Blackbaud Grantmaking

Formerly GIFTS Online

Blackbaud Grantmaking is a great hub for housing grant recipient organization information, supporting documentation and all grant requests and data. It tracks status of grant requests (approval & declinations), has the ability to create custom payment schedules and track actual payment data. Custom notes & alerts are also available to applied to each individual grant recipients profiles.

As previously mentioned, it helps me keep track of payments and reports.

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.

Blackbaud Grantmaking is a comprehensive grants processing tool that helps nonprofits track, manage, approve and report on their philanthropic activities. I recommend Blackbaud Grantmaking to any nonprofit accountable for more than 100 grants annually.

For our corporate foundation, this platform is very practical and easy to use. To be able to customize or configure the system to your needs is difficult, but can be an easy task for a savvy administrator.

Allows multiple ways of accomplishing a task, such as creating grants. Documents can be uploaded to applications allowing a history of what transpired.

Pros - User groups, number of programmers on staff, environmentally conscience, research and analytics, easy of code management for data collection

Cons - Portal voting on ideas, lack of seamless connection with other Blackbaud products like AngelPoints, and no conditional logic on application forms

The software is well suited for any corporate or Foundation client. Offers high amount of scalability, flexibility and will dramatically improve efficiency especially if you're coming from a paper based model. Easy to use and understand basic operations.

Blackbaud Grantmaking is great at grants management. It is not a great tool as a customer relationship/contact manager, but could be.

Blackbaud Grantmaking is very well suited to my particular charitable structure as I work in a remote location, and the online platform allows me to keep an electronic record of my grantmaking, so my colleagues from North American and the Middle East can have access.

Blackbaud Grantmaking is well suited to handling large numbers of grant requests and would be very helpful in handling a high volume of applications.

Blackbaud Grantmaking is less appropriate if a foundation is looking for a "foundation management" system vs a grants management system only.

Blackbaud Grantmaking is well suited for organizations who utilize RFP's and reporting. At one point we manually input all our information so it is suited for that as well. As of now it is hard for Mac users to utilize the systems as staff and grant applicants. It is also not suited for a shared space with working draft files. It is meant for finished documents. Working drafts would have to be done outside of Blackbaud Grantmaking if multiple users are editing it at one time.

Well suited for the online RFP process and online submissions of deliverables

Not well suited for a shared space for working drafts of files.

Well suited for organizations that use online applications and reporting, but is flexible enough to accommodate manual entry of application or reporting data, and well suited for a variety of organization sizes. Not yet a seamless fit with Mac offices because of reliance on Silverlight, Windows environment, and Explorer.

Can handle lots of data and has a lot of potential as to manipulation but also sometimes, it is kind of clunky to get to the final desired look.

Blackbaud Grantmaking is good for larger organizations with complex processes and/or dedicated staff that has the time to learn how to use it. In my opinion, it is probably not the best for smaller organizations.

It is good for funders who need the flexibility to customize. I also love the online functionality. If your program officers don’t want to be chained to their desks, you have to have an online system.

It's a great way to manage board requested matching and/or discretionary funds.

Because we are private, I can't really get into all aspects of how I use Blackbaud Grantmaking, but this software is really great in helping us track and manage our giving. Also, gives great reports for our annual board meetings.

Before Blackbaud Grantmaking we kept all the grantee information in a file by grant year. Although we still do that, we have the information saved in the cloud and therefore one is able to look up information without collecting folders. It is great to be able to pull up that years we gave a grant and to see, online, the paperwork they submitted without digging through files.

Private foundations that grant to non-profits.

If you are only managing one funding source, or working for a foundation that makes relatively few grants per year, Blackbaud Grantmaking is probably overpowered for you. It would still be useful, but it really shines when managing complicated and robust grantmaking activities.