Blackbaud Sphere™

Blackbaud Sphere™
Blackbaud Sphere™
Blackbaud Sphere consists of five products:

Sphere® Events™

Sphere® Events Advanced™

Sphere® eMarketing Basic™

Sphere® eMarketing™

Sphere® eMarketing Advanced™
The overview table below lists the core modules available in each product and the tables that follow describe the highlighted features in
each module.
modules in each product:
Sphere Events
Not Applicable
Sphere eMarketing
Fundraising Campaigns=
Email Communications=
Basic
*Runs on the Sphere Supporter Database
Friends Asking Friends — Thon
Fundraising Campaigns
Content Managed Websites
Email Communications
eCommerce
*Runs on the Sphere Supporter Database
*Runs on the Sphere Supporter Database
Friends Asking Friends — Thon
Friends Asking Friends — Special Events
Fundraising Campaigns=
Content Managed Websites=
Email Communications=
eCommerce=
Standard
Member Management
Advocacy
Volunteer Management
Web 2.0 Engagement
Advanced
*Runs on the Sphere Supporter Database with
multi-chapter enterprise support
Enhanced Version
=
*Runs on the Sphere Supporter Database with
multi-chapter enterprise support
Blackbaud Sphere™
3
Event Administration — Use a full set of tools to manage your event, supporting
online and offline participant, donor, volunteer, and sponsor activities.
3
3
Personalized Fundraising Pages — Enable constituents to create their own
personal fundraising pages, email their families and friends, and add gadgets to their
social networking pages.
3
3
Event Registration — Site visitors can register as an individual, join a team, start a
team, and register themselves, their friends, their families, or their co-workers all at
one time through a single credit card transaction.
3
3
Participant Address Books — Allow participants to import personal email address
books and create personalized email solicitations.
3
3
Participant Headquarters — Give participants access to donation and email
communication reports detailing activity on their personal fundraising pages.
Automatically load participants' personal email address books, email histories, and
donation histories in future events.
3
3
Bookkeeping — Track, record, and administer all of your event’s registrations,
donations, and sponsorships with single and batch entry forms.
3
3
Extended Involvement — Allow supporters to participate further in various
online activities such as polls, quizzes, bulletin boards, Coach’s Corner, stores, online
auctions, and gadgets.
3
3
Sponsorship Promotion — Create corporate sponsorship opportunities on the
website. Add a sponsor box with rotating sponsor logos to your website.
3
3
Event Volunteer Management — Track and manage volunteer positions for the event.
3
3
Thon Event Reporting — Access a full set of highly customizable event-specific
reports showing communication, registrant, donation, and sponsorship data.
3
3
Thon eCommerce — Build a simple online store to sell event merchandise.
3
3
Corporate Team Pyramids — Provide a third-level of team participation where
teams can be grouped under individual or national corporations.
3
Sphere®
eMarketing
Advanced™
3
Sphere®
eMarketing™
Sphere® Events
Advanced™
Event Websites — Promote thon-based and other team fundraising events online by
using Sphere's intuitive user interface to design and launch your event site.
Sphere®
eMarketing
Basic™
Friends Asking Friends — Thon
Sphere®
Events™
module features:
Friends Asking Friends Golf —
Use this comprehensive golf event management tool to host your golf event website
and administer key event functions like online personal solicitations.
3
Full-Featured Tournament Website — Create a professional engaging website
that allows visitors to register, sponsor, donate, or even volunteer.
3
Registration Package Functionality — Offer complete foursome, twosome,
individual, dinner-only, or other customized player and sponsor package
registrations.
3
Limits, Wait Lists, & Group Organization — Set limits on player slots and
dinner tickets, provide a wait list option, automatically assign players to groups
and edit groups based on handicaps or other criteria.
3
Friends Asking Friends Gala —
Use this comprehensive gala event management tool to host a gala event website and
administer key event functions like online personal solicitations.
3
Online Guest Registration & Ticketing — Guest can register online and create
their own personal fundraising page. Administrators can set the maximum number of
registrations and assign guest tickets.
3
Table Seating — Provide table buyers online tools to invite guests and reassign
seats as they receive RSVPs. Use administrative tools to track table and guest
seating assignments.
3
Premiums & Registration Fee Levels — Apply membership benefits
to registration and set different registration fees like standard, table, and
entertainment sponsor.
3
Friends Asking Friends Custom Thon —
Build Friends asking Friends fundraising sites using a highly customizable template
to match a specific design and user experience.
