2026 Asia Pacific Winners and Finalists
The Changemaker Award
You don’t just respond to change; you use tech to embrace it.
Recognises agile organisations that have embraced new tech capabilities to overcome challenges and deliver results.
Asia Pacific Winner: Vision Australia
Challenge
As Australia’s leading provider of services and advocacy for people who are blind or have low vision, Vision Australia faced a critical challenge: ensuring that every digital interaction was fully accessible. From donation forms and volunteer registrations to client service requests, digital barriers risked limiting independence and engagement for the more than 40,000 people the organisation serves. Internally, staff needed technology that was equally accessible and capable of supporting more efficient, insight-driven decision-making.
Solution
Rather than treating accessibility as a separate initiative, Vision Australia partnered directly with Blackbaud to help advance accessibility within Blackbaud Enterprise Fundraising CRM™ and Blackbaud Integrated Payments™. Through extensive testing, feedback, and co-design, the organisation helped identify opportunities to enhance accessibility capabilities across fundraising, payment, and CRM experiences. Accessibility principles were embedded into web forms, payment processes, and CRM workflows, creating a more inclusive experience for supporters, clients, donors, volunteers, and staff.
Outcome
The result was a step change in digital accessibility and operational efficiency. Accessible web forms now support independent engagement for people using screen readers and assistive technologies, while staff benefit from a more usable and efficient CRM environment. Just as importantly, Vision Australia’s collaboration helped strengthen Blackbaud’s native accessibility capabilities, creating scalable improvements that extend beyond a single organisation and raise the standard of accessibility across the broader nonprofit technology sector.
The Data Strategist Award
Data is your not-so-secret weapon.
Recognises organisations that showcase how data-informed decisions or problem solving have given them a greater edge.
Asia Pacific Winner: Adelaide University
Challenge
The formation of Adelaide University brought together two established institutions, each with its own fundraising systems, donor databases, reporting structures, business processes, and technology integrations. Without a unified approach, donor information, fundraising activity, financial data, and alumni engagement risked remaining fragmented across the new university. The challenge extended beyond consolidating systems. The organisation needed to create a single advancement ecosystem that connected philanthropy, alumni relations, prospect research, finance, and IT while enabling the new institution to begin operating as one from day one.
Solution
Adelaide University used the merger as an opportunity to intentionally design a modern advancement environment built around Blackbaud Raiser’s Edge NXT®. Working closely with Blackbaud and Blackbaud partner Visualise Fundraising, the university consolidated two deeply embedded fundraising ecosystems into a single platform while aligning processes, reporting frameworks, integrations, and governance structures. Cross- functional workshops brought together fundraising, alumni relations, prospect research, finance, operations, and technology teams to establish shared definitions, workflows, and operating models, creating a unified foundation that extended well beyond technology alone.
Outcome
The university successfully launched with a single, reconciled advancement platform supporting donor management, fundraising operations, alumni engagement, and reporting across the entire institution. The final consolidation achieved 100% pass rates across system testing, user acceptance testing, and deployment, while donor, alumni, and prospect data were unified into a trusted source of information. Most importantly, teams that previously operated within separate institutional structures now work from a shared operating model with common processes and goals. By eliminating organisational and technology silos simultaneously, Adelaide University established a connected advancement foundation that will support fundraising growth, stronger donor experiences, and institutional collaboration for years to come.
The Futurist Award
Thinking inside the box? No way! You’re a master of tech flexibility.
Recognises organisations that have pursued technological exploration and creativity within Blackbaud’s flexible ecosystem with notable results.
Asia Pacific Winner: Australian National University
Challenge
As one of Australia’s leading universities, Australian National University (ANU) manages a complex advancement operation spanning more than 150,000 alumni across 160 countries, a substantial prospect and donor community, and philanthropic income exceeding $70 million annually. Advancement leaders needed deeper insight into constituent engagement, richer portfolio intelligence for fundraisers, and more sophisticated ways to support decision-making across fundraising, alumni relations, stewardship, and communications. At the same time, the University sought to move beyond traditional reporting and develop a future-focused approach to engagement, analytics, and prospect identification.
Solution
Building on the foundation of Blackbaud Enterprise Fundraising CRM™, ANU developed a series of innovative enhancements designed to strengthen engagement, improve visibility, and expand institutional intelligence. The team created an engagement model aligned with the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) standards, evaluating constituent activity across philanthropy, volunteering, experiential engagement, and communications. They also expanded portfolio reporting, introduced demographic and wealth enrichment data, and piloted AI-assisted prospect research to help identify and prioritise new opportunities. Together, these innovations transformed Blackbaud Enterprise Fundraising CRM into a strategic advancement platform supporting fundraising, alumni engagement, stewardship, and executive decision- making.
Outcome
The results have positioned ANU at the forefront of advancement innovation. The University now calculates a 100-point engagement score across approximately 300,000 constituents, providing a more holistic view of supporter relationships and engagement potential. Enhanced reporting and portfolio intelligence support daily fundraising activity, while ANU’s update-your-details campaign generated 3,837 responses from more than 130,000 contactable alumni, making it the institution’s most successful campaign of its kind. By combining Blackbaud technology with emerging AI capabilities, ANU has created a future-ready advancement model that continues to support more than $70 million in annual philanthropic income while strengthening engagement across its global community.
The Rising Star Award
A go-getter with exceptional potential in their field.
Celebrates ambitious individuals at manager-level or below (non-executive or director level) who demonstrate exceptional potential in their field.
Asia Pacific Winner: Sam Ovais, Fundraising CRM Manager, Vision Australia
Context
For Vision Australia, accessibility is central to its mission. As the organisation worked to create more inclusive digital experiences for people who are blind or have low vision, it needed a technology leader capable of bridging fundraising operations, accessibility advocacy, and technical innovation. The challenge extended beyond maintaining systems; it required identifying opportunities to improve accessibility, strengthen integrations, and ensure that Blackbaud technology could better support both staff and supporters.
Leadership
Sam Ovais expanded his role beyond traditional CRM management, building expertise in system integrations, accessibility testing, and digital engagement technologies including Blackbaud Enterprise Fundraising CRM™ and Blackbaud Internet Systems. Through rigorous testing and collaboration with Blackbaud teams, Sam identified accessibility gaps, escalated platform enhancements, and helped improve payment processing and supporter engagement experiences. He also became a trusted advisor across fundraising, marketing, and digital teams, ensuring accessibility remained a key consideration in every technology decision.
Impact
Sam’s work delivered measurable results for Vision Australia and the broader Blackbaud community. His efforts to resolve recurring gift processing challenges increased debit success rates from 91% to 94%, generating more than AUD $402,000 in additional annual revenue. He also helped advance accessibility improvements that strengthened experiences for donors, staff, and people with lived experience of blindness or low vision. By combining technical expertise, deep business understanding, and an unwavering commitment to inclusion, Sam has helped shape how accessibility is embedded within Blackbaud technology and demonstrated the impact an emerging leader can have across an entire sector.
Asia Pacific Finalists
Lynn Kenyon, Database & Insights Manager, Neurological Foundation of New Zealand
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.