Blackbaud FIMS vs. Foundant Grant Lifecycle Manager

It is a very robust system and with the various modules you can accomplish much of what is needed for traditional transaction US-based grantmaking. If you have more complicated grantmaking, deal with foreign currencies or want to have tighter alignment of finance and budget numbers, GIFTS may not meet your needs. Additionally, some of their core projects have limited accessibility in terms of various mobile devices or access from outside the organization's network.

Incentivized

From where I stand, GLM is well-suited for use by small-staffed charitable foundations who make more than thirty (30) grants a year and distribute more than $500,000 in funds to non-profits. The software is able to handle every step in the grant-making process from receipt of a request, to the evaluation and decision regarding the grant, to tracking the pay-out, and to closing the grant when the work or the year is completed.

Incentivized

• Simple layout
• Duplication reports
• Lots of fields for organization-specific information

Incentivized

• Foundant provides a streamlined grants management solution for reasonable cost.
• The company listens to its users, collecting ideas and making improvements. Updates to the software are rolled out several times a year. When something cannot be changed right away, the company gives context and forecasts when the change might be possible.
• While the software is easy to use, it also offers more advanced features (such as merge templates) that allow more customization for the advanced user.

Incentivized

• While GIFTS Classic is the most barren interfaces of all MicroEdge products, there are some simple capabilities I wish GIFTS could still perform such as better email integration from outlook to a GIFTS request, more efficient requirement reminders, and a wider use of Microsoft Office and other external product integration (GuideStar).
• It's disappointing that you have to purchase an additional "Customizer Module" or "Budget Module" in order to access basic functions of a GMS. This seems like a basic system function that MicroEdge takes advantage of, unfortunately.
• The online application module (IGAM) is still quite antiquated and you have to be knowledgeable of basic HTML in order to really customize your organization's online application. More flexibility and design functions would be greatly appreciated with the online application function, especially since this is a public document and represents your organization.

Incentivized

• Need a smother process for third party responses. Currently individuals recommending more than one student for scholarships have many emails to deal with to find the correct link to upload the correct student's letter.
• Questions that would filter which applications the applicant would apply for.

I typically receive a response to an inquiry within an hour or two, if not sooner. Most tech support people are knowledgeable about our problems, and if not, they will escalate to the proper person.

Incentivized

It is really a matter of priority. I can see situations where GIFTS Classic is a very strong option! Once an organization determines its priorities then it should definitely consider GIFTS to see how well it compares with mission critical functionality.

Incentivized

I have not used other online grantmaking products or evaluated others. I used to use MicroEdge Gifts, but not the online application version. It was a stand alone management system. This is hands-down better, easier to use and a more complete system

• Reporting was difficult on GIFTS - often we had to place data into Excel by hand since we could not create simple customized reports. This increased time spent on tasks GIFTS was supposed to streamline.
• GIFTS did not alert us to duplicated organization records, so often it was difficult to reflect an organization's full grant history to our Board of Directors, leading to employees spending time searching through paper records to make sure all information was properly reported.
• GIFTS created duplicate contact records, meaning it was difficult to find out which contact was related to which organization and cluttered our data. This caused decreased processing and response time to "new" contacts who turned out to be previous contacts or contacts whose information was tied to previous organizations. Even when contact information was updated for a new organization, sometimes the program would revert to the first organization contact information, several times leading to checks cashed to incorrect organizations---the very worst consequence of using GIFTS to our organization. Thankfully, the money was recovered upon the few times that error occurred, but it led to me and other employees reading through out 800+ checks before issue to make sure the correct organization was in fact being rewarded.

Incentivized

• Positive customer service--fairly easy to use for applicants.
• Positive--easy to run reports you have already set up, so [it] saves time.
• Negative--limited question types makes it harder to gather the data we want to track.
• Negative--our budget is more complex than can be tracked in Foundant, so we have to use a separate program.
• Negative--we have to track potential grantee conversations in a separate program.
• Negative--getting data ready to display in a dashboard takes a lot of time to manipulate in Excel.

Incentivized