Companies that replace American workers with cheaper labor in India are prioritizing profits over people, undermining the livelihoods of hardworking families and contributing to the decline of the American middle class. This practice not only exploits foreign workers but also betrays the trust of American employees who deserve fair opportunities.
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Blackbaud has announced that it will spend the next 24 months changing its workforce, expanding in India, embracing AI, and eliminating some employees’ jobs. Apparently, the people expected to live under that announcement are also supposed to accept restrictions on building another source of income.
If you haven’t read the exclusivity policy, go look it up on the HUB. Then read it alongside the workforce announcement.
The company wants every available option for protecting its financial future while restricting yours.
That takes extraordinary corporate nerve.
Blackbaud can decide that your position costs too much. It can move the work, reorganize the department, or eliminate the role. Your years of service and accumulated knowledge do not prevent any of those decisions. Yet taking additional work to protect your family’s finances can become a question of whether you are sufficiently committed.
How convenient that “commitment” becomes an obligation precisely when it is being demanded from the people with the least security.
A mortgage does not pause for a workforce strategy. Medical bills do not wait for clarity from leadership. Groceries cannot be purchased with assurances that the company’s total headcount will grow somewhere else.
Telling someone that Blackbaud may finish the year with more employees offers remarkably little comfort when their own job is among those being removed. They cannot pay their electric bill with someone else’s offer letter.
And the language makes the whole thing harder to stomach.
“Thoughtful shifts.” “Valued colleagues.” “Parting ways.”
People are losing the income that supports their homes, their healthcare, and their families. The least leadership can do is describe that plainly. Employees should not have to endure the financial consequences and then applaud the sensitivity of the announcement.
Calling people valued carries an obligation to demonstrate it. Put that value into severance that reflects their service. Put it into clear answers about their future. Put it into reasonable freedom to find other work. Sentimental language costs the company nothing; the decisions behind it can cost an employee almost everything they have built.
Meanwhile, those who remain are expected to maintain performance through months of uncertainty, departures, and concern about what comes next. They still have customers to support, deadlines to meet, and bills coming due.
Then comes the expectation that they remain financially dependent on Blackbaud.
How much vulnerability does one paycheck entitle a company to demand?
Protecting confidential information is reasonable. Preventing genuine conflicts of interest is reasonable. Requiring employees to fulfill their responsibilities is reasonable. Those concerns can be addressed with specific rules and evidence of an actual problem.
A blanket restriction reaches much further. It allows the company to interfere with an employee’s financial survival without accepting responsibility for the outcome.
The arrangement is indefensible: Blackbaud reserves the right to decide it no longer needs your labor, while limiting your ability to establish somewhere else that does.
And employees may be afraid to say so.
That fear should embarrass leadership. Anyone asking why they cannot protect their household should be able to expect an answer. They should not have to wonder whether the question will affect their next review, their standing with management, or their place in the next restructuring.
Silence under those circumstances is a terrible measure of employee support. People who need their paycheck may swallow a great deal to keep it. Treating that restraint as acceptance would be another insult.
Leadership should stop expecting employees to carry all the uncertainty while surrendering their options. If outside work creates a demonstrable conflict or performance problem, address it. If it does not, explain what legitimate interest requires controlling it.
“Because we expect exclusivity” is an assertion of power. It does nothing to justify the demand.
If Blackbaud wants to be someone’s sole source of earned income, it should make a substantial commitment worthy of that dependence. Announcing two years of potential job losses while restricting employees’ ability to prepare is a breathtaking abuse of an already unequal relationship.
The people doing the work deserve enough freedom to protect the lives that work is supposed to support.
@2ry Yeah, funny how 2 new turtle sanctuaries showed up that weren’t in the IOP budget…
@2gz When you buy something for the Island, or should I say donate, the case goes away. That is what happened to it.
More US layoffs are coming before mid year 2027. They already have the people identified. More required work will go to managed service providers.
I find it super interesting that Michael Gianoni was given a two year extension to his term to "get the value up," and that it was that same two years that he said (in so many words) "we're going to be saying goodbye to a lot of people that have been with us for a long time over the next two years" before they started outsourcing to India. So much so that they actually need two full office sites (one in HITECH and the other in the Financial District). Any time it comes up internally, they don't like us to talk about or acknowledge it, even though it is public information you can easily use AI to find.
I also find it interesting that he is already planning on his next opportunity after Blackbaud (https://newmoyergeospatial.com/2026/09/blackbaud-ceo-mike-gianoni-invests-in-ngs).
This guy already has one foot out of the door, and his only goal right now appears to be how to maximize profits for his exit. He doesn't care about us (he already wants to say goodbye to us) and would rather trade in all the core teams and people for the sake of some extra cash in his pocket when he leaves.
Don't get me wrong, the rest of the ELT are enablers and share in those same profits... and as long as they're not the ones "calling the shots" then they can just absentmindedly sit by and allow him to trash everything on his way out, just for the sake that they'll be able to make a little extra money for themselves.
In the end:
- It doesn't matter how much "social good" they've promoted over the years
- It doesn't matter how much they "give back"
- It doesn't matter how great it sounds like it is to be here
... they're still a corporation that only exists to maximize the profits for shareholders, of which the ELT are major shareholders (their compensation contains major amounts of stock).
Don't forget, this company doesn't really care about what you feel. When Covid came around and we started working from home, the ELT did their Teams meetings with all of us and we had the option to be able to send questions into the Teams Meeting Chat anonymously. The questions while direct were never rude, but the ELT didn't like getting called out for the things they were doing since it affected everyone. So what did they have done? They stopped the ability to send questions anonymously to the chat. They knew that it would force people to shut up because everyone feared the retaliation they might face for speaking up. You can't even chat publicly in the meeting like you could before.
It was Oscar Wilde that wrote "Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth."
The ELT doesn't want to know the truth. They don't even want you to speak. It's why your questions have to be sent in ahead of time so that they can cherry pick the acceptable ones and hide the rest.
Last thing: Does anyone remember what happened with this case:
https://www.fitsnews.com/2024/03/14/blackbaud-ceos-dui-arrest-comes-at-pivotal-moment-for-company/
Just go look at status.blackbaud.com that's a good indicator of how well the transition to india is going on some of these products. "Just give them AI tools guys, they will figure it out!"
Blackbaud is now doing 'Social Good ' in India while doing the opposite and destroying the US workforce that got them where they are. They are lining their pockets with profits at whatever cost to the US economy
@d6 Absolutey a for profit. People think because our customers are nonprofits that we are too. We are not. We are a publicly traded (for a little bit longer) business.
Beyond the impact on American workers, this approach may also be creating business costs that leadership is underestimating. Customer support is a good example: despite multiple hiring cohorts in BBI, the number of agents who consistently meet performance expectations remains relatively small.
Blackbaud has never been anything but a for-profit business. While those of us have been her awhile were surprised, it does also reinforces a couple of things. 1 - employee quality of life has never been at the top of the priority list for this leadership team and 2 - they still are slow on the uptake and missed the offshoring trend by about 10 years. The GCC model is crumbling for India and Blackbaud is going to be left holding an empty bag
Blackbaud doesn't do good, they do business.