A NOTE FROM MALLORY
Big announcement from Blackbaud this week: Starting July 1, 2026, all gifts made with online giving forms in Raiser’s Edge NXT, Online Express, and NetCommunity will be subject to a new transaction fee. I go into more detail below on how this might affect your organization.
In addition to that announcement, the Blackbaud product update season just wrapped! I spent an embarrassing number of hours in briefings, so you don't have to. The short version: there's a lot coming for the DBM side of the house, and some of it is genuinely exciting. The longer version is in the blog post linked below.
— Mallory
MAY BLOG POST
Good Data, Better Fundraising is my blog where I go deeper on the topics the newsletter can only skim — database best practices, Raiser's Edge NXT updates, gift processing, fiscal year-end prep, and the unglamorous work that keeps fundraising operations running. My May post is live now: a full breakdown of the Blackbaud product update briefings, including what's available now, what's coming, and what's further out. If you like what you see, subscribe to get future posts delivered to your inbox.
ONLINE FORM PLATFORM FEES
This week, Blackbaud sent a communication to customers about a new transaction fee on online donation forms, effective July 1, 2026. Here's what you need to know.
Which platforms are affected:
Raiser's Edge NXT: 1.5% transaction fee
eTapestry: 1.5% transaction fee
NetCommunity: 2% transaction fee
Online Express: 2% transaction fee
Blackbaud CRM, Altru, and Luminate Online are not affected
Australia and New Zealand customers and currencies are not affected
The details that matter:
There is no cap on the fee — it applies to every online gift, regardless of size
There is no annual ceiling on the total amount of platform fees an organization pays
This is in addition to the existing Blackbaud Integrated Payments credit card processing fees
Existing recurring gifts and existing online installment pledge payments will not be assessed the fee
For recurring gifts made through your online donation forms after July 1, only the first payment will be assessed the fee. All future payments will only have the credit card processing fees.
Your options:
Blackbaud is offering three fee coverage configurations. Full details here.
Donor Cover: The donor has the option to cover both fees as a single combined amount (the two fees are not broken out separately for the donor to see). Blackbaud reports that 70%+ of fees are covered by donors among organizations using this option. If the donor opts in, the total transaction amount (original gift plus the added fee) is tax-deductible.
Complete Cover: The donor is asked to contribute a percentage of their gift to help offset costs. That contribution goes directly to Blackbaud and is not tax-deductible. Blackbaud covers all fees for gift amounts up to $3,000. For gifts over $3,000, checkout can offer the Donor Cover option as a fallback.
This is what your donors will see at checkout if you use Complete Cover.
MAY TIPS: YOUR OPTION REGARDING THE NEW ONLINE PLATFORM FEES
1. Learn the other ways to process a credit card transaction outside of an online giving form.
If you're expecting major gifts via your online forms, the fees can add up. A $100,000 gift processed through an NXT donation form carries a $1,500 fee. Complete Cover won't apply because it exceeds the $3,000 cap, and if the donor doesn't opt into Donor Cover, your organization is paying that $1,500. For gifts of that size, route them through a gift batch instead — use the EFT option if you're in Database View, though I'd recommend using the grid batch entry in the Web View because you'll end up there anyway. You can also process the card with a Merchant Services payment terminal (the physical device you can charge cards with in person) or the Merchant Services virtual terminal (your friends in finance may need to help if you don't have Merchant Services access).
2. Move your giving forms from Online Express/NetCommunity sooner rather than later.
If you're still running Online Express or NetCommunity forms, now is the time to recreate them in Raiser’s Edge NXT— you can't migrate them directly, but you can upload your existing Online Express recurring donations via global import, and they'll process automatically going forward. Fee Cover options are not available on Online Express or NetCommunity forms, so switching before July 1 also gives your organization access to Donor Cover and Complete Cover for future gifts.
3. Research your Fee Coverage Options
If you're not already using Donor Cover or Complete Cover, it's worth a serious look. Blackbaud reports that 80% of customers use some form of fee coverage. Fee coverage options can now be configured for each individual online donation form, so try some A/B testing to see how this affects your giving.
WHAT'S NEW — MAY 2026
Constituent Forms
Located in the Online Giving menu (which makes no sense to me, but OK), Constituent Forms are a straightforward way for your people to update their own contact info and preferences. You can also include Custom fields in the form, allowing constituents to check off specific table fields. Things I think this would be useful for:
Constituents can submit a form expressing interest in volunteer opportunities or to request info on planned giving.
Individuals can self-identify demographic and socioeconomic information, such as generation (for segmentation) or skills (to identify volunteers able to provide high-value services, like lawyers).
Online data review for Events
If you have ever spent hours cleaning up duplicate records created by event registrations, you understand why I'm so relieved this exists. This has been a time sink for way too long.
There is only one online data review setting, so unmatched constituents will only be flagged if you have your your data review preferences are set to either “Review transactions with unmatched constituents” or “Review and match all transactions”. An alert at the top of your Events Overview page will indicate how many unmatched constituents you have and include a link to Online Data Review.
Campaign, Fund, and Appeal Records Now Have Fancy Dashboards
Blackbaud added significant reporting capabilities to campaign, fund, and appeal records in NXT. Each of those records now comes with its own dashboard, including revenue reports, gift and donor lists, and some basic gift and donor analytics. This can be a great resource for directors and executive-level staff with limited report-pulling abilities.
Blackbaud AI - Chat
Last month, I wrote about the new prompt library. If you're not using Chat yet, take five minutes to check it out. It works best with simple, straightforward prompts — think of it as a time-saving tool rather than a substitute for a generative AI chatbot like Claude, Gemini, or Perplexity. It's not built for analysis or complex copy generation, but there are two things it genuinely does well:
Donor meeting prep: Instead of digging through a constituent record to piece together the last gift, recent actions, and events attended, just ask Chat.
Pledge reminders: Open a donor record or a gift record with an outstanding pledge, and Chat will offer to draft a reminder letter — you can also ask it to write a phone script.
That said, it has real limitations worth knowing about:
It can only work with one constituent at a time, so you can't prompt it to pull all pledges due by 6/30/26 and draft reminder letters in one shot (which would be genuinely useful, for the record).
The 500-character prompt limit is restrictive.
Every time you want to switch topics, you have to trash the conversation and start over.
Blackbaud is hosting a webinar on May 28 called “Practical fundraising scenarios with Chat for Blackbaud AI,” which I’m planning to attend. You can register here.
WHAT'S NEXT
A lot was discussed at the product briefings, but these are the ones I'm most excited about. The May Good Data, Better Fundraising post provides much more detail on updates to Raiser’s Edge, Online Giving, and Payment Services.
Grid view gift batch
In a recent Q&A session with Bill Connors and the Blackbaud team, they said they plan to achieve full parity between the Database View and Web View gift batches by September 30 of this year.
Tabbed Layout for Constituent Records
If you've ever waited for the giving history node to load on a constituent record, you already understand why this matters. The current single-page layout is slow, cluttered, and requires more scrolling than anyone should have to do. The tabbed layout will break constituent records into organized sections, with faster load times, fewer clicks, and less noise. Sticky nodes will stick* around for now, but the overall experience will be significantly better. One thing being dropped is the red checkmarks on tabs that indicate which ones contain data. I'm genuinely surprised they cut that, because it was actually useful.
*Yes, I did that on purpose.
LET'S CONNECT
Looking for guidance on estimating the financial impact of this new fee on your organization? Thinking about a database audit or doing some summer data cleanup? I offer a free 30-minute exploratory call — no pressure, just a practical conversation about where your system stands and what you can do about it.