3
Memorial and Tribute Sites — Set up web tools where supporters can reach out
through personal pages and email tools to pay tribute or memorialize loved ones.
3
Gift Registry — This unique set of tools gives supporters the ability to pick
from a variety of gift ideas and register items for friends and family to purchase
on their behalf.
3
House Parties — Give advocacy-focused tools to supporters, allowing them to
host, manage, and promote house parties and meet-ups.
3
Independent Fundraising Events — Gives supporters the ability to promote their
own fundraising initiatives independently with online registration, email promotion,
and donation collections.
3
Build Your Own Event — Configure a unique fundraising, outreach, or advocacy
website built from the basic components of Friends Asking Friends.
3
Sphere®
eMarketing
Advanced™
Sphere®
eMarketing™
Sphere®
eMarketing
Basic™
Sphere® Events
Advanced™
Friends Asking Friends — Special Events
Sphere®
Events™
Blackbaud Sphere™
Sphere®
eMarketing™
Sphere®
eMarketing
Advanced™
Targeted Campaigns — Create targeted email communications to specific
segments using an advanced query engine.
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3
3
eNewsletter Management — Allow constituents to subscribe and unsubscribe to
specific eNewsletters.
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3
Content Editor — Enable non-technical staff to create rich HTML emails with a stateof-the-art WYSIWYG editor.
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CAN/SPAM Compliance — Promote cleaner lists with a double opt-in and opt-out
option tool.
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Template Library — Create and manage a library of email templates.
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Split Mail Testing — Compare the effectiveness of various email subject lines and
messaging.
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Bounce Management — Tracks individual receipt delivery results to optimize
future delivery performance.
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Forward to a Friend — Allow recipients to forward emails to recruit friends or
colleagues while tracking the volume and success of such activities.
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Spam Assassin — Test and verify the quality of email content before sending to
reduce potential ISP blocking and improve deliverability.
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3
Dynamic Content — Personalize emails with mail merge field and content based on
demographic, behavioral, or other data.
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3
3
Auto-Fill Online Forms — Pre-populate forms accessed by constituents to promote
database cleanliness and an easier user experience.
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Recurring Email Schedules — Create dynamic email communications that
automatically send on a pre-set frequency, such as daily, weekly, monthly, or annually.
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Dashboard and Reporting — Access a list of delivery results within a detail report
for each mail campaign and individual mailing. Analyze open rates, clicks, bounces,
form completions, transactions, unsubscribes, and more.
3
3
3
Email Communications
Sequential Emails — Automate your email strategy with rules to develop sequences
of follow-up emails based on constituent responses.
Sphere®
Events™
Sphere®
eMarketing
Basic™
Sphere® Events
Advanced™
Blackbaud Sphere™
3
Sphere®
Events™
Sphere® Events
Advanced™
Sphere®
eMarketing
Basic™
Sphere®
eMarketing™
Sphere®
eMarketing
Advanced™
Blackbaud Sphere™
Campaign Management — Track the performance of marketing and fundraising
activities.
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Gift Entry — Track and record offline giving, including donations, pledges, and
recurring gifts.
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Giving History/Profile — A giving data summary is automatically calculated for
individuals and households.
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Matching Gifts — Blackbaud Matchfinder is integrated with Sphere to provide
information to donors about the possibility that their company may match their
contribution. Additional fees apply. For more information, visit
http://www.blackbaud.com/services/des.aspx.
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Contact Forms — Use a form-builder to capture constituent information.
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Donation Forms — Use a form-builder to create single- or multiple-step forms to
collect online donations.
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Registration Forms — Use a form-builder to create single- or multiple-step
registration forms. Forms can be used for volunteers, conferences, or other event types
and can have standard and custom fields. Forms come with full reporting.
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Memorials & Tributes — Give web tools that enable donors to contribute in memory
of loved ones by sending eCards with customized memorial or tribute messages.
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Online Auctions — Run online auctions with catalog management.
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Acknowledgements/Thank you Letters/Pledge Reminders — Merge gift and
constituent data into Microsoft® Word® for offline acknowledgements and pledge
reminders.
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Fundraising Campaigns
Batch Gift Entry — Utilize an online spreadsheet to quickly enter multiple gifts
directly into the Sphere Supporter Database.
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Sphere®
eMarketing
Advanced™
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3
Website Design Templates — Use templates to simplify your work and maintain
consistency. Macromedia® Dreamweaver® plug-in available.
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Navigation Manager — Modify website navigation structure independent from
content and design.
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File and Image Libraries — Upload, store, and manage all files and images.
