Nonprofit Finance Leaders: Don’t Miss These bbcon 2023 Sessions

The annual conference celebrating Blackbaud’s ecosystem of changemakers is back and in person this year! In addition to getting to catch up with friends, partners, and colleagues, bbcon 2023 is packed with learning opportunities specific to finance.

The bbcon 2023 agenda is full of great sessions for finance professionals serving nonprofits, schools, foundations, healthcare, and cultural organizations, from creating better systems to extending what you currently do with Blackbaud’s fund accounting software, Financial Edge NXT. While we hope to see you in Denver October 22-24, many of these sessions will be available online for you to watch from the comfort of your office.

Financial Management Luminary Session Panel Discussion: Using Your Voice in a Sea of Change

*don’t miss*

Your finance team touches all aspects of your organization—grant programs, fundraising goals, vendor management. That makes you a vital part of any change management conversation, but you may not always be asked to the table. In this Luminary session, Blackbaud’s Heather LeVan leads a conversation with industry experts and customers about how to have an active and productive voice in change management, especially around the software your organization uses.

Enhancing Your Current Processes

Even the most well-oiled finance teams can improve their processes with new technology and new partnerships. Here are a few sessions that will inspire you to rethink your workflows.

Let the Machines Work so the People Can Think!: Blackbaud Solutions Consultants Katie Turner and Katherine Liles will show you how much of Financial Edge NXT’s functionality can be completed with the push of a button. From Chart Organizers to Dashboards, you’ll leave with practical ways you can automate and simplify your fund accounting.

Improving Business Process with Process Maps: Is it really an improvement if you can’t measure the impact? Blackbaud Process Engineer Jackie Huffman will give you three steps to transforming your business processes, and how to quantify the financial impact of these improvements.

What It Takes to Work with Vendors: With the right strategic partners supporting you with software and services, you can maximize the value your organization brings to your community. In this session, Karen Cincotti from the Roswell Park Alliance Foundation walks you through finding the right vendors, negotiating contracts, and knowing when—and how—to say goodbye to a relationship that is no longer serving your organization.

From Juggling Hats to Mastering Financial Communication: Empowering Leadership through Numbers: Nonprofit finance professionals are no strangers to doing the jobs of several people, but that doesn’t make explaining the numbers to your non-finance colleagues any easier. Consultant and nonprofit CFO Stephanie Skryzowski will guide you through effective strategies to help your leadership and board actually grasp your financial metrics.

How to Make Your Audit Easier with Financial Edge NXT: No matter how well your audit went last year, there is always room to improve. In this session, Blackbaud Solutions Consultants Donna Albaum and Jennifer Standley walk you through how to know what you can expect from an audit. They will also show you how to use Financial Edge NXT to get ready for next year’s audit and fix recommendations from the management letter

Transform Your Deliverables with Financial Edge NXT Reporting: Your finance team—and your stakeholders—need actionable data. They need information that helps them make data-driven decisions. Blackbaud University Instructors Andrew Alter, Marie Broek, and Maire Moriarty show you how to customize your chart organizer and report parameters for different audiences and real-life scenarios so you can make the most of your reporting.

New and Notable

Coming to bbcon means you get an up-close look at the exciting updates coming to your fund accounting software. This year, you’ll learn more about what’s happening with Accounts Receivable and get three levels of detail into the Total Web Solution.

A Deeper Dive into the New World of Financial Edge NXT Accounts Receivable: Get a front-row seat as Blackbaud Principal Product Manager Tom Walker highlights the exciting new capabilities of A/R in Financial Edge NXT. He’ll show you how these updates can improve efficiency and shorten your bill-to-cash cycle. You’ll even hear from a member of the Early Adopter Program to learn first-hand how these new features work in practice.

Total Web Solution: We know everyone wants more information on the move to the Total Web Solution. Join us for all three sessions on the migration to Web view or choose the sessions that apply most to where you are in the transition.

• Part 1 will provide some history on how the software architecture of Financial Edge NXT has evolved over time and why an API-first approach will help the software be more flexible going forward.
• Part 2 will dive into why and how we plan for product updates and how we incorporate feedback and marketing trends. You’ll get a look at the roadmap for where we’re going, our strategic vision, and the long-term big picture for Financial Edge NXT.
• Part 3 will highlight the top 10 reasons to move to Web View and address standard questions about migration. This is also a great place to see some of the new updates in action.

Don’t miss the pre-conference workshops to help you get the most out of Financial Edge NXT, from building your chart organizer to digging into personalized reporting with Insight Designer.

Showcasing Great Partner Solutions

Several Blackbaud Financial Edge NXT partners will give attendees tips, best practices, and use cases for ways you can simplify your fund accounting processes. 

• Who doesn’t want to reclaim 80% of their time? Errol Amacker and John Zaudtke from Paymerang will show you tools and strategies to remove manual tasks from your workflows, saving your team time and enabling you to focus on other priorities.
• The team from Zobrio will continue the conversation around automation, especially with integrations between your fund accounting and donor management solutions.

Also check your agenda for sessions with Pairsoft by Papersave, Omatic, Questica, and other great partners.

Still More on the Mainstage 

While our financial management sessions will get you excited about your fund accounting team, the main stage presentations will inspire you as a human helping other humans. Don’t miss the conversation with Olympian and cancer survivor Chaunte Lowe, and check the bbcon website for more great mainstage speakers.