Blackbaud is seeing faster-than-expected AI adoption across the nonprofit sector, with President and CEO Mike Gianoni saying the technology is already expanding customer spending and widening the company’s competitive advantage. Gianoni told Investing.com that fundraising teams face a structural labor challenge, citing data showing more than 10,000 fundraising roles must be filled annually.

AI can help these very stretched fundraisers to extend their reach and reduce the burden of repetitive, time-intensive work, Gianoni explained. Blackbaud recently introduced its Agents for Good autonomous AI products, including a Development Agent that analyzes donor data, prioritizes prospects and executes multistep outreach. The company’s flagship fundraising tool, Raiser’s Edge NXT, is the most powerful in the market, helping customers see a 44% average increase in total dollars raised.

Gianoni highlighted that Blackbaud’s advantage lies in its proprietary philanthropic dataset, which is not available to public large language models from companies such as Microsoft or Salesforce. This data underpins forecasting tools that generate roughly 30 billion predictions annually, enabling more accurate donor insights and recommendations across fundraising, education and corporate social responsibility. For this year, Gianoni believes donor confidence will depend on transparency and clearer communication of impact.