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Web Caching and Acceleration — Provide fast website response times for all
websites hosted on Sphere through advanced Web Caching Services.
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3
Product Support for Search Engine Optimization — Include a variety of meta-tag
data at the web page and website level to optimize search engine placement.
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Version Control and Archiving — Allow users to revert back to previous versions
of content.
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Web Publishing Workflow — Quickly and easily publish new content to the website
including scheduled automated releases. Use workflow tools to control who can create,
review, and publish content.
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Login Security — Secure access to specific web pages or website sections requiring a
valid username and password.
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Surf-to-Edit — Browse your website to identify Web pages you want to edit, then click
a button to open and directly make your changes.
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Content and Article Listings — Create content listings segmented by type or
relevancy.
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Personalization and Relevancy — Provide content to visitors based on their database
segmentation and interests to create a rich user experience and acquire new supporters.
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Event Calendar — Create an online event calendar with the ability to collect
online registration, roll-up events across multiple calendars, or post user-submitted
calendar features.
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Site Statistics — Analyze real-time website traffic activity to better understand your
visitors and constituents.
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Sphere®
eMarketing
Basic™
WYSIWYG Content Editing Tools — Create and modify content with this state-ofthe-art content editor.
Content Managed Websites
Sphere®
Events™
Sphere®
eMarketing™
Sphere® Events
Advanced™
Blackbaud Sphere™
Custom Forms — Use the WYSIWYG editor to have complete design control over
donation and contact forms.
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Interactive Site Features — Create specialty website features such as job boards,
resume postings, photo gallery, eCards, bulletin boards, and classified ads.
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Sphere®
eMarketing
Advanced™
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Product Catalog — Create a catalog with categories, photos, and detailed
descriptions of each product.
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Shopping Cart — Each online visitor is provided with a robust online shopping cart
complete with checkout capability that sums up the price for all selected products and
completes the transaction.
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Online Inventory Management — Get the ability to track in-stock product items
and auto deduction from online and offline purchases.
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Shipping Fees — Calculate domestic and international shipping fees including
weight- based fees.
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Additional Donation Options — Easily add a donation amount to the shopping
cart total.
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Purchase Discounts — Get the ability to offer volume or other discounts at the
order and/or product levels.
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Reporting Features — View detailed reports and create custom reports. Track
information, such as number of products by order and receive inventory notifications.
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Sphere®
eMarketing
Basic™
Online Store — Quickly set up and manage an online catalog of products, set
pricing and inventory, and get to know your supporters better through revenue
generating sales.
eCommerce
Sphere®
Events™
Sphere®
eMarketing™
Sphere® Events
Advanced™
Blackbaud Sphere™
Display Options — Leverage the power of eMarketing’s full content management
system. Choose from a variety of layouts and set the quantity and display options for
your products.
3
Suggested Products — Create relationships between products to suggest related
items.
3
Sphere®
eMarketing
Advanced™
Sphere®
eMarketing™
Sphere®
eMarketing
Basic™
Sphere® Events
Advanced™
Member Management
Sphere®
Events™
Blackbaud Sphere™
Member Center — Provide a password-protected area where members can edit
their personal profiles, view their membership histories, renew their memberships,
and view targeted content based on their membership level.
3
Online Membership Sales — Allow donors to attain different membership
levels through various types of transactions, such as registrations, donations, and
eCommerce purchases.
3
eStore Member Discounts — Create members-only benefits such as discount
codes, premiums, or special privileges.
3
Benefit Levels — Establish different levels of membership and associate them with
premiums, points, automatic discounts and other benefits.
3
Online Member Directory — Publish website features where members or website
visitors can look up information of other members or contacts.
3
Membership Terms — Set specific membership type parameters such as duration
(floating, fixed, or lifetime), dues year, advanced sale date (to allow for pre-sales), or
grace days.
3
Fundraising Premiums — Utilize affinity programs to encourage participation in
fundraising campaigns by attributing gift levels to membership levels.
3
Tokens — Award members with tokens based on various online activities that can be
redeemed for various rewards or access to specialized website content.
3
Benefits History — View histories of your members' benefits and manage
membership terms.
3
Sphere®
eMarketing
Advanced™
Sphere®
eMarketing™
Sphere®
eMarketing
Basic™
Sphere® Events
Advanced™
Volunteer Management
Sphere®
Events™
Blackbaud Sphere™
Volunteer Positions — Create one-time and recurring volunteer positions and
identify the number of volunteers needed for each position.
