Blackbaud Volunteer Network Fundraising

The Blackbaud Volunteer Network Fundraising Solution is a Blackbaud Best Practice module that is designed specifically for college and university annual giving and reunion giving programs. This tool helps your staff manage volunteer fundraisers more efficiently, while making it easy for those volunteers to complete their solicitations.

The module in the Blackbaud Platform is a simple one-stop dashboard that lets managers create volunteer assignments, monitor Volunteer Network Fundraising activities, and view campaign results. The tools make it easy to track volunteer activity and exchange information.

Blackbaud Volunteer Network Fundraising is composed of three components:

  • The Management Dashboard for Volunteer Managers who are on staff at our customer institutions.

  • The volunteer Web Portal allows your Volunteers to easily and quickly contact their assignments, file status reports, and even send thank-yous.

  • A Mobile App for iOS and Android gives your Volunteers the same great tools available in the Web Portal on their mobile device.

When enabled, this module provides your institution with a new layer of the Platform called Volunteer Network Fundraising as well as access to the Blackbaud Volunteer Network Fundraising Web Portal for your volunteers

The Management Dashboard is integrated within your Platform subscription. Users of the Platform will have access to a new layer titled Volunteer Network Fundraising. Within this layer, users will be able to create campaigns, assign Managers, add Volunteers and assign them constituents, and track your Volunteers' progress.

Managing Campaigns

Campaigns are available via the blue Campaign Menu tab along the left side of the page. From here, you can choose from a previously created campaign or choose to Add Campaign where you will walk through the campaign creation wizard.

The roles for each campaign are broken into two levels, each with differing access to the module. The Manager is a Platform user on your staff who manages a set of volunteers and will utilize the tools available in the Volunteer Network Fundraising layer of the Platform. The Volunteer will utilize the Web Portal and Mobile App to manage their assignments. Their progress and results are reported to the Manager via the Platform.

Learn more about working with campaigns in the module

Accessible to your Volunteers, the Web Portal provides tools to help view and contact assignments, track progress, and send thank-yous.

The portal makes it easy for agents to find new assignments by using the Blackbaud predictive scores to recommend prospects with similar interests who are likely to donate. Volunteers can also search through the list of available prospects if they are looking for a particular friend or classmate.

Once their list is set, volunteers can begin the solicitation process. The portal takes away the guesswork and walks them through the steps, recommending a next action for each prospect. When a volunteer is ready to start contacting prospects, they can access the prospect’s profile screen to review information about the prospect. They will have access to phone, email, and mail scripts provided by their manager at your institution. They will also see that they are asked to report the result of their contact once they are finished. They may indicate that the prospect will donate, won’t donate, or will need to be re-contacted. If re-contact is needed, the volunteer can choose to be reminded in one week, two weeks, or on a specific date in the future. Volunteers may also provide notes for their manager to review in case they need to report a change in contact information or if a prospect wished to no longer be contacted. After prospects donate, agents are reminded to send a thank you. The volunteer will also have a script for the thank you, which can be copied into their preferred email. With a few quick edits, the volunteer can send it off and move on to the next prospect on their list.

The mobile app is available for iOS and Android devices via each app store. The app provides similar tools to your volunteers as the Web Portal to help view and contact assignments, track progress, and send thank-yous.