Fundraising-Software Provider Blackbaud to Acquire Its Rival Convio

January 17, 2012 | Read Time: 2 minutes

Blackbaud, the largest provider of fundraising software to nonprofit organizations, has announced that it plans to acquire Convio, one of its biggest competitors, for $275-million. The deal is expected to close by the end of March.

Convio was one the last of the major online fundraising software companies founded in the late 1990s as Internet contributions started to take off that is still competing with Blackbaud. Its acquisition is expected to improve Blackbaud’s online offerings, but it means charities will have fewer options over all.

The purchase of Convio is the most recent acquisition Blackbaud has made to expand and solidify its position at the top. But previous deals, such as Blackbaud’s 2007 purchase of Target Analytics for $60-million and the 2008 purchase of Kintera for $46-million, were significantly smaller.

Convio’s focus on online fundraising, especially tools for federated charities that hold fundraising walks and runs, is a good fit for Blackbaud, which is stronger in providing software to help charities keep track of donors and handle accounting of donations, say company officials.

“Our executives have always had a little glint in their eyes about what could be [if the two companies merged] because we see our solutions as being highly complementary,” says Jana B. Eggers, senior vice president for products and marketing, at Blackbaud.

Concerns About Innovation

Consolidation in the nonprofit-software industry has long sparked fears among charities about the danger of fewer choices and a lack of competition stifling further innovation.

Ms. Eggers rejects the idea that Blackbaud will have little competition after it acquires Convio, pointing to business systems such as Salesforce and SAP, which she says many charities use to manage their donor data.

Looking just at online fundraising, she says, the two companies together process $2-billion in online contributions annually out of an estimated $17-billion that is donated online.

Says Ms. Eggers: “We’re a really small portion of a very large market.”

About the Author

NICOLE WALLACE

Features Editor

Nicole Wallace is features editor of the Chronicle of Philanthropy. She has written about innovation in the nonprofit world, charities’ use of data to improve their work and to boost fundraising, advanced technologies for social good, and hybrid efforts at the intersection of the nonprofit and for-profit sectors, such as social enterprise and impact investing.Nicole spearheaded the Chronicle’s coverage of Hurricane Katrina recovery efforts on the Gulf Coast and reported from India on the role of philanthropy in rebuilding after the South Asian tsunami. She started at the Chronicle in 1996 as an editorial assistant compiling The Nonprofit Handbook.Before joining the Chronicle, Nicole worked at the Association of Farmworker Opportunity Programs and served in the inaugural class of the AmeriCorps National Civilian Community Corps.A native of Columbia, Pa., she holds a bachelor’s degree in foreign service from Georgetown University.