What’s New and What’s Next: Why Your Finance Team Should Attend bbcon 2024

There are several exciting times of the year for nonprofit finance professionals—budget season, audits, year-end close. But one of our favorites is right around the corner: bbcon 2024!

Whether you want to hear about product updates like automated payments and AI or brush up on fund accounting best practices, you don’t want to miss these bbcon 2024 financial management sessions.

Product Updates

As you know from your in-product notifications and emails, there is a lot happening with Blackbaud Financial Edge NXT®. In addition to understanding and getting comfortable with the Total Web Solution, you can hear about new ways to save time and get more accurate data from your financial system.

Members of the Financial Edge NXT product team will present on how automated payments and AI advancements are coming to your accounts payable. In the session Revolutionizing Accounts Payable with FENXT: Automated Workflows and AI Advancements, Heather Johnson, Brad Bonham, and Regina Okonkwo will explore the comprehensive procure-to-pay processes already at your fingertips as well as their vision for the future. This includes Expense Management, Purchase Requests, WebPurchasing, and Approval Workflows. They will also touch on the developments happening with AI-powered document intelligence that will make invoice scanning and automation a breeze.

Need more information about Payment Assistant? Catch the session Unlocking Efficiency with Payment Assistant: Financial Edge NXT’s Automated Payment Solution, with Hallie Hurwitz, Reese Hopkins, and Chris Turner as they explore the future of payment processing. They will show you how Payment Assistant can help with fraud prevention, increased efficiency, and improved security for your payments.

The Total Web Solution has been the priority for the Financial Edge NXT team for the last several years. With the date for all functionality to be available in web view drawing closer, you won’t want to miss Brenda Noiseux and Heather Johnson’s session Blackbaud Financial Edge NXT: Pioneering Innovation and Future Direction in Fund Accounting. They will explore the roadmap beyond the total web solution with a focus on real-world applications of AI and enhanced interoperability across the NXT suite.

Connected Systems

Speaking of interoperability across our NXT solutions, there will be a few sessions highlighting the benefits of having your fundraising and fund accounting systems work together.

Blackbaud’s Katherine Liles and Katie Turner will talk with Kyle Abraham from Avon Old Farms School in the session Looking for Higher Donor Impact?They will discuss the importance of having both your development and finances teams involved in donor stewardship. Kyle will talk about how Avon Old Farms School is bridging those offices to provide meaningful data both to his donors and to the Board.

Getting a little further into the details of a Financial Edge NXT and Blackbaud Raiser’s Edge NXT integration, Heather LeVan and Julia Wehmeyer show you how you can get a cohesive money story across your organization. In their session, Partners or Adversaries: How Fundraising and Finance Can Share a Cohesive Money Story with Blackbaud Raiser’s Edge NXT and Blackbaud Financial Edge NXT, they will dive into the solutions to show you what is possible to make your team stronger together, and less adversarial.

Best Practices

You come to bbcon to learn about what’s new with the products that power your organization, sure. But you also come to learn how to get better at using the tools you already have.

Reporting is a key part of any finance professional’s role. From required statements of financial position and budgets to dashboards that compare your revenue streams over time, you often share your financial stories through your reports. In The Art of Charts: Choosing the Right Visualizations to Tell Your Story, Alicia Eastvold from Your Part-Time Controller, LLC, will share tips, techniques, and examples of effective storytelling graphics. She will also highlight general best practices for basic design principles for data visualization to make your reports easier to understand.

Are you ready to really understand how to get the most actionable data out of your fund accounting system? Join Blackbaud University instructors Marie Broek and Maire Moriarty for their session, Insight Designer: Harnessing the Power of Your Blackbaud Financial Edge NXT Data. They’ll show you how you can use organization-specific coding to analyze your finances and make data-driven decisions. You’ll learn how to use Insight Designer to design your own custom insights to meet your specialized needs, dig deeper into analysis, and drive more action.

If your organization received some of the more than $1 trillion in federal government funding that was available in the past few years, you may now be trying to navigate the complex federal grant requirements. Rachel Werner from MyFedTrainer will lead the session Internal Controls: Your Blueprint for Maintaining Accountability of Your Federal Grants to help you make sense of this daunting and often complicated process. She’ll provide a step-by-step process for integrating federal grant compliance into your organization’s internal controls. She’ll also provide an overview of the updated requirements and expectations based on the new Universal Guidance changes.

Change is something nonprofit organizations, foundations, and schools understand all too well. But maintaining your organization’s financial health can be difficult when it feels like the floor is always shifting underneath you. In their session, Keeping the Focus on Financial Health, Sustainability, and Operating Reserves, CPAs Paul Preziotti and A. Michael Gellman will explore how to help senior leadership better understand and monitor the balance sheet and operating reserves. From an income statement point of view, they will discuss the hidden benefits of segregation of duties and how overhead expenses and allocation of indirect costs impact the “bottom line.”

Main Stage Can’t Miss

Don’t forget to look at sessions outside of fund accounting for some other fantastic opportunities for learning and connection.

If you are like most organizations, you—or your staff—have been incorporating AI-powered tools into your daily processes. And if you are like most organizations, you’re wondering if you are taking the right approach to this new technology. Holly Herbert, the Director of Data Intelligence for Blackbaud, will explore ways to empower your employees to engage in Generative AI innovation safely and with intention. Her session, Amplifying Employee Impact Through Generative AI, will help you future proof your talent while driving impact.

And definitely don’t miss the main stage conversation with Sheryl Lee Ralph. Sheryl stars as “Barbara” on ABC’s current smash hit Abbott Elementary, and she’s a passionate advocate for education. She is the founding director of DIVA (Divinely Inspired Victoriously Anointed) Foundation 501(c)(3), created in memory of the friends she lost to HIV/AIDS.

Can’t Make It to Seattle? Join Us Virtually!  

Even if you can’t make it to the Emerald City in person, you can still register for virtual bbcon. You’ll get access to a number of the great sessions and learning opportunities. You can learn more and register for both in-person and virtual bbcon at https://www.bbconference.com/2024/.