Development Agent FAQs

Your Development Agent is designed to help you reach out to build stronger relationships with your constituents. Through a series of communications, your agent begins with an introduction and can cultivate them all the way to action or solicitation based on your preferences.

Use the sections below to explore how the Development Agent works and other helpful details to get started.

Overview | Get started | Assignments | Communications | Donation forms | Email Engagements | Learning Behavior and Data Use | SMS Engagements

 

Overview

Blackbaud is introducing a series of artificial intelligence agents that will act as staff support or “virtual team members” by autonomously executing complex workflows for nonprofits.

The first Agent for Good in the series, Development Agent, helps organizations expand donor engagement by building personalized relationships at scale, crafting outreach strategies, and managing cultivation plans with minimal human intervention. Unlike assistants that simply suggest actions, the Development Agent takes initiative, freeing up human fundraisers to focus on high-impact, personal outreach strategies. This innovation marks a major leap forward in fundraising automation, empowering nonprofits to raise more with greater efficiency and precision.

No, the agent is treated as a user with its own permissions and roles, not just a fundraiser.

Yes, Canadian organizations are supported.

 

Get started

It follows a phased approach:

  • Start by assigning 10 donors to the agent.

  • Review communications and get comfortable.

  • Gradually ramp up the number of assigned constituents.

See Onboarding progress.

It helps users build confidence and avoid overwhelming situations like sending 1,000 emails prematurely.

See Onboarding progress.

You should monitor the Needs Attention section for escalated issues. The agent flags questions it shouldn’t answer so that you can step in.

See Escalated actions.

 

Assignments

When automatically assigning constituents, the agent uses Blackbaud’s Prospect Insights Pro algorithms to identify mid‑level donors based on your organization’s defined giving range. By default, this range is $500–$10,000, but you can update it at any time in Data mappings.

They run once a month, at midnight on the first day of the month. If you don’t see new assignments after that date, they will not be added until the next scheduled run.

Assignments are made all at once, not gradually.

If no changes appear, it could mean:

  • The process didn’t run successfully.

  • There were no eligible constituents.

  • Your environment has limited or incomplete data.

Note: Prospect Insights Pro is used by the agent to support this process and does not provide standalone access to Prospect Insights Pro.

Donors are only auto-assigned if they don’t already have a human fundraiser. Future updates may offer more granular control.

Yes, donors with existing human fundraiser relationships are excluded from auto-assignment.

Communications to that donor stop once the relationship is removed.

Constituent assignment limits in phases 1 - 7 fall into two categories:

  • Manual assignments

  • Automatic assignments

In phase 8, limits are lifted and assignments are unlimited.

See Onboarding progress for full details.

Because the agent doesn't assign itself to any constituent who is already assigned to a staff member, you can prevent a constituent from being added to the agent’s portfolio by assigning the constituent to another fundraiser.

When in a tier or phase that includes automated assignments, the agent makes the assignments all at once, but are throttled to add only 20 new constituents per day to ensure adequate time to address any needs and reviews.

 

Communications

Emails are dynamically generated based on the donor’s record. The content is personalized and not pulled from historical emails unless configured otherwise.

Yes, you can customize the brand voice.

Yes, by default it uses the primary name and salutation, but you can adjust the preferred name and salutations.

If significant changes occur (such as a new gift or a deceased record), the message may be regenerated and sent back for review before sending.

The agent doesn’t follow a fixed script or send asks after a set number of messages. Instead, it evaluates engagement signals, such as timing, past interactions, and responses, to determine when a solicitation is most appropriate. This helps ensure that asks feel timely, relevant, and respectful of each constituent’s relationship with your organization.

It ensures that messages reflect the most recent constituent activity (e.g., donations, status changes) instead of relying on outdated information.

Not yet, but working on that!

You can provide text to help train your agent's knowledgebase so that it not only learns information about your organization, but how you talk about your organization. The more content you upload, the more the agent can know and use in its communications.

Currently, uploaded content is capped at 30,000 characters per addition.

If more than 5 messages go back and forth in a conversation, it's escalated for human review. This ensures that complex situations or sensitive topics get appropriate attention from your human team.

 

Donation forms

Yes, you can change your donation form at any time.

To change the form, open the agent (On the left, select Portfolio, Development Agent), then on the right, select Engagement Types. Under Solicitation, enter the new donation form URL in the Donation form field and select Save.

 

Email Engagements

From the main Development Agent page, under Related Links, select Scheduled communications to review engagement details.

No, the review window is fixed at 7 days. Future enhancements may allow snoozing or accelerating the send.

You can either take over the conversation or provide guidance for the agent to respond appropriately.

Messages are typically generated one week before the scheduled send date to allow time for review.

Each constituent receives an email roughly once every six weeks.

The agent automatically adjusts to the time zone set in your browser. If your browser reflects your current time zone, the times shown will match your local day and time.

