As with previous editions, this guide continues to focus on platforms that serve private and public grantmaking foundations. If you are interested in software with features needed by community foundations, such as sophisticated fund management and donor management, we recommend our July 2022 publication, Landscape of Integrated Software for Community Foundations. If you have an interest in additional types of grantmaking systems, we invite you to share this with us by emailing marketing@techimpact.org.  

This edition introduces substantial changes to how we evaluate and present the grants management systems based on feedback we’ve received over the past several years.   

To reflect the changing role of grants management systems in how foundations work, we once again developed a set of inclusion criteria that spell out “must have” features for software to be considered for the guide. Those criteria focus on cloud-based systems that have a demonstrated client base in the private and family foundation sector.   

Once we chose the systems for review, we used a redeveloped ratings rubric that groups software functionality into eight areas and specifies whether and how each system meets our requirements criteria as follows:  

1. The functionality is core to the system and available to all clients. 
2. The functionality is available to premium-level subscribers. 
3. The functionality can be purchased as an add-on to the base system. 
4. The functionality can be achieved with a system workaround.  
5. The functionality is available through a pre-existing integration with third-party software. 
6. The functionality can be achieved through custom development. 

Every system review includes graphs that summarize how the software meets the requirements from that area of the rubric as well as an in-depth narrative explaining its approach to the major features. 

Changes in the marketplace continue to impact systems we included in previous reports. We identified three new grants management systems that met our inclusion criteria: Impactfully by Foundation Source, Submit.com, and Temelio. In addition:   

• First Akoya.net was replaced by akoyaGO, a redeveloped grants management solution also built on Microsoft Dynamics, and is included in this edition of the guide.  

• Bonterra acquired Cybergrants. We reached out to the vendor multiple times about participating in this edition of the report, but did not receive a response.  

• Salesforce has announced that it is sunsetting foundationConnect in 2025 or 2026 and will focus on its grants management product, Salesforce Grantmaking, which we included in this edition of the guide.  

• WizeHive released a new grants management platform called NextZen, which we are including in this report in place of Zengine, which the vendor will continue to support.