E4E Relief's CEO Matt Pierce connected with Dale Strange, president and chief operating officer, corporate impact solutions at Blackbaud, to discuss technology's role in philanthropic advancement, corporate social responsibility trends and how Blackbaud's solutions serve diverse stakeholders in the social impact ecosystem.
Matt Pierce: What's energizing your team in the philanthropic software space?
Dale Strange: In a word, innovation. The opportunity to deliver new technologies to drive inclusive engagement and better measurement is a tremendous opportunity for us.
There are three areas of innovation giving us an incredible amount of energy right now. The first is speed of impact. That's around connecting systems between corporate giving and nonprofits. We're doing some really important work to wire those two up and to speed up the impact of giving. Getting that philanthropic good to those that need it really matters to us.
The second is impact measurement. This is all about the opportunity to drive meaningful change within the landscape of impact measurement reporting through our partnership with True Impact and the development of tools like Impact Edge. This allows us to really capture philanthropic good across a company's environment and be able to report on that very quickly in ways we haven't been able to before now.
The third is inclusive participation. It's really important that programs be able to reach employees in all areas of the globe. Our global expansion and recent announcements, particularly in Mexico, give us the opportunity to reach more employees and to have them participate in the engagement that historically were limited.
Matt Pierce: This is a two-part question: How have you seen technology help accelerate social good? Are you leaning into AI?
Dale Strange: Technology has definitely been an enabler. When we think about the last decade in particular, having platforms that make it easier to be engaged, whether that's giving or volunteering, has been transformative.
More recently, AI has been a game changer, and that's one of the things that excites us when we think about the future. We have been focused on AI for a very long time, and I would say we're leading from the front. That’s where partnerships became really important, like bringing tools such as Microsoft Copilot into our product portfolio. We're incorporating these tools in ways that allow practitioners to gain efficiencies through AI and also bring new capabilities like reporting, which is instrumental in measurement. We want to enable purpose-driven leaders to continue their work at scale across their enterprises. Our vision is to be the operating system of corporate impact through the use of leading technologies that allow organizations to achieve amazing outcomes and high participation among their employee groups.
What's unique is that we've been building and launching our Blackbaud Copilot, which is a version of Microsoft Copilot's incredible infrastructure but built specifically for the social impact space. The platform has already launched in the hands of an early adopter program with select customers and is slated for general release this year.
Matt Pierce: Where do you think the CSR space is headed as a whole over the next few years?
Dale Strange: We've seen the entire CSR and corporate social impact landscape evolve tremendously over the last five to 10 years, moving from being an altruistic program set to being a true strategic business imperative. And that's the big trend that continues to gain momentum.
There's lots of conversation about how the work that we do through corporate social responsibility certainly is good for society, and it turns out it's very good for business as well. I think that alignment is really good. So, we're continuing to advise customers to focus on their overall programmatic strategy – and the measurement of the work – so that they can speak to where these programs are driving positive impact. We're providing them with tools to be able to produce measurement and ROI, and I think that's going to be really important as more companies lean in and progress their work in this area.
Matt Pierce: Do you think that what businesses are hoping to measure or have been measuring over the last three to five years is going to be the same things that they're looking to measure over the next five-to-10 years forward?
Dale Strange: I think measurement is going to require much more precision. What we're seeing over the next couple of years is a really big demand to know the actual impact initiatives have on societal good.
That's the part that we are so excited to be working on right now because that will allow CSR practitioners not just to speak in terms of the amount of money that we gave to a cause, but the impact that we help deliver through those employee donations and community grants that we may have made. We're going beyond just the quantifiable metrics (which we've been talking about for years) to also looking at the qualitative data and the stories of impact.
That's one of the things that we are so excited about in that new partnership with True Impact—the ability to really help CSR practitioners not only track and measure what's happening in that last mile but then raise that back up into a true story of impact that they can share back out. This ideally is going to both inspire their employees to further engage and obviously continue to share the reach that they're having through their community programs in a way that they can tell that sort of return on investment more strategically.
Matt Pierce: Is there anything that you could recommend that helps to continuously energize your team and keep them focused on delivering all of your game-changing technologies?
Dale Strange: Yeah, I think our passion comes from the work that we do, which I'm sure is the case for E4E Relief. Blackbaud was recently named to Newsweek's list of America's Most Responsible Companies, which we are super proud of. That really is a reflection of our team members who wake up every day thinking about our role in helping enable social good.
Every one of our employees has similar stories about their "why" they do the work. So, on those long days when we're all helping steward the success of our clients, we draw upon that reason we're here and that common purpose. It really is to help good take over from a social impact perspective. And I know from the people that I've met at E4E Relief, that we have commonality in that regard.
Matt Pierce: Congratulations again on that recognition. How does your team approach disaster relief? How do you help accelerate fundraising and distribution into nonprofits where there's boots-on-the-ground support?
Dale Strange: We activate an emergency response center, if you will, where we come together to cover a lot of different angles. One is advice and counsel to our corporate clients on how they should be thinking about the direction of their philanthropic efforts, program advice on how they might think about increasing match caps and other activities like volunteering to engage employees in the response.
We have an incredible group of cross-departmental teammates that come together for that emergency response center. We go into a dial-up mode to make sure that our systems are maintaining maximum uptime and stability. We also have the ability to expedite giving so we can make sure that the impact is making it to those who need it very quickly.
This puts us in a position of being able to help those of us in the social impact arena—be it nonprofit or corporations— and to accelerate that support and engagement, particularly in times of disaster.
Matt Pierce: What critical KPIs do you determine to measure and define success?
Dale Strange: From a corporate social responsibility standpoint, so much of what we do is around enabling purpose-driven companies to engage their employee base in this work. So, a big KPI for us is around engagement and participation. We want high levels of participation both for its impact on social good and the positive impact that it has on those employees' well-being and their affinity to their companies.
The other one is the ultimate impact that we are making. We're very proud of statistics like total philanthropic good: Over $100 billion per year flows through our systems to amazing nonprofit organizations. A key metric for us is really empowering our customers to make that impact. They're doing that through their engagement programs. When we see that increased participation, we get stories from customers who are able to, in some cases, more than double the participation in their programs.
Matt Pierce: In which conversation do you envision Blackbaud being a cutting edge thought leader?
Dale Strange: I would say we are cutting edge thought leaders in the conversation about enabling strategies and technology to drive step function changes in employee engagement and the follow-on ability to then measure the impact that that engagement is having on the causes the purpose-driven companies care about.
Matt Pierce: What's one thing very few people know about Blackbaud that would surprise them?
Dale Strange: The incredible generosity of our employee base and the fact that we are made-up of individuals who, themselves, came from a nonprofit environment and are active in volunteer and board service. It's very unique. Another facet about our group is how deeply they care about each other. It's something our clients learn about us quickly and I think it makes a difference from an end-to-end perspective.
Matt Pierce: Take me through a day in the life of Dale Strange at Blackbaud. What does that look like?
Dale Strange: I like to start the day by prioritizing some type of well-being, and for me that’s running, as I'm a marathon runner. So, I love to start the day with being in nature and just enjoying that time to reflect.
After that, most of my days are spent in conversation with purpose-driven leaders. Almost every single day, I get to talk with different leaders, in companies large and small, to understand the work they're doing, the programs they care about and pondering how we can do more to support them and their outcomes. And then, certainly, collaborating with our internal employees to make sure that we stay aligned to those purpose-driven leaders in such a way that we're producing good outcomes.
I also spend some time each day finding the best Mexican food, which is not a hard thing to do in Austin, Texas!
