Bridgit, the data integration platform built for charities and the only startup from the UK and Ireland in Blackbaud’s 2026 Social Good Startup Program, has won the People’s Choice Award at bbcon 2026 in Columbus, Ohio.
Bridgit was one of eleven startups that pitched at Blackbaud’s showcase. UK Fundraising reported in February that it had been selected for the accelerator, the only startup chosen from the UK and Ireland. Its People’s Choice win brings sponsorship of the 2027 conference, plus dedicated sales enablement and marketing support.
Sean Donnelly, Co-Founder and CEO of Bridgit, said:
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“Winning the People’s Choice Award means a great deal to us because it came from the people who live with charity data every day. For a small UK team, standing on the bbcon stage in Columbus and being chosen by the audience was a moment we won’t forget. Fundraising teams everywhere lose hours each week downloading, cleaning and re-uploading spreadsheets between platforms, and this recognition tells us the problem we’re solving is one the sector feels deeply on both sides of the pond. We’re grateful to Blackbaud’s Social Good Startup Programme for giving us this platform and to everyone who voted.”
Sean and Rob at bbcon
Bridgit People’s Choice Award: how the vote worked
After the startups pitched live at Blackbaud’s showcase in September, Blackbaud customers and the public were invited to vote for the solution they thought had the most potential. Voting closed on 30 September, and the winner was announced on the main stage at bbcon on 1 October.
A panel of Blackbaud judges chose separate Judges’ Choice winners: DonorAtlas, Apps NXT and Untapped Solutions, the last with a Corporate Impact distinction.
What Bridgit does
Blackbaud describes Bridgit as an AI-powered platform that helps nonprofits get more from their data by connecting systems, automating data cleanup and mapping, and making information easier to use across teams.
UK Fundraising’s February coverage reported that Bridgit automates the flow of data between a charity’s fundraising platforms, CRMs and marketing tools. At that point the company was preparing to expand to serve American nonprofits, and the bbcon win puts it in front of a large US audience.
Clean data before AI
Donnelly linked the award to the sector’s growing interest in artificial intelligence:
“Charities are being told that AI will transform how they work, but none of that is possible without clean, connected data. That’s the foundation Bridgit builds, and this award [shows] how much appetite there is for practical tools that make the sector’s data work harder. We’re excited to build on this with Blackbaud and all of our fantastic platform partners, and to keep making life easier for the teams doing the fundraising.”
Also at bbcon 2026
The 2026 Blackbaud 2026 SGSP cohort in Charleston
Blackbaud’s annual conference also saw the company unveil Platform for Good, a connected foundation for data, workflows, AI and partners across its ecosystem, and Lantern, a fundraising-specific language model developed with Databricks. Blackbaud also announced the winners of its 2026 Impact Awards.
About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.
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