Abila, formerly Sage Nonprofit Solutions, which focuses on nonprofit organizations and government agencies, has acquired Avectra, one of the major AMS providers to the association market. Click here to read the press release from Abila.
As I wrote last year about the YourMembership acquisition of Affiniscape, I’m generally skeptical of these kinds of deals. I find this one fascinating because Abila focuses on the nonprofit market, which has needs distinct from the association/membership management market. In recent years Avectra has been making a push into offering fundraising functionality within its flagship enterprise product, so perhaps that was part of the attraction to Abila.
I’m not in the prediction-making business, so I won’t venture a guess as to how this plays out. But I will be watching with great interest.
Full disclosure: EDM is an independent third-party consulting firm. This means we have no financial relationship with any of the vendors mentioned in this blog. We provide unbiased opinions on what we see.
Abila is now one of the leaders.
Something to think about: Last year Convio was purchased by Blackbaud and Blackbaud decided to sunset Common Ground (product from Convio). Common Ground users were sent a message that small to mid-sized orgs would be asked to migrate to eTapestry and/or Raisers Edge while their enterprise customers would need to migrate to their Luminate Suite or Blackbaud CRM. Blackbaud’s reasoning was to streamline their “product portfolio and organization.” In reality it would have been tough or near impossible to manage all their different offerings and it was probably the right thing to do.
As for Abila they too have several different product offerings. It will be interesting to see what happens to Avectra’s two AMS offerings (Enterprise / Pro) and if they decide to follow behind Blackbaud’s strategy of streamlining their product portfolio. I don’t think initially Enterprise or Pro are in jeopardy at this time, however, if Abila decides to purchase other AMS companies (they seem to have the financial backing to make it happen) the same way gomembers.com made acquisitions in the late 90’s early 00’s, it could happen.
I believe we will see more acquisitions in this space over the next year.
Tim, totally agree with everything you’ve written. The next 12-18 months will be very telling in terms of what happens to Avectra’s two product lines.