Senior Customer Advocacy Manager at Blackbaud

Job description

About the role We’re looking for a Customer Advocacy Manager to lead the evolution of Blackbaud’s customer advocacy ecosystem, building on our Community and Champions programs to create a more connected, scalable, and signal-driven approach to advocacy. In this role, you’ll shape how Blackbaud identifies, engages, develops, and activates customer advocates across the customer journey. You’ll bring together community engagement, customer relationships, technology, data, and AI-enabled capabilities to create meaningful opportunities for customers to share their expertise, influence others, and strengthen the broader social impact community. You’ll own the strategy for Blackbaud Community and the Champions advocacy program while helping define what comes next. This is an opportunity for an experienced advocacy leader to bring a strong point of view, modernize our approach, and build an integrated advocacy ecosystem that engages the right customers in the right opportunities at the right moments. What you’ll be doing Own and evolve the strategy for Blackbaud Community and the Champions program, creating an integrated experience that deepens customer engagement and expands the reach and impact of customer advocacy. Develop a modern, signal-driven approach to advocacy, using customer data, engagement signals, automation, and AI-enabled capabilities to identify and activate the right customers at the right moments. Build scalable advocacy pathways that help customers become Champions, speakers, reviewers, references, storytellers, peer leaders, and product contributors based on their interests, expertise, and relationship with Blackbaud. Create compelling community and advocacy experiences through targeted campaigns, communications, member-led groups, peer connections, events, and other opportunities that deliver value to customers. Shape and advance an AI-forward advocacy technology ecosystem, identifying opportunities to connect platforms, data, workflows, and automation to deliver more personalized customer experiences at scale. Build trusted relationships with customer advocates, understanding their motivations and creating opportunities that are valuable to both the customer and Blackbaud. Partner across Marketing, Customer Success, Sales, Support, Product, Partners, Events, and Brand to embed customer voices and advocacy opportunities into broader customer and business priorities. Establish clear program governance and operating practices that make it easier for internal teams to identify, engage, and collaborate with customer advocates while protecting the quality of the customer experience. Define and measure community health, advocacy engagement, and business impact, using insights to strengthen programs, prioritize investments, and demonstrate the value of customer advocacy. Stay current on emerging advocacy practices and technologies, bringing new ideas and an informed perspective on how customer advocacy should evolve within a modern SaaS organization. What you’ll bring Deep experience leading and evolving a mature customer advocacy program within a SaaS organization, with demonstrated success scaling advocacy across the customer lifecycle. Experience building or managing an integrated advocacy ecosystem that may include customer communities, champion programs, references, reviews, customer stories, speakers, peer engagement, user groups, and other forms of customer participation. A strong understanding of customer community strategy and how community engagement can help identify, develop, and sustain long-term customer advocates. Experience with modern, AI-forward advocacy technology, along with a clear vision for using customer signals, data, automation, and AI to create more timely, relevant, and scalable advocacy experiences. A track record of moving advocacy beyond individual programs or one-time requests toward a coordinated, customer-centered model that creates value for customers and the business. Strong strategic