Case Study: Bennington College achieves 300+ annual work hours saved and automated fundraising workflows with Blackbaud Raiser’s Edge NXT and Microsoft Power Automate

How Bennington College extends the rich capabilities of Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT with customized automations

Bennington College’s small advancement team faced time-consuming, manual processes—tracking more than 3,300 online gifts a year, saving email gift notifications as PDFs, running reports, and crediting complex gifts—without in-house developer expertise. The college needed a way to streamline routine tasks so staff could focus on strategic fundraising and relationship stewardship.

Director of Advancement Services Dan Snyder used Blackbaud Raiser’s Edge NXT with Microsoft Power Automate connectors to build low‑code automations that automatically generate and store gift‑notification PDFs, refresh reports, and automate donor-crediting workflows and outreach tasks. The changes cut a 2.5‑hour weekly process to 0.5 hour, saved about 55 hours a year on PDF handling and roughly 300+ hours annually overall, and improved fundraising tracking and donor engagement.

Bennington College

Dan Snyder

Director of Advancement Services