Grants management systems sit at the confluence of a variety of changes in the way the philanthropic world does business. In a world in which remote work has become the norm, data has become more accessible and more frequently used by non-technical people, and foundations are rethinking their relationships with grantees, the technology that facilitates and powers grantmaking has had to do more for a wider range of users.
Today, grants management systems are evolving into not just an important piece of a foundation’s larger technology stack but increasingly a tool that is the center of the stack. The ways in which the different platforms achieve this centrality differ. Some vendors build as much functionality as possible into their core systems, while others choose to integrate them with other commonly-used tools.
The systems are no longer used solely by grant managers. Smaller foundations with fewer staff that generally lack in-house IT teams to manage a variety of systems are turning to all-in-one tools that let them manage grants and relationships with grantees, simplify the processes for sending payments over to their finance teams, and generate holistic reports of activities and outcomes. Larger foundations tend to take a more modular approach that connects different specialized enterprise solutions and build automations that help them more efficiently process high volumes of applications and grants.
Systems across the spectrum are rolling out new tools and features to meet changing demands in the marketplace.
Security
High-profile security breaches in systems that serve the nonprofit and philanthropic markets have increased the demand for more stringent security protections of data in grantmaking systems. Multi-factor authentication (MFA) is now standard and many systems either have or will have single sign-on (SSO) capability. When choosing a system, foundations are now looking more closely at vendor data and security policies to learn more about how their systems handle encryption, data storage, and access.
Data Integration and Sharing
The data held within grants management systems can be the key to effective grantmaking, but data quality, collection, management, and accessibility are all common barriers that foundations face. Foundation and nonprofit activities can generate large amounts of qualitative and quantitative data, but foundations need to be able to capture, categorize, standardize, and report on this data in order for it to be useable.
Several philanthropic data standardization and impact-reporting repositories have expanded in recent years:
- Candid has continued to build out its nonprofit demographic data collection and has developed integrations with a number of grants management systems to allow foundations to import and use this data to better understand their grantees and impact.
- The Impact Genome Registry provides standardized impact data from thousands of nonprofits to foundation, corporate, and government funders.
- Foundations around the world are using the 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals for outcomes and impact measurement.
Standardization of data is important not just for collective measurement and reporting, but also to identify areas of systemic bias and to surface communities and programs that might otherwise be neglected. This includes gender-inclusive taxonomies and more in-depth demographic categorization. Integration with standardized data repositories can also provide foundations with useful data that they might not otherwise be able to collect without greatly increasing application and reporting burdens on their grantees.
Reporting and Data Visualization
Reporting has continued to become more sophisticated, but also more accessible to non-technical users. Many grants management systems offer multiple dashboards across the system and allow you to configure dashboards for executive users and board members with access. Several systems have added or are adding the ability to schedule reports and even email the reports to external users.
A couple of systems have further stepped up their reporting game by adding integrations with business intelligence tools like Microsoft PowerBI and Domo. This is helpful to large foundations that work with large quantities of data and has also made more powerful and sophisticated dashboards and data visualizations available to data savvy medium and small foundations.
Enhanced reporting is becoming more important to foundations of all sizes, as many are looking to improve their data-driven decision-making and get a clearer picture of their impact. As part of the increased focus on social justice, foundations are also looking to gain a clearer picture of their grantees and grantmaking to uncover bias in their systems. Reporting that aggregates data across programs and collecting and reporting on demographic data have helped drive changes in the way some grantmakers are doing their work.
Equity-Centered, Values-Driven, and Trust-Based Grantmaking
One of these changes is the shift toward non-traditional methods of giving. This has resulted in the rise of equity-centered, values-driven, and trust-based grantmaking (for example, PEAK Grantmaking’s five grantmaking principles).
These practices, principles, and movements arose to address power imbalances in the funder/grantee relationship that contribute to the entrenchment of systemic inequities in society. The result has been a re-examination of the way in which foundations engage with and fund organizations and projects. Rather than a top-down approach to programs and relationships, foundations that practice these methods instead look toward collaborative, equitable, values-based, and participatory grantmaking practices.
The relationships between funders and grantees are the cornerstone of these practices, which means that grants management systems that include a constituent relationship management (CRM) component or that integrate with a CRM are an important tool for these practices. Other systems looking to serve foundations exploring these practices are working to improve their relationship and interaction tracking functionality, simplify and automate their application processes to reduce the burden on nonprofits and/or find less-burdensome alternatives to traditional applications, and strengthen their budgeting functionality to support multi-year grantmaking.
Foundations practicing equity-centered, values-driven, and trust-based grantmaking also are looking to ease reporting burdens on their grantees while still capturing the data they need to evaluate impact. Grants management systems are helping them do this by facilitating oral reporting (e.g. recording a conversation with the grantee or allowing them to upload a video report and using AI to create a transcript or summary of the report), surfacing application responses and other system data on reporting forms so grantees don’t have to look for their applications or retype any information, and allowing foundation staff to submit reports on behalf of grantees.
Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning
The rapid rise of user-facing generative AI and the increasing sophistication of machine learning tools are just beginning to have an impact on grants management technology, and grants management vendors are beginning to experiment with ways in which they can integrate AI functionality into their software.
While the potential benefits of AI-generated or enhanced processes are myriad (reducing administrative burden for both grants managers and grantees, simplifying and streamlining processes, enabling integration across multiple platforms and systems), keep in mind that AI doesn’t generate results out of thin air—the quality of its output depends on good data practices and effective data collection.
Currently, the most common useb of AI in grants management systems is to create transcripts of meetings and calls and summaries of applications, grants, and reports. Some of the reviewed systems include tools for applicants that use AI to suggest responses to questions based on the applicant’s previous applications, either in the system or from PDFs uploaded by the applicant. Other functionality being developed includes AI-generated data insights, natural language workflow creation, and the generation of text descriptions of images and videos.
Part of the slower adoption of AI in the grantmaking world is related to concerns about bias and the ethical use of these types of tools. Another set of fears is that AI will remove the human aspects of grantmaking. In focus groups, for example, one vendor heard concerns from nonprofit staff about whether funders will be using AI to scan applications for keywords and from foundation staff about applicants using AI to generate application responses that don’t reflect the actual organization.
In response to these various concerns, the Technology Association of Grantmakers (TAG) partnered with Project Evident to develop a Responsible AI Adoption Framework to help grantmakers think through how they want to use AI, its impact on their staff and grantees, and how to select and implement AI vendors and tools in ways that align with their core values. This includes making sure that any AI adoption efforts are people-centered and transparent, that data security and privacy are protected and maintained, and that all activities are undertaken with oversight and monitoring.