Grantmaking is a key piece of your company’s overall corporate social responsibility (CSR) strategy as well as a critical source of revenue for nonprofits. Unfortunately, the grants management process can be complex, time-intensive, and manual, creating additional work for corporate teams who are already overextended. From vetting nonprofits to reviewing applications to reporting impact, there’s dozens of steps and stakeholders involved across the entire grantmaking lifecycle. Plus, managing disbursements in-house can be expensive and risky for your business.
In this blog, we’ll address the three biggest grantmaking challenges that companies face and offer tips and tricks for how to overcome them, including how Bonterra’s Grants Management software can help.
For more ways to optimize the grants management process for easier approvals, faster funding, and maximum impact, download our complete guide.
Challenge #1: complex workflows
The problem:
Grants administrators tasked with managing review and approval workflows face inefficiencies and manual work, limiting their ability to focus on strategy and impact. Here are three common challenges they face:
- Complex processes: Your grantmaking programs are likely unique to your company, resulting in highly complex and tailored processes. Unfortunately, having too many application questions, approval steps, and users involved can lead to frustrated grantees, overworked staff, and lost opportunities, straining critical relationships with nonprofits.
- Manual approval routing: Review and approval processes that are managed manually in spreadsheets and emails are error-prone and can create additional administrative work for teams who are already overextended. Manual processes are also at higher risk for errors, bottlenecks, non-compliance, and delayed disbursements.
- Evolving regulatory requirements: During the review and approval process, your teams are tasked with ensuring that privacy and compliance requirements are being met. But when regulations are subject to change from country to country, this process can be tedious and time-consuming if it’s handled manually. Plus, your company likely has standard operating procedures (SOPs) that need to be followed, adding an additional layer of requirements to an already complex process.
The solution:
Bonterra Grants Management is designed to minimize manual work and increase granting efficiency, making funding easier for grants administrators and freeing up critical time for nonprofits. Here’s how:
- Partner with Bonterra’s team of industry experts to review your processes and identify opportunities for optimization, transforming your entire lifecycle for maximum efficiency.
- Build workflows that meet your company’s unique needs and can scale with you as your programs evolve.
- Accelerate review and approval steps with automated nudges and end-to-end visibility at each stage of the application process.
- Manage risk with customized user permissions, air-tight organization vetting, and audit trails.
Challenge #2: managing payments
The problem:
When it comes to disbursing funds for your company’s grantmaking programs, managing payments in-house can create an administrative burden for teams across your organization.
Corporate philanthropy teams are responsible for vetting and watchlist scanning, handling check reissuances and returns, accommodating redirections, and communicating with donors.
Accounting teams are tasked with managing hundreds of one-time vendor relationships, complex reconciliations, and manual payment batching.
Legal and compliance teams are liable for reputational and regulatory risks associated with funding nonprofits.
The solution
When your company transitions from managing payments in-house to Bonterra’s Disbursements Service, you’ll simplify funding, outsource risk, and maximize impact. Let’s take a closer look at how these outcomes are achieved.
Simplify funding: Offload the administrative complexities associated with managing disbursements in-house — including batching funds, vetting organizations, and generating invoices — so your teams can focus more on strategy and impact.
Offload legal risk: Mitigate the risks associated with funding nonprofits when you transfer legal liability and compliance procedures to Bonterra and our donor-advised fund (DAF) partner, the Charities Aid Foundation.
Maximize impact: Reduce administrative work and payment costs for nonprofits through batched donations, unified tax receipts, and digital payments. These efficiencies, coupled with transparent and swift funding cycles, enable nonprofits to achieve greater impact in less time.
Challenge #3: reporting impact
The problem:
Historically, reporting impact meant tracking the amount of funding provided and the number of nonprofits supported. Today, leading corporations and foundations don’t just want to know how much was granted; they want to pinpoint exactly how those funds made a difference and how to use those insights to inform future programs. This kind of data unlocks a new way to think about impact and allows you to deliver better, more tailored programs.
Measuring outcomes, not just outputs, is easier said than done. Grants administrators need a purpose-built tool that offers real-time updates, customizable dashboards, and data visualizations. With the ability to extract valuable insights from key data points, your teams can easily identify trends, measure effectiveness, and determine the true impact of your efforts.
The solution:
Bonterra’s Insights tool elevates grantmaking by empowering grants administrators to dig deeper into their data. With access to turn-key dashboards, automated reports, and support from Bonterra’s team of industry experts, you’ll take grantmaking to the next level.
Here’s how Insights makes impact data accessible and actionable for grantmaking teams:
- Start reporting impact immediately with more than 15 out-of-the-box dashboards designed to measure outcomes and easily meet common regulatory requirements like the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA).
- Integrate Insights directly into workflows to drive real-time automation, decision-making, and consistency across your entire process.
- Measure impact based on your specific needs through drill-down and self-service dashboard builder capabilities.
Grants management software for leading corporations
With the right grants management software, you can reduce manual work and increase efficiency for your team and your nonprofit partners, strengthening these critical partnerships. As your partner in grantmaking, Bonterra will work alongside you to build a platform that is tailored to your business needs today but can scale with you as you grow.
Ready to see if Bonterra is right for you? Schedule a demo with one of our experts.
