Why Salesforce1 and Blackbaud are a Great Pair for Nonprofits

Chocolate and peanut butter. Sunshine and swimming pools. Rainbows and unicorns. Fundraising solution leader and mission management platform leader.  Which of these pairs is unlike the others?  Read on to find out.

Blackbaud commends the recent announcement of Salesforce1 – salesforce.com’s new social, mobile and cloud customer platform.  The launch of Saleforce1 is good for the industry and good for Blackbaud, as it highlights the importance of the nonprofit sector and the important work these organizations do to make our world a better place

Blackbaud was one of the first companies to build a nonprofit-specific CRM on the Force.com platform, and we will continue to work closely with salesforce.com to support our nonprofit customers. As leaders in our respective industries working together, we give the marketplace a great option when choosing their CRM solutions. Combined with our other CRM and donor management solutions, Blackbaud serves the nonprofit space with a well-rounded and complete portfolio of solutions to support our customers’ diverse needs for fundraising, marketing and program management.

Well… all of the goodness that will come from the Salesforce1 platform investment carries directly over to Luminate CRM, Blackbaud’s, Salesforce-based CRM. In fact, Salesforce1 will make it easier to develop mobile solutions on the Force.com platform. We expect to see greater and faster innovation and better connectivity between various applications in the marketplace. Recently, one of our engineers won a company-wide “off the grid day” competition thanks largely to the benefits that Salesforce1 provides to our development efforts.

Today, Blackbaud announced the inclusion of Luminate CRM on the Salesforce1 AppExchange.  While Luminate CRM has been available for more than four years and is used by hundreds of nonprofits to manage fundraising and mission-critical operations, the enhanced partnership with salesforce.com and the inclusion of Luminate CRM on the Salesforce1 AppExchange extends accessibility and availability of our solution to even more organizations.  We believe this highlights Blackbaud’s commitment to lead in fundraising technology, regardless of platform.

Best of all, this milestone is accompanied by an exponential increase in Luminate CRM engineering, support, and services to ensure we keep up with the demand the launch of Salesforce1 and our AppExchange listing will generate.  This added investment is also enabling some fantastic innovation, some of which is in the realm of mobile apps using Salesforce1.  Stay tuned for more to come!  Meanwhile, if you have questions or want to learn more about Luminate CRM, we’d love to chat. 

So, which of the great things above is not like the others?  Rainbows and unicorns, of course.  Unicorns aren’t real! 

It’s been around a long time, but you never get tired of it…
and every year a new combination emerges that makes it more and more delicious!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Chris Krackeler

Chris Krackeler is the VP and General Manager of Luminate CRM, where he leads Blackbaud’s efforts to build the leading non-profit fundraising solution on the Salesforce1 platform.

Prior to that, Chris was VP of Enterprise Sales at Convio, which helped more than 1,400 non-profits use technology to mobilize people to support their missions.

Having always been passionate about helping non-profit organizations and early stage companies, Chris opened GetActive Software’s satellite DC office in 2000 and helped them evolve from a start-up company on a shoe-string budget to a leading provider of fundraising and advocacy software to more than 600 non-profit organizations.

Chris is also frequently invited to present at industry events to share ideas, cutting-edge research and best practices.  He holds a BA in Political Science from Georgetown University, where he graduated with Cum Laude honors.  When not working, he is an avid cyclist, tennis player, and father to young twins. Connect with Chris on Twitter at @CKunplugged or on LinkedIn