Chronus vs. Foundant Grant Lifecycle Manager

If you are going to scale a mentoring program with 50+ users (mentor and mentees) you need software, to get out of the "matching" game, this is a Chronus positive. You also want an ongoing pulse on how it's going, whos looking for a mentor, and adding new users. This is very easy to do with the software.

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

• Algorithmic match
• Admin dashboard
• Connection plan
• User interface, mobile friendly

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

• Mentoring software is only as good as we provide good internal mentors so accountably is on us to bolster the system with good mentors.
• When I evaluate the satisfaction of our mentees I need to hear "my mentor was great" and this is not a software result but a human result.
• Many of my Chronus contacts have changed over the years, sometimes I feel I know more than them.

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.

These are a "spectrum" of software options, some more sophisticated than others depending on the need. There is no 1 and done tool, so we use a few. Some are for all EEs, some are for 100s, and some are for 10s of EEs. Chronus works well for our mentoring need their value is good. The most recent similar tool I evaluated is MentorEase. MentorEase seems to do much of the same at a lower price but I did not like the UI nor was the rep easy to understand. MentorEase may be good to match up new EEs with a "buddy". Chronus is more powerful we match on more sophisticated attributes.

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

• Term rate improvements
• Career Progression counts
• Connectedness

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