3
Online Volunteer Center — Use online tools to enable volunteers to register,
search for other volunteers, find available volunteer positions, edit their volunteer
profile, view volunteer history, and submit time.
3
Volunteer Profiles — Collect and manage volunteer data such as availability, skills,
interests, and history as well as online and offline activities.
3
Volunteer Reporting — Volunteers can submit dates, hours, comments, and rate their
experiences. Staff can manage and report on detailed volunteer activity.
3
Sphere®
eMarketing
Advanced™
Sphere®
eMarketing™
Sphere®
eMarketing
Basic™
Sphere® Events
Advanced™
Advocacy
Sphere®
Events™
Blackbaud Sphere™
Action Centers — Develop personalized action centers to create awareness on
issues that impact your organization, encourage constituents to take action on bills,
email elected officials, and sign online petitions.
3
Elected Officials Database — Use the database of federal and state legislative and
executive targets to mobilize activists.
3
Federal and State Committee Data — Use the database of federal and state
committee data for advocacy action targets.
3
Auto-District Append — Automatically append your constituents’ database
records with their state and federal district codes so that the system is able to
identify their elected officials based on their addresses.
3
Media Database — Use a database of newspaper, magazine, television, and radio
targets to create Letter to the Editor campaigns.
3
Federal Bill and Vote Tracking — Track the bills that are important to your
constituents and create legislative scorecards based on Congressional/Senate votes.
3
Friend or Foe — Create multiple action letters for a campaign in order to target
officials with content that is relevant and appropriate to their positioning on the
issues.
3
E2Action — Allow constituents to take action by replying to email instead of
requiring them to go to the website.
3
Custom Targets — Create advocacy actions directed at custom targets including
unique web forms.
3
Display Options — Leverage the power of eMarketing’s full content management
system. Choose from a variety of layouts and customize the user interface through
style sheets.
3
Advocacy Report Center — Access summary and detail reports of your advocacy
efforts within the Action Center controls.
3
Sphere®
eMarketing
Advanced™
Sphere®
eMarketing™
Sphere®
eMarketing
Basic™
Sphere® Events
Advanced™
Web 2.0 Engagement
Sphere®
Events™
Blackbaud Sphere™
Content Submission Forms — Provide forms to collect, post, and manage
user-generated content including news stories, photos, personal stories, and
calendar items.
3
RSS Feeds and Podcasts — Syndicate website content to other users and websites
using auto-generated RSS feed for content listings. Create and syndicate your online
media library using a Podcast feed.
3
User forums and Blogs — Host advanced blog and forum tools to promote online
discussions and interaction among staff, supporters, and website visitors. The
solution features a completely integrated version of the Community Server product.
Additional fees apply.
3
User Commenting — Allow visitors to post comments on content items to promote
interaction.
3
Constituent Networking — Create an online environment for constituents to
connect with each other and create either open or controlled social networks using
relationship tracking, mapping, and personal pages.
3
Sphere Supporter Database
Sphere®
Events™
Sphere® Events
Advanced™
Sphere®
eMarketing
Basic™
Sphere®
eMarketing™
Sphere®
eMarketing
Advanced™
Blackbaud Sphere™
Individual Profiles — Record all critical information about your constituents in one
easy-to-manage place.
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Organization Profiles — Create, record, and manage profiles of organizations and
primary contacts.
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Custom Profile Fields — Create and organize custom fields for individual,
organization, and transaction records.
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Static & Dynamic Segments — Categorize your constituents and target your
communications.
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Relationship Tracking — Track interconnected supporters and their highlights.
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Duplicate Management — Create settings to automatically resolve duplicate
records or resolve them manually.
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Interaction Tracking — Centrally record activities about interactions associated
with constituents.
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Liquid Score — Target your audience and improve direct response ROI with this
simple yet accurate wealth score.
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Query Tool and Import Center — Quickly import, update, or retrieve records
using customized export queries and a standardized set of templates covering most
all available data.
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Stand Alone Web Pages — Use a WYSIWYG editor to create administrative
dashboards and public web pages hosted independently from each other.
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Attributes — Manage multiple sets of custom addresses, salutations, and properties
for each constituent.
3
Opportunity Tracking — Create pipeline workflows to track potential major and
planned gift prospects.
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Task & Appointment Tracking — Track various interactions between staff and
constituents using online task and appointment services.
