Single Sign On (SSO) for Blackbaud ID
Your school can use your organization's identity provider (IdP) to enable a single sign-on (SSO) experience for Blackbaud solutions (including www.Blackbaud.com, Raiser's Edge NXT, Financial Edge NXT, and Education Management) using your Blackbaud ID for access.
Tip: Consider watching a brief webinar recording about SSO for Blackbaud ID. See Blackbaud SSO Configuration (9 minutes).
The single sign-on configuration must be completed by a organization administrator for your organization through www.Blackbaud.com.
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A platform manager user who has admin rights in a specific product is not necessarily also an organization administrator. For information about how to become an organization administrator, refer to the Blackbaud Knowledgebase.
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The user who sets up this SSO must have a Blackbaud ID (which is the unique identifier for each individual). If you don't have a Blackbaud ID, you must create one.
Tip: We recommend a member of your organization's IT staff complete the self service configuration to enable a Single Sign-on experience for your organization. Your staff should already be familiar with your identity provider (IdP) settings or SSO configurations before beginning this process. For detailed assistance with your specific identity provider, please contact your IdP's customer support instead of Blackbaud's customer support.
Blackbaud ID supports single sign-on (SSO) with several identity providers (IdPs) or directory services.
When your school administrator configures an SSO, Blackbaud ID will refer to your directory services for user authentication.
For a list of IdPs which Blackbaud ID supports SSO through and instructions for each, see the Blackbaud ID Single Sign-on Setup Help.
Warning: Before you begin SSO setup, we recommend you have at least one admin-level Blackbaud ID account with an email address outside of your claimed domain(s) (such as gmail.com or @yahoo.com). If an unexpected issue occurs and all users on your domain are unable to login, you can log in with the non-domain admin account to access authentication and manage settings.
Previously, we recommended using the generic SAML 2.0 to connect your Blackbaud solutions to Google G Suite as your Identity provider.
Based on your feedback, we released a native connector via Google’s API to improve the user experience. We now recommend this connector for schools that use Google G Suite as your identity provider.
If your organization uses Google as its identity provider (IdP), you can set up either a SAML 2.0 or G Suite connection to enable single sign-on (SSO) for Blackbaud ID. If your members have multiple Google accounts — such as for personal and business use — or share browsers or devices with other people with Google accounts, we recommend a G Suite connection, as it enables members to easily choose which account to sign in with.
If you already set up a SAML 2.0 connection for SSO through Google, you can convert to the native API G Suite connection.
Tip: For more information about SSO for Blackbaud ID, refer to this guide.
Tip: Some authentication settings are not accessible while impersonating. To set up authentication for your school, log in as the platform manager who has organization admin rights instead of impersonating one.