August pulls Blackbaud contact data into August through SIS sync. Blackbaud “parent/guardian relationship” data and Blackbaud “emergency contact” data are related, but not identical. A parent can have parental access in Blackbaud without necessarily being marked as an emergency contact. For that parent to show in the read-only Emergency Contacts section of the August form, they need to come through Blackbaud’s student emergency contacts data, not just the parent/guardian relationship sync.
In the form itself:
Emergency Contacts is read-only for parents. It is prefilled from the student’s current August contacts that are SIS-managed and marked emergency_contact.
Additional Contacts is editable. Parents can add/update additional contacts here; those are stored in August as guardian/portal-provided contacts.
Submitting the form does not update Blackbaud emergency contacts. August intentionally does not write these emergency contact edits back to Blackbaud, because SIS-managed contact data would be overwritten by the next sync.
Blackbaud updates refresh the student’s contact records in August on sync, but they do not automatically refresh already-started form submissions. If a family already opened/started the form, the prefilled emergency contacts are effectively a snapshot until the form is restarted/reset or manually repaired.
💡 Practical guidance for schools/parents: update emergency contact info in Blackbaud if the school expects it to appear in August’s read-only emergency contacts list. Use August’s form “Additional Contacts” section only for extra contacts collected through the portal, with the understanding that those additions live in Swift and do not flow back to Blackbaud.