Likelihood to Recommend As I mentioned, cost is prohibitive for us. Because it is highly customizable, it is very powerful, but if you are looking for an intuitive, easy to use solution right "out of the box" solution because you have few staff and no IT dept. this may not be the best fit (unless they develop some lower cost / less customizable options?). That being said, we have managed to implement successfully with no IT. I completed the implementation, code the application and online reporting forms (using HTML) and use Blueprint to customize what we need, but it has been a big learning curve and an investment of time to manage the back end of the program. I will say that training new general users is pretty straight forward so their ability to search for information they need and quickly is greatly enhanced. The automatic customized reports and reminders are pretty great, and the overall integrity of our processes and data are greatly improved. Sometimes we wonder if it is overly complex and if there is a way e could "hide" more of the aspects that are not relevant to us, or that we are not using, so we can have a cleaner interface.
Read full review I highly recommend this software, as it has allowed us to be much more transparent with the delivery of benefits and their applications, also the hours of work in this regard are less, allowing staff to devote to other tasks. A very useful and necessary software.
Inés Prieto R&D / Product Development Engineer - Quality
Read full review Pros We like to create our own numbering system and Blackbaud Grantmaking allows us that flexibility. When we were having issues with items being in numerical order the tech support was amazing. Creating your own forms is very important for us. We have several different donors and we have a grant application form and a report form for each one. They are easy to create as well as update and access. Alternative ways to hunt for information. I can access a grant by the organization name, project name, grant number or even the name of the person who submitted the grant application. This is critical in a case where the program officer has a nickname for the grant (you can include that as well in the profile) and can't remember anything else. Read full review It has made the application, which is almost identical to the application questions previously displayed by our old service, seem less daunting and more user friendly to grant applicants. The grant review team has exclaimed that the side-by-side review option is the best feature ever invented and has saved them loads of paper. Internally, I appreciate the ease of use of the back end system. Being able to easily assign grants to reviews both in and outside the organization, easily create queries for the stats I need, and the ability to move application through the steps of the system seamlessly make this my top choice since I'm the only staff member dedicated to the Foundation which leaves me with lots on my plate to balance. Read full review Cons Application linking process is time consuming System enhancement ideas must be submitted to a community portal and other users must take the initiative to vote on their favorite ideas instead of vendor programmers collecting received ideas and doing the work themselves. Lack of conditional logic in online application Communication with other Blackbaud products notably Employee Volunteering and Engagement (fka AngelPoints) Read full review It's messy- we can only apply a question to a certain amount of applications so we have 2-3 of a lot of questions The affiliate directors can't export an excel file from their dashboard If a question changes or becomes required or not required it impacts all past applications Read full review Likelihood to Renew As long as there is continued development in the product allowing us to create efficiencies, streamline operations, deliver on our reporting requirements and the usability for internal and external partners remains strong we would have no reason to look elsewhere from a systems perspective. If costs changed substantially we'd have to look at different options to meet our cost savings objectives.
Read full review We are so happy with the service that we just signed the contract for another year.
Read full review Usability There is room for improvement and the development of the software seem slow. As customers, we hear a lot about what's in development and promises of new features rolling out. However, it feels like those developments take a really long time to show up in they system for my day-to-day use.
Read full review The platform is very basic. On the other and, our staff does not take advantage of its full capabilities because such features did not work well for us/fit our needs
Read full review Support Rating When it was microwaves they were a lot more Hands-On assistance, but since merging they have better tracking of the issues.
Read full review We didn’t really use their support. I wish they would have told us more about the fact they were changing to get rid of the flash player as that was the main reason we left.
Read full review Implementation Rating Preparing and cleaning up your data prior to implementation, will make the process much smoother and easier. Garbage in, garbage out.
Read full review Their design team gave us the option to save some money by creating the forms ourselves for both the submission and review portals. This also allowed us to get to a point where we felt very comfortable in any future changes that would need to be made to forms since we were so immersed in creating them.
Read full review Alternatives Considered At the time that I used GrantedGE, the product was in the development stages and there were a lot of bugs and issues with functionality. The customer service didn't have the bandwidth to quickly respond to issues. BlackBaud's customer service and history in the field are advantages
Read full review SurveyMonkey and
SurveyGizmo are great to use for other programs and events that require collecting fairly basic responses and feedback, however, these don't provide the level of information and data that is needed for our grants processes. WizeHive provides a number of tools and other benefits that are just beyond these products' capabilities
Read full review Return on Investment It has increased our return on reaching our business objectives. It has moved us (or started to move us) to a better place in reporting and transparency. It has helped us transition from an act of corporate giving to a goal of social change. Read full review Zengine is definitely a time-saver, but there are a myriad of grant management software platforms on the market that save just as much time, some even more time-saving. But if you have a basic need to offer an application process of any sort (grant, scholarship, etc.) to the public, Zengine can be very helpful in saving time and keeping everything related to the grant handy in one location, and all connected (application, reviews, final reports, etc.). Read full review ScreenShots Blackbaud Grantmaking Screenshots WizeHive Zengine Screenshots