Blackbaud Grantmaking

Good Grant Tracking Program

Comments: Really like the quickness of the customer service team to answer any questions or solve any problems.

Pros:

I really enjoy the ease of use (after some training). We can customize the applications and reports to fit our needs. I am able to run reports or queries to see detailed information on payments, outstanding reports, applications, budget items, etc. Makes my day easier.

Cons:

Some of the reports are limited, I wish there was more control over editing. I use Microsoft Access and that reporting system is the best. The reports that Blackbaud Grantmaking can make are simple and basic.

Meets our needs

Comments: 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.

If you are looking for something simple and easy to use, DO NOT go with Blackbaud

Comments: I have had the displeasure of using this platform for several years now and I cannot de-recommend Blackbaud Grantmaking enough. I honestly do not know how they have managed to stay in business for so long and have gotten away with charging such high prices for such a difficult to use platform. I always dread having to use the platform for anything as I end up wasting so much time trying to complete the most simple of tasks. I have used multiple other grantmaking platforms in the past and Blackbaud is by far the worst and most expensive. There are way too many features that make anything you do more complicated than it needs to be. Nothing is cohesive or makes any sense and it is all very clunky. I keep thinking the more I use it the easier it will be to use, but that has not been the case even after several years of daily use. I am consistently dumbfounded at how unintuitive this platform is to use and I have been counting down the days until my contract ends.

Pros:

The customer support is very good and knowledgeable (I need to contact them all the time because the product is so difficult to use and they usually resolve my issue fairly quickly)

Cons:

Blackbaud Grantmaking is way too clunky of a product and they make doing a very simple task extremely and unnecessarily complicated. A task that would normally take a few minutes on most other grantmaking platforms takes hours on Blackbaud because there are way too many steps involved. They have multiple websites for related tasks (admin portal, application form setup, reviewer portal, etc.) instead of having everything just housed under one website. Lastly, the interface on all of these sites is not cohesive and looks very old and not up to date with modern times.

BBGM Product Review

Comments: Overall, I like the product. There are some kinks that are still being worked out and hopefully that will come soon. Tech support gets back to you quickly. There are times that a case takes too long but overall all tech staff have been great to work with.

Pros:

It's one of the most robust systems out there. Many options to run reports.

Cons:

I feel the product was rolled out before it was completed. I know it's a work in progress but our spellcheck did not work for the first year and just recently was fixed. The document check in/out feature is not designed well. It's designed to check documents out of the system and back in. Too much work and room for error. I feel the pricing is high and not consistent between their clients.

Blackbaud Review

Comments: 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.

Problematic without support capacity in the company

Comments: 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.

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

Comments: 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.

The good and no-so-good

Comments: I have been using the software for several years and can navigate through it but find some functions very tedious and often need support.

Pros:

The software manages the grants from inception to close; the support team is terrific.

Cons:

The software is not intuitive and creating reports, updating fields, editing documents, and other functions are time-consuming and difficult. While the customer support is terrific, it would be nice to not need support to complete tasks that should be intuitive.

Small Foundation User

Comments: We are a small foundation, with a small staff, and the complexities of Blackbaud grantmaking end up being very time consuming for an already over extended employee. However, we have had a great experience with customer service and with our sales rep and consultant.

Pros:

I like the dashboard features and the ease of switching back and forth on the dashboard to view different features as they pertain to our grants.

Cons:

With the reviewer portal, you cannot pick multiple grant requests to send to PDFs - you have to send them one at a time. For our board members, who log into the reviewer portal, it is time consuming for them to manage. Also, when you print the PDF of the grant request, it prints out the HTML version of the grant request, causing the PDF to feature a repeat copy of the grant request in the HTML format. This is confusing for people who use the portal, but do not use Blackbaud grantmaking regularly.

Review of Blackbaud Grantmaking

Comments: Overall we appreciate the software although the annual price increases are becoming difficult to overlook.

Pros:

I like the easy use once you learn the product. Some areas are less intuitive than others but once you have it down, it becomes pretty fluid.

Cons:

There are still parts of the program that are VERY difficult to manage. For example, the need to download two versions of a file in order to make changes is annoying and doesn't work well at all.

Blackbaud Works!

Comments: I appreciate the customer service I always receive from Blackbaud. The system is easy to navigate. Outstanding customer service.

Pros:

I really like the ease of entering information into the system. And generating organizational reports is amazing. It allows us to track and review the history of giving for each grantee.

Cons:

I would love to have more detailed documentation on how to run reports.

Needs more integration features

Pros:

BBGM is a very robust tool and allows for customization of every aspect of the system.

Cons:

The product does not integrate with other products including Blackbaud products.

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.

Lackluster

Comments: I have not solved any problems with Blackbaud Grantmaking. We only use it because it is a legacy system. The online version is lacking.

Pros:

I find this product to be exceptionally cumbersome.

Cons:

After implementing Blackbaud Financial Edge and Raiser's Edge for another organization, I was excited to use another Blackbaud product at my current company. Unfortunately, Grantmaking is missing many key components. The User Interface is clunky and not-intuitive. I am not able to batch import records, making our grant process very cumbersome. I find that I use excel for 95% of our grantmaking needs and then enter the records into Grantmaking when I have time so that we have an audit trail. It's unfortunate, the product could be so much better, but nothing has changed in the 8 years that I have been using it.

Once you train to use software it is pretty easy to use

Comments: Applications are easier to process and export into reports

Pros:

I like the report features. and the views of the applications.

Cons:

We used the other version called Gifts before, huge learning curve to new software but it is more efficient

Great way to organize grant information.

Comments: Helps to keep track of grant information in a database that is easy to search. Overwhelming amount of functions.

Pros:

Similar to blackbaud’s other software, this database has everything I need to keep track of grants, constituents and financial transactions.

Cons:

The interface is not the most up to date in its appeal and look. Also there are an overwhelming amount of functions and data that you can access that learning takes a good bit of time.

It's great workflow tool for the company

Comments: Great workflow tools

Pros:

It's easy to customize to the company workflow and environment. Add-on functions and report writers are good function for grants management.

Cons:

It has many technical issue with implementing add-ons and customization. It can't be done without IT specialists.

Needs Improvement

Pros:

I like that it integrates with the financial component and that now is an online platform.

Cons:

I don't like the reporting face of this product, I found it hard and time-consuming to use it. I would like a product where reporting and data access would be easier. I feel that I need to "create" whatever I like to access. Overall, it is not user-friendly.

It's a great software to track your grant projects and payments.

Comments: Great grant project tracking tool!!

Pros:

Workflow - It's a customizable software that we can change the system to our workflow. And, it's integrating with accounting software, Financial Edge.

Cons:

It's not 100% customizable. So, you have to deal with prefixed formats of them. Now it has online version.

Grantmaking

Comments: easy to navigate

Pros:

this software is easy to navigate because having everything in excel was getting too complicated. Now everything is in one place and you can se the grantee profiles anytime.

Cons:

Getting a report is a little complicated, probably i need more training.