Blackbaud has turned a deaf ear on this issue. Our organization is in the same boat, i.e., working with organizations (like schools) that do not have a Tax ID. In April 2025, prior to the "upgrade" Customer Service stated that "this has been forwarded to our programming team where it will be investigated. This is a known issue or request from a couple of our other client's so I added High Priority to your case stating: **They cannot use this currently as it stands.** Once the investigation process is complete and we are able to fully understand the issue, the next step is to develop a fix or workaround." They went ahead and pushed the upgrade through without any changes that August. Our organization stopped using the application portal.

Love it!

Totally agree, we have new users on a daily basis that are very confused by this NPO connect database. I recognize that the goal was to create some useful functionality, but at least for our organization, the confusion created far outweighs any benefits

Agreed, we have a similar need for our DAF holders to bypass this when making recommendations.

When? This has already created so much work and ruined the integrity of 120+ organizations in my database. I cannot believe you would take applicant input data over the database. Many of the updates with the new applicant system and move from IGAM have destroyed the database and functions reliant on good data hygiene. This is the most disappointing 'update' from Blackbaud.

Work is planned to have the Registration ID/Tax ID/Charity # a non-required field when adding a new organization.

We also work with a number of grantees who are not registered Charities and could see this screen shall provide us with lots of queries and issues for those who don't have a a Tax IDto complete in order to add an Organisation. There is no ability to bypass this and there is nowhere to add instructions for those who do not fit the 'standard charity' criteria. Making the NPO Connect Screen optional would be the best way forward.

I originally set up my application to accept applications from organizations last round, but the NPO search is confusing so I'm changing the form to allow applications from individuals on the backend and at least then the applicants only need to enter their info once. Thanks for posting this!

Thank you for adding this to the new ideas list! We too work with many churches, government organizations and schools. This is causing a lot of issues with grant applicants.

Yes, please turn this function off. This is not at all helpful as we complete our due diligence process internally. We fund churches and government organizations where this will cause a lot of confusion.

We agree! We work with many individual schools, and I am certain that Principals don't know tax ID numbers, nor will they have the bandwidth to navigate NPO Connect. Our grant approval process for over a decade has required confirmation of school tax exemption via district letterhead. Blackbaud's upgrade will be very challenging for our foundation. We also request the ability to bypass mandatory Tax ID or NPO Connect. We fully agree making this optional is the best way forward.

Thank you so much for submitting this Sarah-Jayne, I also agree that the Tax ID section should be optional rather than mandatory as we have experienced a lot of feedback from our NAAFIO Fund applicants on this stage being very confusing, despite us making a YouTube video tutorial and a step by step guide PDF to avoid this issue.

Thank you for submitting this idea, Sarah-Jayne. To expand on your idea, I'd love it if we could make the Tax ID optional while still leveraging NPO Connect for those clients who do "fit the 'standard charity' criteria."