This Spring, Blackbaud announced that it planned to acquire Kintera. Since then, the "i's" have been dotted, the "t's" have been crossed, and the real work of integrating the two products has begun in earnest.

Lots of Kintera Sphere users have questions about what the acquisition will mean in terms of functionality. Blackbaud's CTO, Shaun Sullivan put together a screencast that demos some of the integrations they're working towards, leveraging the APIs in both systems. You can see a demo of Kintera Sphere and Raiser's Edge sharing data, as well as a Sphere/Infinity integration.

Flickr Photo: Cubbie_n_ VegasI'm in DC -- well, Arlington -- for the next couple of days, giving a social media training. A few big things happened yesterday, but I spent most of it on airplanes. As it's currently 4:30 am, according to my body, I'm going to cop out and just give you guys a bunch of links to keep my daily blogging streak alive.

Here's the stuff I wish I had the wherewithal to write about today:

Unless you've been out of the office, you undoubtedly heard that Blackbaud is buying Kintera.  They are both publicly traded companies, so neither is allowed to comment on what will happen right now.  They have to keep behaving as completely separate entities until the acquisition is approved.  That doesn't give us a lot of good information, but it hasn't stopped the speculation either.

This is certainly very meaningful for the sector.  No matter how the acquisition plays out in terms of which products are kept, etc., there is one less choice in the nonprofit CRM market.  And I tend to believe that choice is good.  But rather than opine at this time, I'll instead share some of the musings of the nonprofit community and beyond:

• Connections: Steve MacLaughlin's Blackbaud Blog
• Nonprofit Tech Blog 
• Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology 
• Idealware
• The Nonprofit Times 
• Don't Tell the Donor 
• Forbes.com 

 What's your take?

If you are subscribed to the NTEN discuss list, you may recall that I sent out a call for questions for a podcast that Blackbaud was putting together regarding the eTap acquisition. Well, the podcast is out. If you are an eTap user, I think there's some good content in there for you. Otherwise, it's nothing you probably haven't heard before about the coupling.

Blackbaud, a provider of services designed specifically for nonprofits, has launched Blackbaud Labs, a testing ground for projects in the pipeline. Google famously maintains its own "labs", essentially a place where they can get free alpha-testers to fulminate over their not-yet-ready-for-primetime products.

The newer Blackbaud Labs currently features two products: a demo of Infinity, their Rich Internet Application (RIA) development platform; and a mash-up of Infinity with Microsoft's Virtual Earth API, which allows mapping of CRM data. The mapping demo features a pretty nifty screencast, highlighting both the potential and the developmental nature of the project.

Peter Gulka, of the Blackbaud User Society, seems pretty excited about the possibilities of Blackbaud Labs, but adds that he would really like to see Blackbaud offer an SDK or a free API. "What could we come up with on our own?" he wonders. "We're a smart bunch and I would love to see a developer community like SourceForge pop up here." Given the blazing successes of development communities for Facebook, Salesforce, and others, the potential for more great community-developed nonprofit resources seems high. You can let express your opinion in the Blackbus Labs Forums.

Blackbaud continues its roll into the eCRM market by acquiring eTapestry.  From the Nonprofit Times article:

"Nonprofit software provider Blackbaud has made its second major acquisition this year, buying online donor management and advocacy tool eTapestry. During the past two years Blackbaud has spent more than $90 million on acquisitions in the nonprofit software and advocacy marketplace."

Blackbaud's first acquisition this year? Target Software. We'll all have to keep our eyes peeled for what happens next.