There’s a certain silence in the parking lot at Blackbaud’s Daniel Island campus in Charleston on a Tuesday morning. It’s not the quiet of a slow day, the kind that builds up as people gradually cease to show up. There are fewer cars than there used to be, fewer people at the local coffee shops, and fewer of those unofficial groups outside the front door that usually form when a business still feels like a place people want to be. The offices remain in place. The brand is still in existence. However, those who are still employed there appear to be aware of a change in the nature of day-to-day operations.
Blackbaud’s workforce situation in 2026 is genuinely hard to describe in a clear and concise manner, which is likely why so little of it has been discussed. No all-hands meeting with a round number of job cuts displayed on a screen, nor a single dramatic announcement. Rather, a gradual series of actions took place, including a CEO email on January 12, a reorganization presented as a “new phase of Workforce Strategy,” a declared commitment to increasing overall headcount worldwide while discreetly removing US positions, and the establishment of a tech hub in India. The true story lies in the space between those two claims. The situation is “a deeper one,” according to a thread on TheLayoff.com that was posted the week of April 20. Few employees appear to have been taken aback by that point.
The contents and delivery of Mike Gianoni’s January email to the staff were noteworthy. Employees were reassured in the message that Blackbaud was “not decreasing the size of our workforce” and that the upcoming changes were related to “shifting capabilities, locations, and skill sets.” Reddit quickly saw through the cautious wording. The hyphens, according to one commenter, indicate that the message was written with AI assistance, adding a layer of irony to a business that simultaneously assured its employees that AI would “empower” them rather than replace them. The response varied from tired to enraged. Regardless of Gianoni’s motivations, there’s a feeling that his communication style has damaged his reputation, which is difficult to repair through memos.
Blackbaud’s predicament differs from the larger wave of tech layoffs in 2025 and 2026 for a particular reason. CrowdStrike, Arctic Wolf, Cloudflare, and other pure technology companies that are shifting to AI infrastructure make up the majority of the companies that have laid off employees this year. Blackbaud provides services to hospitals, colleges, and nonprofits. One client is the Make-A-Wish Foundation. Numerous Red Cross chapters and university endowments do the same. For years, working for the company that powered these organizations’ back-end operations carried a sort of reflected purpose. These organizations exist to do social good. The pitch was that. There are still versions of it on onboarding decks. The phrase “Powering an Ecosystem of Good” is actually used by the company. A completely different question is what it means for the people who are being replaced by cheaper labor abroad.
Right now, the Glassdoor record is pretty dismal. According to reviews, there have been yearly layoffs, freezes on promotions, unexpected off-track performance reviews in Q1 2026, and a general atmosphere where morale has been dropping for years rather than months. When a former employee joined in 2017, she claimed to have been paid about 40% less than she had at her previous job. At the time, this was justified by the argument that people wanted to live in Charleston. That rationale has vanished now that the workforce is almost entirely remote, and it appears that salaries have not increased to reflect this. Some of this may be a reflection of the typical frustration that comes with restructuring. It might also indicate a more structural issue, such as a company that has been underpaying employees for years and is now shifting those positions to an even less expensive location.
Blackbaud has been bearing the consequences of its 2020 data breach for years: a $3 million SEC fine, a $49.5 million multistate settlement, and the continuous compliance burden of operating under FTC supervision. This context is important because it means the company is juggling regulatory pressure, a reputation issue, an offshore transition, and the competitive demands of a dynamic SaaS market. It’s still genuinely unclear if leadership has the capacity or credibility to handle all of that. Confidence hasn’t been sparked by the stock’s performance. The internal forums indicate a decline in trust. Additionally, the atmosphere in Charleston, one of the locations where Blackbaud formerly stood for something akin to a steady, fulfilling career option, is somewhere between slow departure and resignation.
