Blackbaud Grantmaking - Flexible, but Doesn’t Support Custom Scoring for Reviewers
February 01, 2018

Blackbaud Grantmaking - Flexible, but Doesn’t Support Custom Scoring for Reviewers

Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Blackbaud Grantmaking (formerly GIFTS Online)

Blackbaud Grantmaking is being used by multiple departments. We are similar to an operating foundation, making grants as well as operating our own programs. Our internal departments use it for contracts, and the grantmaking team (program and accounting) uses it to manage about 130 grants a year. We had been on GIFTS since 2008, and moved to BG in 2017 so we could access the database online. This allows us to use it in the field during site visits, or to process grant applications after hours or offsite.
  • Highly customizable - we use the coding sheet to put shared metrics in a drop-down menu
  • Accessible anywhere - allows team to work from home during periods of intensive work
  • Easy to create views and export a custom set of fields (columns) as an Excel file
  • Allows shared searches and shared views
  • We were very disappointed with the reviewer module. It was a main selling point of BG and it doesn’t meet our needs at all. We want something that allows us to create Likert-type scales for multiple criteria, and automatically average the scores for all reviewers.
  • There are still quite a few bugs in the system, such as inability to create an accurate Fiscal Year automatically.
  • The business model is not user-friendly. There is no “out clause” in the contracts, and the price is extraordinarily high. If the product is so great, why do you need to put handcuffs on your users?
  • Blackbaud Grantmaking, like GIFTS before it, makes it possible to manage as many grants as we do. We couldn’t do it without a database.
  • The ability to customize outcomes has let us share metrics across similar programs, to aggregate our impact on the community.
  • The ability to work from home when needed has positively impacted our program officers’ job satisfaction.
We thought the other systems were much more affordable and some had better features. However, we were locked into a contract with MicroEdge/Blackbaud, so had to stick with them until our contract expires. If the pricing were better we might consider staying when the contract expires.
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.