Dates are initially based on engagement planning rules, including blackout and preferred dates, but can be adjusted for reactivity.

 

Learning behavior & data use

Yes, the goal is for the agent to adapt to important dates and giving patterns specific to each organization.

Reactivity refers to the system’s ability to adjust communication plans based on constituent actions or changes, rather than sticking to a pre-set schedule.

The agent uses only data already stored in your Raiser’s Edge NXT constituent records, including:

Basic constituent details

  • Name

  • Primary salutation

  • Birth date

  • Religion

Giving and engagement history

  • First gift

  • Latest gift

  • Giving milestones

Relationships and background

  • Relationships

  • Education

Segmentation and insights

  • Active constituent codes

  • Donor persona

  • Planned Giving Likelihood

  • Sustainer Giving Likelihood

Contact information and consent

  • Email address

  • SMS phone number

  • Email consent

  • SMS consent

The agent uses only your existing Raiser's Edge NXT data and does not pull from external sources. All data remains secure and private.

Only data already in Raiser's Edge NXT is used. External APIs are not currently integrated.

When the agent detects a new donation, it adjusts upcoming engagements to prioritize a timely thank‑you.

  • If an introduction has already occurred, the agent schedules a thank‑you engagement for two days later.

  • To avoid over‑contacting the donor, the agent ensures there are at least 7 days between engagements, pushing other engagements as needed.

This happens automatically and helps ensure donors are acknowledged promptly while maintaining appropriate contact spacing.

 

SMS Engagements

No, SMS is completely optional. You can enable it while onboarding or later via settings. You can disable SMS at any time.

No, SMS functionality is included with the agent as an agent capability, just like email.

Yes. There are two levels of control:

For example, you might enable SMS overall but turn it off for solicitation messages if you only want to use texts for stewardship and event communications.

The agent makes a decision based on where the constituent is in their donor journey.

The agent only chooses between channels that the organization has enabled for that engagement type. Within those options, it follows logic rooted in Blackbaud research including considerations around:

  • Donor lifecycle stage (new donor vs. recurring vs. lapsed)

  • Engagement type (solicitation vs. impact update vs. thank you)

  • Constituent's communication history and preferences

Not currently, but this is on our roadmap.

No, adding SMS does not add more messages. SMS messages follow the same cadence as email. When it's time to send an engagement, the agent selects the best channel for that scheduled engagement.

The agent creates a personalized 12‑month engagement plan for each constituent with up to 8 total proactive outreach engagements per year, whether that's SMS or email. Engagements are distributed evenly over time, resulting in an average cadence of approximately one message (either SMS or email) every 6–8 weeks, with a minimum of 7 days between contacts.

Phone number provisioning and carrier registration usually takes 1-2 weeks.

During this time, your organization can complete other onboarding steps and the agent can still use email. You'll receive a notification when your agent's phone number is provisioned and SMS functionality is activated, confirming that the agent can begin messaging constituents via text after they opt in.

During SMS configuration, provide a link to your privacy policy and terms & conditions, and an email address for a point of contact.

Your designated point of contact will receive an email from our third-party vendor, Bird. The email includes a verification pin and instructions to complete a brief form (example below). The form requests the contact's name, job title, and verification pin provided in the email. Ensure that your point of contact completes this portion to start provisioning review.

After the carrier approves your phone number and SMS is enabled, you’ll receive a notification in Development Agent confirming that SMS messaging is ready to use.

Confirmation message about agent phone number creation

If additional setup is required, such as reviewing or updating which engagement types can use SMS, you’ll see a one‑time reminder with next steps.

If provisioning is still in progress, a pending state is shown when you select Configure SMS. If provisioning fails, you’ll receive a notification. Blackbaud will respond to the carrier on your behalf to identify the issue and work through to resolution.

To help organizations grow SMS participation without running separate campaigns, the agent can automatically include an SMS opt‑in message at the bottom of scheduled emails. The message appears only when SMS messaging is enabled for your organization.

The message gives constituents a simple way to opt in, with either a link to an opt‑in page or by replying directly to the email, depending on what’s offered. Once a constituent opts in or out, the SMS opt‑in message is automatically removed from future emails.

invitation to join sms

"Would you like to hear from us through SMS? Opt-in [here] or reply with your phone number."

This approach allows you to promote SMS enrollment through your existing email communications, helping reach both existing constituents and new ones who may not have opted in during onboarding.

SMS follows the same standard review process as email. Messages appear in the review queue 7 days prior to the scheduled send and can be human-reviewed or regenerated as desired before sending. Your organization has full visibility and control over what gets sent.

The character limit is 160 characters.

Yes, for Canada. United States-based 10DLC numbers can send and receive SMS with Canada-based constituents.

Other international countries are not yet supported, but broader international SMS support is on our roadmap.

For non-US or Canada phone numbers, the system automatically routes them to email-only communication. No error occurs.