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It wouldn’t be AFP ICON without a conga line of new technology and fresh data being unveiled on the exhibit floor. This year is no exception for the annual international conference of the Association of Fundraising Professionals. Staff from Blackbaud, Bloomerang, Dataro. Microsoft and Moore were among service providers talking up either new platforms or enhancements to current offerings.
Bloomerang debuted Conversational Reporting on its Intelligent Giving Platform. The new capability lets any nonprofit team member describe the report they need in plain language and receive a configured, ready-to-use report in seconds, according to an announcement from Bloomerang.
Conversational reporting was available in Alpha beginning yesterday, with general availability planned for this summer.
“Our goal is to make intelligence the default, not an add-on,” Dennis Fois, chief executive officer at Bloomerang, said via a statement. “Conversational reporting is a real step toward that. The development director who used to spend Tuesday mornings pulling reports can now spend them calling donors. That’s the shift. The platform stops being a system of record. It starts doing the work alongside the team.”
A user can type a request, for example, “show me donors who gave last year but not this year,” and get back a fully configured report nearly immediately. The capability extends data access across the full team, from development directors prepping for board meetings to program managers tracking volunteer hours by region, without filters, training or a specialist on standby, according to the announcement from Bloomerang.
Along with the capability to use plain language, officials said the capability is intended to enable users to:
- Refine with follow-ups: The platform can adjust any report on the fly, such as narrowing the date range, swapping a segment, or layering in a new condition simply by asking;
- Schedule and share: Turn one-off requests into recurring reports delivered automatically the team; and,
- Move straight to action: Convert any report into a targeted outreach list with one click, so the insight doesn’t stop at the screen.
“Reporting has been one of the biggest technical barriers in nonprofit software. Too many clicks, too much training, and too often a single staff member is the only one who can build the query the team needs,” Tommy Vacek, chief technology officer at Bloomerang, said via a statement. “We built Conversational Reporting so the report you describe is the report you get back. You don’t have to wonder if the filters are right or if you’re missing something. You ask, you get the answer, you act.”
Conversational Reporting is the latest capability in Bloomerang’s intelligent Giving Platform, which also includes Penny, the strategic fundraising partner launched earlier this year, alongside a set of AI-powered tools across fundraising, CRM, and volunteer management.
Officials from Blackbaud were talking about a “new era of impact,” equipping fundraisers with purpose-built, responsible AI tools intended to help navigate increasing complexity, meet donor expectations, and accelerate their outcomes.
According to research from the Blackbaud Institute, the typical nonprofit saw approximately 4.3% revenue growth last year, but growth was concentrated among organizations with greater capacity. When resources are scarce, adding capacity can be a challenge, which is why technology that has the power to amplify fundraising results is critical, officials said via a statement.
“Fundraisers are being asked to do more than ever. They need to build deeper relationships, personalize engagement at scale, and raise more, often with limited time and resources,” Tiffany Crumpton, vice president, head of donor management and fundraising products at Blackbaud, said via a statement. … “AFP is a critical partner in shaping the future of fundraising, and together we share a deep commitment to trust, ethics, education, and progress across the sector.”
Blackbaud is showcasing how its AI solutions are designed for fundraising and embedded into existing workflows that are intended to enable teams to expand their capacity, build stronger donor relationships, and accelerate impact. Its latest AI includes:
- The Development Agent, Blackbaud’s first Agent for Good™: This autonomous, AI-powered digital advance is intended to be a “teammate,” an expert agent to be embedded in a dedicated social impact platform. Working alongside Blackbaud Raiser’s Edge NXT® users, the Development Agent is intended to identify, cultivate and engage donors with timely, individualized and brand-aligned outreach to enables fundraising teams to expand capacity for donor engagement and grow giving at scale.
- Intelligent Assistance for Raiser’s Edge NXT: These AI features are intended to help fundraisers work more efficiently by automating workflows and delivering advanced analytics to inform smarter decisions. AI-enhanced intelligent assistance in Raiser’s Edge NXT surfaces strategic insights and recommended actions, boosting productivity while keeping fundraisers firmly in control.
- Action Strategies in Raiser’s Edge NXT: New Action Strategies are intended to reduce the prep time required for donor outreach by compiling relevant donor context — recent activity, engagement signals, preferences, and recommended next steps — into concise briefings within existing workflows.
Dataro has launched a Single Gift Predictive model for fundraisers. Single Gift predicts which donors are likely to give a non-recurring gift within the next three months without requiring the extensive data that most predictive AI tools depend on. It’s intended to make donor-level prediction usable for organizations needing immediately actionable insights without a heavy lift, Dataro officials said.
It doesn’t require any channel or category tagging, which is usually the barrier that keeps small and mid-sized shops from getting value out of predictive AI in the first place. For organizations that do have tagged data, the same model can filter down to a specific channel or appeal, so it scales with their data maturity instead of demanding it upfront, official said.
Said one official, it is “less about ‘vendor launches feature’ and more about the AI readiness gap in the sector being addressed, which is something we saw we needed to tackle head-on. Fundraisers are getting hammered with pressure to adopt AI, but most of what’s out there assumes a level of data hygiene the majority of organizations don’t have. This is a good example of going the other direction.”
A new fundraising platform, SimioAccelerate, designed with data from SimioCloud by Moore in collaboration with Microsoft on Microsoft Azure was unveiled. Moore is a Microsoft Elevate Partner.
The platform is designed to be enterprise-level fundraising intelligence for nonprofits of all sizes, according to an announcement regarding the platform.
SimioAccelerate is an AI-powered data as a service (DaaS) fundraising platform. The intention is to accelerate nonprofit growth using proprietary giving signals from SimioCloud. AI agents orchestrate, automate and execute the fundraising process. By connecting a nonprofit’s first-party data with SimioCloud, the platform delivers donor insights powered by proprietary predictive models, officials said via a statement.
SimioAccelerate is intended to translate these signals into actionable intelligence to activate fundraising campaigns. AI-generated campaigns are created with the nonprofits’ branding, content, and messaging. Execution is then initiated with email, call scripts, direct mail, and other addressable channels, delivering increased support to the nonprofit mission.
“Fundraising is entering a new era where data and AI will fundamentally change how generosity is discovered and activated,” said Gretchen Littlefield, CEO of Moore. “SimioAccelerate brings all nonprofits a level of intelligence that has historically only been available to the largest enterprises.”
SimioAccelerate’s free platform is available now, with its premium subscription platform reaching general availability in May 2026. For more information on the product, go to wearemoore.com/simioaccelerate.
Said Harpreet Girn, vice president, global scale, Microsoft Elevate, at Microsoft Corp.: “Through our collaboration with Moore, SimioAccelerate brings together the scale of Microsoft Azure, the unique data of SimioCloud, and the power of AI to the nonprofit sector, helping these organizations unlock new insights to accelerate their missions.”
