Blackbaud Grantmaking

RATING:

3.7

(19)

About Blackbaud Grantmaking

Blackbaud Grantmaking is a cloud-based solution designed to help organizations streamline the entire grant management lifecycle, from accepting and reviewing applications to processing payments after the final selection. Organizers can create program-specific workflows, communicate with stakeholders and assign tasks to staff members on a unified interface. Administrators can utilize the Blackbaud Grantmaking’s personalized dashboards to gain real-time insights into budgets, balance, payment data and allocated funds. Foundations can improve evaluation processes by allowing reviewers to access assigned applications, revisit workflows and collaborate with peers and staff members on tasks. Additionally, users can sign in from any device to manage and share grants and u...
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Blackbaud Grantmaking Reviews

Overall Rating

3.7

Ratings Breakdown

Secondary Ratings

Ease-of-use

3.5

Customer Support

4

Value for money

3.5

Functionality

3.5

Most Helpful Reviews for Blackbaud Grantmaking

1 - 5 of 19 Reviews

Melissa

Executive Office, 11-50 employees

Used daily for more than 2 years

Review Source: Capterra
This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you.

OVERALL RATING:

5

EASE OF USE

4

VALUE FOR MONEY

5

CUSTOMER SUPPORT

5

FUNCTIONALITY

5

Reviewed October 2022

Blackbaud Review

Blackbaud allows me to provide my team the information they need to conduct their work.

PROS

Blackbaud offers a broad array of features that provide valuable information for managing grant awards.

CONS

Blackbaud is highly customizable and heavily nuanced. A feature that is welcome but can be tedious.

Jenny

Philanthropy, 11-50 employees

Used daily for more than 2 years

Review Source: Capterra
This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you.

OVERALL RATING:

4

EASE OF USE

3

VALUE FOR MONEY

3

CUSTOMER SUPPORT

4

FUNCTIONALITY

4

Reviewed September 2022

Meets our needs

We've stayed with BBG because it allows us to do what we need it to do, and we've found workarounds for tasks it can't do (like forecasting grant budgets).

PROS

Blackbaud Grantmaking meets our needs for grant tracking, online applications and document and relationship management. We like being able to build custom reports and automate reminders, and it's easy to pull up a grant history or run a tax status check.

CONS

However, BBG is not the most user-friendly product in the marketplace. It takes a lot of clicks to get to what you need and we lost some functionality when the platform migrated to SKY View. Advanced features (like changing views and searches to look for multiple criteria) are not intuitive and require staff training. There's a robust library of pre-built reports but it can be difficult to wade through to find what you need. We also have to spend a good bit of time helping grantseekers navigate the online grant portal.

Reason for choosing Blackbaud Grantmaking

BBG best met our needs, particularly around grant tracking/reporting and document management.

Reasons for switching to Blackbaud Grantmaking

We needed an online grant application solution.

Alan

Philanthropy, 2-10 employees

Used daily for more than 2 years

Review Source: Capterra
This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you.

OVERALL RATING:

1

EASE OF USE

2

VALUE FOR MONEY

3

CUSTOMER SUPPORT

1

FUNCTIONALITY

2

Reviewed October 2022

Problematic without support capacity in the company

Negative. I we weren't a small shop and I did not have to do the conversion work myself I would definitely switch to another product.

PROS

The installation was relatively easy and the team helpful. It handles most functions reasonably well.

CONS

The support has declined over the years, and especially since Gifts was acquired by Blackbaud. When endusers have difficulties, it is difficult to know exactly what they are and to communicate this to helpdesk staff. Wait times for help are often excessive. It is difficult to modify original configurations without expensive additional help. Administration is more time consuming than it should be especially for a small shop with the program staff is also the tech staff.

Amy

Philanthropy, 11-50 employees

Used daily for less than 2 years

Review Source: Capterra
This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you.

OVERALL RATING:

4

EASE OF USE

4

VALUE FOR MONEY

3

CUSTOMER SUPPORT

3

FUNCTIONALITY

3

Reviewed June 2019

Better than what we had, but still doesn't deliver on all of the promise.

PROS

I like the ability to customize views and dashboards for specific users.

CONS

I'm still frustrated at the lack of integration between Blackbaud's suite of products. Part of the reason we stuck with Blackbaud when transitioning from Gifts Classic is because we were moving to FENXT for our financial software. We were promised that these programs would integrate in some way, and that hasn't happened.

Reason for choosing Blackbaud Grantmaking

We assumed the transition would be easier, since it was just an evolution of the product we were already using.

Reasons for switching to Blackbaud Grantmaking

We needed a cloud-based system due to the fact that we have an international staff.

Ovidiu

Used daily for less than 2 years

Review Source: Capterra
This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you.

OVERALL RATING:

4

EASE OF USE

3

VALUE FOR MONEY

3

CUSTOMER SUPPORT

5

FUNCTIONALITY

4

Reviewed February 2018

GIFTS is great for good audit trail-grants processes. Although it needs major updates.

GIFTS does what it is meant to do. It helps you manage your grant making process from first contact to closure. However, it falls short in the user friendliness area and cannot keep up with other more innovative competitors.

PROS

This is a secure grant making specialised tool that is bound to give you everything needed to manage grant applications from application stage to reporting and closing. It offers great and clear ways of managing grants at different stages and far surpasses what an excel spreadsheet could do in this regards. The GIFTS plugin for outlook works great and you can rely on it to make sure all emails and documents relating to your grants process are safely stored and can be retrieved at any point.

CONS

Not very user friendly. Might have been good some years ago but now with competitors like Salesforce, GIFTS really need to catch up fast before it loses customers. We had to switch away from GIFTS as it became a burden for us to control and was full of unnecessary tools. I addition, we did not find the price agreeable for the amount of work we did with the program. The manual is a hefty 400 pages book which you cannot be bothered to read for troubleshoot. GIFTS really needs to upgrade to a newer style of troubleshooting with in-built free text searches for issues.