Blackbaud’s EVERFI purchase highlights corporate demand for addressing environmental and social goals

Some deal news this morning: Blackbaud, the leading cloud service provider devoted to powering social good, is purchasing EVERFI, a leader in addressing social challenges through education programs. The $750 million deal may be smaller than you normally read about in CEO Daily. But it’s here for a reason: the combined companies plan to feed off exploding corporate demand to address environmental and social goals.

“We’ve got over 100 Fortune 500 customers on our YourCause platform,” Blackbaud CEO Mike Gianoni told me last night. YourCause is a software product that helps companies manage employee giving and volunteering as well as grantmaking. “We saw this really pick up with the European investment community first, and now it has taken over in the U.S. It’s happening at the CEO and board levels as part of the effort to drive ESG goals. It’s also linked at the corporate level to the war for talent. It’s getting weaved into every business we see.”

Big companies pursuing social goals also provide most of EVERFI’s revenue, funding educational programs in the companies and in schools and communities. EVERFI CEO Tom Davidson described this in a commentary piece for Fortune last year as a new “Impact-as-a-Service” model.

“When you look across what companies are doing,” Davidson said last evening, “they are managing all their internal employee giving of time and money; they are using of technology to upskill their people; they are using software for their carbon net zero programs; they are pushing into social impact and community engagement….Out of this, there are going to be two, maybe three companies that drive this for the Fortune 500. We definitely want to be one of those companies.”

Davidson will join Blackbaud—“First time I’ve ever had a boss,” he said. Deal terms include $450 million in cash and around $300 million of Blackbaud stock. Blackbaud is a public company with a market cap of $3.8 billion. EVERFI’s investors include TPG’s The Rise Fund as well as tech titans including Jeff Bezos, Eric Schmidt and Evan Williams.

And while we are talking about market caps, worth noting that yesterday Apple became the first company ever to cross the $3 trillion threshold. Something to shoot for, fellows. More news below.

Alan Murray
@alansmurray
alan.murray@fortune.com

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This edition of CEO Daily was edited by David Meyer.