Blackbaud Announces the 2026 Blackbaud Impact Awards Finalists Featuring Four Organisations Across Australia and New Zealand
Celebrating the Organisations and Individuals Using Technology, Innovation, and Collaboration to Create Meaningful Impact
We’re excited to announce the finalists for the 2026 Blackbaud Impact Awards, recognising outstanding organisations and leaders who are using Blackbaud technology to advance their missions, strengthen their organisations, and deliver measurable outcomes. The awards celebrate the changemakers transforming ambition into action and demonstrating what’s possible when purpose and technology come together.
For more than four decades globally, and since 1996 across Asia Pacific, Blackbaud has partnered with organisations across the social impact ecosystem—including charities, healthcare organisations, educational institutions, foundations, and companies committed to positive social change. The Blackbaud Impact Awards shine a spotlight on customers who are embracing innovation, overcoming challenges, and delivering meaningful results for the communities and causes they serve.
“Across our Asia Pacific region, organisations are continually finding new ways to deepen engagement, improve efficiency and expand their impact while staying true to the people and communities they serve,” said Kevin Sher, president and general manager of Blackbaud’s operations in Asia Pacific. “This year’s finalists demonstrate the value of combining innovation with purpose, whether that’s using data more effectively, embracing accessibility, streamlining operations or exploring emerging technologies. Their stories highlight a sector that is future-focused, resilient and committed to creating meaningful outcomes.”
Australia and New Zealand Organisations and Leaders Honoured in the 2026 Blackbaud Impact Awards
The Blackbaud Impact Awards continue to grow as a global celebration of customer excellence. This year, we expanded opportunities for recognition across regions and are thrilled to highlight the work of four organisations based in Australia and New Zealand.
These stories demonstrate how data, collaboration, digital transformation, and forward-thinking leadership can help organisations navigate complexity, respond to evolving needs, and achieve lasting impact. Whether improving supporter engagement, empowering teams with better insights, modernising operations, or exploring new technologies, each finalist reflects a commitment to innovation in service of their mission.
Vision Australia
Vision Australia is a finalist for the Changemaker Award for their partnership with Blackbaud to co-design and embed new accessibility features into Blackbaud Enterprise Fundraising CRM™ and Blackbaud Integrated Payments, eliminating digital barriers for people who are blind or have low vision, enabling fully accessible web forms and a more inclusive CRM experience—ultimately driving platform improvements that benefited the entire sector.
Additionally, Sam Ovais, Fundraising CRM Manager at Vision Australia, is a finalist for the for the Rising Star Award, which recognizes emerging leaders who are making an outsized impact. Ovais is recognized for championing accessibility as a core principle across Blackbaud Enterprise Fundraising CRM and Blackbaud Internet Solutions™—bridging technical expertise with deep fundraising business acumen to drive inclusive system design at Vision Australia, while proactively advocating for platform improvements that are actively shaping how Blackbaud’s technology evolves for disability-focused organizations everywhere.
Australian National University
Australian National University is a finalist for the Futurist Award for leveraging Blackbaud Enterprise Fundraising CRM and Perplexity AI to build a CASE-aligned 100-point engagement score across 300,000 constituents, drive $70M+ in philanthropic income in 2025, and deliver ANU’s most successful alumni engagement campaign ever.
Neurological Foundation of New Zealand
Lynn Kenyon, Database & Insight Specialist at the Neurological Foundation of New Zealand, is also a finalist for the Rising Star Award, recognized for proactively driving the adoption of Blackbaud Raiser’s Edge NXT® unified view—redesigning workflows, consolidating a 65,000-record database, and empowering her team to work with confidence—and founding a peer-led data community across New Zealand and Australia that supports more than $11 million in annual neurological research funding.
Adelaide University
Adelaide University is a finalist for the Silo Buster Award for turning a complex university merger into an opportunity to deliberately design a single, modern Advancement ecosystem—consolidating two deeply embedded Blackbaud Raiser’s Edge NXT environments into one unified platform, achieving 100% pass rates across testing and deployment, and engineering cross-functional collaboration across Philanthropy, Alumni Relations, Prospect Research, Finance, and IT so that two institutions entered Day One operating as one.
To view the full list of global finalists and to read more about their impact, visit www.blackbaud.com/impact-awards.
Stay Tuned for Winner Announcements and Celebrations
Winners will be announced on Tuesday, 18th August, and will be celebrated at bbcon Sydney, Blackbaud’s annual user conference. This year, bbcon Sydney will take place 19th-20th October at the International Convention Centre (ICC). The event will include free-to-attend post-conference user groups for Blackbaud Raiser’s Edge NXT, Blackbaud CRM and Higher Education customers, as well as a Payments Processing Optimistion workshop. Learn more and register here.