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Sphere®
eMarketing
Advanced™
Sphere®
eMarketing™
Sphere®
eMarketing
Basic™
Sphere® Events
Advanced™
Sphere Supporter Database:
Multi-Chapter Management Enterprise
Sphere®
Events™
Blackbaud Sphere™
Virtual Accounts — Manage permissions and data visibility for multi-chapter
organizations within a single database. Use the preferred account structure to
promote centralized and organization-wide data management and sharing practices.
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Multi-Accounts — Manage permissions and data visibility for multi-chapter
organizations across separate database instances. Use the preferred account structure
for organizations that cannot share data between chapters/local and parent entities.
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National and Regional Events — Quickly and easily create regional or chapter
Friends Asking Friends Thons from pre-configured event templates. Control
permissions and release site updates across multiple sites and run reports across
all accounts.
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Parent - Child Content Sharing — Allow organizational websites to share content
between parent and child entities. Sharing tools include automatic content updates
from parent to child, approval management for shared content, and uploads from
child sites to a shared content library.
3
Parent Master Calendar — Create a centralized calendar aggregating event
activities across parent and child organizations.
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Sphere Supporter Database: Payment Processing
Sphere®
Events™
Sphere® Events
Advanced™
Sphere®
eMarketing
Basic™
Sphere®
eMarketing™
Sphere®
eMarketing
Advanced™
Blackbaud Sphere™
Complete Solution — Get fully integrated payment services requiring no merchant
account set-up.
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Payment Options — Get transaction support for all major U.S. credit cards and
direct debit.
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Low Transaction Fees — Benefit from Blackbaud’s ability to negotiate the lowest
rates from payment processors.
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Simple Administration — Manage all of your online payments through a single
interface including the ability for full or partial reversals for collected payments.
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Real-time Reporting — Instantly access all transaction activities such as event
registrations, donations, and eCommerce purchases.
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Security Compliance — Blackbaud is certified as a merchant processor by PCI,
the industry standard for credit card processing, and has completed full information
security audits by third party companies.
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Highly Secure Infrastructure — Process payments protected by state-of-the
art security measures, such as redundant firewalls, authentication services, and an
encrypted SQL database unreachable by any public IP address.
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Installment and Recurring Payments — Allow supporters to set up secure,
recurring or installment payments on a weekly, monthly, quarterly, or annual basis.
The ability to manage future payments is included.
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International Currencies — Supports credit card processing in non-U.S.
currencies and non-U.S. credit cards.
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Transaction Identifiers — Customize the descriptors that appear on your donors’
credit card statements.
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Third-Party Payment Processor Service — Get the ability to process funds
through a third-party (i.e., non Blackbaud Sphere) payment processor using
Verisign Payment Gateway services.
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Sphere®
Events™
Sphere® Events
Advanced™
Sphere®
eMarketing
Basic™
Sphere®
eMarketing™
Sphere®
eMarketing
Advanced™
Blackbaud Sphere™
Connect Data APIs — Utilize a robust set of application programming interfaces
(APIs) to exchange data between Sphere and a third-party system. APIs cover more
than 20 core Sphere Supporter Database data types including account meta-data,
custom fields, and custom tables.
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Polling and Query API — For enterprise integrations, the query API supports an
embedded SQL-like query that filters potential result sets. The getUpdated method
supports polling by returning just the records that have changed since the provided
time stamp.
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Connect Process APIs — Utilize business process APIs to initiate and record gift
activity in the Sphere database.
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Connect Documentation & Community — Get a library of API literature
complete with specification, sample code, and use cases. Use the online community
for technical questions and best practices.
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Connect Catalog — Get a catalog of software solutions that come pre-integrated
with Sphere. The wide range of solutions include caging, social networking, video,
and text messaging.
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Raiser’s Edge Connector — Exchange core donor data between Sphere and The
Raiser’s Edge. It features two-way or one-way data exchange options, new Sphere tab
within The Raiser's Edge, and single-sign on between the systems.
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Single Sign-On — Develop an administrative login link between Sphere and
another system using a standard SSO format.
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Gadget Development Toolkit — Build customized gadgets or widgets to penetrate
social networks and increase fundraising success.
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Sphere Supporter Database: Connect
Extended Call Limit — Extend beyond the standard limits of APIs calls per hour/
day to support larger, enterprise-level data projects.
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Custom Entities — Extend the Sphere Supporter Database’s data model quickly
and easily with a point-and-click builder. As you create new data types, Sphere
automatically creates Supporter Database tabs and interface elements, and makes the
new data available through the API.
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800.443.9441
[email protected]
Blackbaud, Inc. | 2000 Daniel Island Drive | Charleston, SC 29492 | © May 2009
www.blackbaud.com