references, reviewers, and donor contacts). If your organization utilizes an institutional Single Sign-On (SSO), BBID will only be required for any locally authenticated users that do not use your SSO to access your site. Multi-factor Authentication (MFA) will also be required for all users not using SSO. More information on this change will be communicated soon.

Additional functionality will become available to enable your Award Management and Stewardship Management site to recognize global opt-out signals.

The applicant-centric awarding functionality is being enhanced to fully load qualified applicant pools, provide you with infinite scrolling, and improved filtering capabilities to empower you to make decisions and act on commitments.

To improve navigational intuitiveness, a new, optional dashboard is being created to clearly define steps needed to administer the full-awarding cycle for user-scoped opportunities. To ease the usability. data will be displayed and calls to action will be provided.

We will continue focusing on improving our accessibility standards to ensure that pages in Award Management and Stewardship Management work with assistive technology and meet WCAG 2.1 A, AA accessibility standards.

Enhanced Award Management and Stewardship Management pages to work with assistive technology to meet WCAG 2.0 AA accessibility standards. Removed Keyboard traps, revised headings, enhanced question modals, and resized text without the loss of functionality.

By leveraging components of Blackbaud’s next-generation user experience (UX) framework, the solution is being modernized to be consistent with Blackbaud products. Additionally, these improvements ease navigation within some of the most highly utilized areas of the product including the Omnibar, hover selectors, Cycle Management Audit, Bulletins, Donor Cover Letters and the Stewardship Dashboard.

With enhancements to Award Mode, administrators can now view archived opportunities separate from active applications and filter opportunities.

Qualified to Apply prevents ineligible applicants from applying to opportunities in which they are not qualified. Ineligible applicants will not see the Apply button for opportunities in which they do not qualify if this feature is enabled. Expanded the feature to enable system admins to apply the feature en masse on opportunity portfolios.

System Administrators can now edit the Customer UID field, which is the primary mechanism used to merge duplicate records. This allows administrators greater flexibility and permissions needed to invalidate incorrect records and preserve applications, reference requests or reviews on correct accounts without Support intervention.

The Applicant Centric Awarding functionality is being enhanced to fully load qualified applicant pools, provide you with infinite scrolling and improved filtering capabilities to empower you to make decisions and act on commitments more seamlessly.

To improve navigational intuitiveness, a new, optional dashboard is being created to clearly define steps needed to administer the full-awarding cycle for user-scoped opportunities. To ease the usability. data will be displayed and calls to action will be provided.

Expanding endpoints within the Award Management and RENXT API to surface donor data within their RENXT constituent record, including the potential for information like details of the award(s) they funded and related data such as thank you notes.

To better represent the uniqueness of your institution, donor reports and snapshots will be modernized to provide you with reports that are more visually appealing and better align with your institution’s branding.

Privacy fields, opt-outs and data deletion or obfuscation controls will provide you with the capabilities needed to allow your organization to be compliant with all new data privacy laws.

We will continue focusing on improving our accessibility standards to ensure that pages in Award Management and Stewardship Management work with assistive technology and meet WCAG 2.0 AA accessibility standards.

This feature helps admins control the way opportunities are promoted. Using this feature helps avoid promoting awards to unqualified students, which could help them save administration time with reviews and application processing.

For applicants, they have visual clarity to easily identify opportunities in which they’re eligible or ineligible. Applicants who meet opportunity qualifications continue to see the Apply button. The Apply button is hidden for applicants who do not meet opportunity qualifications with a label that indicates they are not currently qualified. See Work with portfolios.

Admins can now specify a renewal start date at the portfolio level. Earlier, renewal applications were being created for awards on opportunities that started prior to this date. Going forward, renewal applications will only get created for awards created on opportunities after the specified date. See Set up renewal portfolios.

Stewardship Management administrators now have the ability to delete uploaded documents on form fields. Using the Form Field Importer. you can now mass archive questions rather than on an individual basis.

Fund periods were added to the bulk actions Post-Acceptance Application and Fund Disbursement grids for administrators when creating saved grid views and reports.

To improve the process in Stewardship Management, administrators now have the ability to send ad-hoc emails from the Donor Contacts grid.

Recipient emails that are manually triggered as reminders by Stewardship Standalone administrators include invitation links when requested from the impact statements grid.

Help keep Financial Aid and Advancement offices in sync by making it easier to see which Fund a portfolio is associated with and control updates to Funds through a fund import.

Allow recipients to answer a post-acceptance question one time, and have their answer automatically copied to other post-acceptance applications using that question. This reduces duplicative efforts where the recipient would need to provide the same answer multiple times to be shared with different donors. We’ll also surface data to provide drill down capabilities that equip you with the ability to take action on missing or incomplete items.

Provide self-service tools in highly utilized areas of the solution to empower you with the ability to create and run reports independently, mass enable features and expand deletion capabilities to improve data hygiene. With your help, we will identify the most requested and most important areas to you where self-help capabilities are needed.

Improve the intuitiveness of features and functions by auditing our code to ensure that descriptions within the product, in the Knowledge Base and our In-Product Help accurately reflect capabilities. Documentation will be incorporated in areas where it does not currently exist to make the product’s functionality more user-friendly.

Ensure all Award Management and Stewardship Management pages work with assistive technology and meet WCAG 2.0 AA accessibility standards, so that all users can access the system and complete their required work.

Starting with some of our most widely used areas of the product, such as the Omnibar, we’ll be updating the user experience utilizing components of Blackbaud’s next-generation user experience (UX) framework to bring a more consistent & cohesive experience to the product.

This functionality allows applicants to complete their applications from any device.

Fundraisers can get insights on how funds were used:

• When fundraisers are viewing a constituent, they can see whether constituents previously received an award and the details of that award.

• When fundraisers are viewing a fund, they can get an overview of how many disbursements were made in a given time frame.

To streamline your experience and system performance, the way you access archived data has changed. See Frozen data overview for details.

Multi-factor Authentication (MFA) is now available for any user that sets up a password with Blackbaud Award Management or Blackbaud Stewardship Management. See Enable multi-factor authentication (MFA).

This feature provides the flexibility to decide which post-acceptance questions use smart autofill. Recipients see a label and different formatting for autofill questions.

• Answers auto-populate on subsequent post-acceptance applications.

• Edits to one response impact all post-acceptance applications.

• Unique questions are updated on each opportunity.

See Enable smart autofill.

Monitor the help of your system with additional system reports. From Site, select Files, System Reports. See System Reports.

Fund import allows you to share financial data with donors. From Site, select Settings, Stewardship Fund Imports.

See the impact of awarding-based actions, such as category changes and force apply actions, using grids that update in real time.