Feeling buried in grant paperwork?
Juggling countless applications, deadlines, and compliance rules with spreadsheets is a recipe for chaos and missed opportunities for your nonprofit.
The real frustration is when manual errors cost you funding and undermine the incredible impact your organization works so hard to achieve.
According to Wild Apricot, nonprofits spend 26 hours per application on average, with nearly 40% reporting missed deadlines that result in lost funding. That’s a huge administrative burden.
While we’re on the topic of improving operations, my guide on best experience management software offers valuable insights.
But the right tools can help you streamline your entire grant lifecycle, from application intake to final reporting, without the administrative headache.
In this guide, I’ll walk you through the best grant management software designed to automate tedious tasks, improve team collaboration, and track your impact effortlessly.
You’ll discover solutions that give you back valuable time, allowing you to focus more on your mission and less on chasing paperwork.
Let’s get started.
Quick Summary:
| # | Software | Rating | Best For |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | AmpliFund → | Grant makers & seekers | |
| 2 | Blackbaud → | Foundations & nonprofits | |
| 3 | Bonterra Organic Estates → | Not grant software users | |
| 4 | Fluxx → | Foundations & government | |
| 5 | Good Grants → | Flexible grant administrators |
1. AmpliFund
Struggling with complex grant management and reporting demands?
AmpliFund empowers both grant makers and seekers, streamlining your processes and increasing capacity. This means you can focus less on data and more on your impact.
You can centralize operations, maintain compliance, and boost communication, helping your team gain a complete view of each award.
This is a better way to manage grants.
AmpliFund helps you gain a new perspective, providing tools and resources to manage every aspect of your funding in one solution. For grant makers, you can create custom applications, build in scoring criteria, and automatically route submissions for review.
Reviewers can use multi-round scoring and attach notes, selecting recipients directly within the system. Additionally, grant seekers can find over 4,000 government opportunities and 200,000 foundation grant makers using the AmpliFund Research Tool. Plus, the system sends automatic notifications for key dates and deadlines.
The Reporting Engine pulls data from every field to create impactful reports, offering real-time visibility into your portfolio, eliminating scattered documents and improving collaboration across your organization. The result is increased funding and improved communication.
Before diving deeper, you might find my analysis of best compliance management software helpful for ensuring audit readiness.
Key features:
- Grant lifecycle management: Streamline processes for grant makers and seekers, from application creation and review to real-time progress tracking and spend-down visibility.
- Automated compliance & reporting: Gain real-time insights with custom alerts for deadlines, automated workflows, and a powerful reporting engine that pulls data for impactful reports.
- Comprehensive opportunity research: Access a vast database of over 200,000 grant makers and 4,000 government opportunities to increase your funding prospects.
Learn more about AmpliFund features, pricing, & alternatives →
Verdict: AmpliFund offers robust solutions for grant makers and seekers to simplify processes, maintain compliance, and boost impact. Their full grant lifecycle support with automated alerts and a powerful reporting engine makes it a strong contender as the best grant management software for organizations aiming to increase funding by an average of 15% and reduce time spent on tasks by 72%.
2. Blackbaud
Are manual grant processes holding your organization back? Blackbaud Grantmaking is built to make your giving programs more efficient, strategic, and outcome-focused. This means you can simplify your accounting, track budgets, and manage revenue without the typical headaches.
This helps you address challenges like time-consuming manual workflows and the risk of errors, freeing your team to focus on impact. You’ll find it easier to manage growing numbers of grant applications.
Unlock greater impact with optimized grant management.
Blackbaud provides purpose-built solutions for grantmaking, simplifying how you manage employee engagement programs and making your giving initiatives more strategic. You’ll find it much easier to track budgets, revenue, and donations, reducing administrative burdens significantly. This comprehensive approach reduces errors and enhances transparency. Additionally, with Blackbaud’s flexible ecosystem and growing partner network, you can ensure your software scales with your organization. This adaptability means you can grow without outgrowing your tech, supported by developer tools and low-code automations.
Maximize your funding impact and build trust.
Key features:
- Grant management for funders: Streamlines your grant processes to be more efficient, strategic, and focused on achieving clear outcomes for your giving programs.
- Fund accounting: Simplifies your financial operations by making it easy to track budgets, manage revenue, handle donations, and ensure proper tax compliance.
- Flexible ecosystem: Allows your organization to grow without outgrowing its technology, offering developer tools, low-code automations, and an expanding partner network.
Learn more about Blackbaud features, pricing, & alternatives →
Verdict: Blackbaud Grantmaking offers a purpose-built solution that helps foundations and nonprofits achieve greater impact by making giving programs more efficient and strategic. Its robust financial management and flexible ecosystem make it a strong contender for the best grant management software, simplifying complex workflows for your team.
3. Bonterra Organic Estates
Are manual grant processes overwhelming your team?
You’re likely struggling with scattered data, missed deadlines, and a lack of real-time insights, making it hard to show your impact. This means your current methods might be hindering your ability to manage applications and report effectively.
This is where Bonterra can help.
Bonterra provides a solution that streamlines your operations, enabling you to focus on your mission rather than administrative burdens. You’ll find features that simplify application management and automate reporting, ensuring compliance and enhancing transparency. For instance, its robust data capabilities help you track grant statuses effortlessly and demonstrate results clearly to funders.
This means you can make data-driven decisions and reduce administrative effort. Your team will gain real-time visibility into your programs, fostering trust with funders through clear, efficient, and equitable grant management.
While we’re discussing Bonterra’s unique focus, understanding the role of best environmental software is equally important for sustainability initiatives.
Key features:
- Certified Organic Practices: Ensures all wines are made with certified organic grapes, reflecting a commitment to sustainability and quality that aligns with responsible practices.
- Regenerative Organic Certified®: Highlights dedication to giving back to the earth through regenerative farming, leading the way in industry and community environmental responsibility.
- True Zero Waste Certified: Demonstrates a strong environmental commitment by diverting over 98% of all waste from landfills, ensuring highly sustainable operations.
Learn more about Bonterra Organic Estates features, pricing, & alternatives →
Verdict: Bonterra Organic Estates isn’t grant management software; it’s a winery focused on organic and regenerative farming. Its homepage describes a commitment to sustainable wine production, including being America’s #1 Organic Winery and achieving Regenerative Organic Certified® status. While it excels in winemaking, it doesn’t offer features relevant to the best grant management software needs.
4. Fluxx
Are grant complexities consuming your valuable time?
If you’re an administrator, Fluxx Grantmaker offers a cloud-based solution that streamlines your entire process. This means reducing repetitive tasks and freeing your team to focus on impact.
You can truly redefine collaboration with a visual experience that connects all interactions, relationships, and data in one workspace, empowering you to become a grantmaking hero!
Ready to simplify your grant management?
Fluxx solves the problem of scattered data and inefficient workflows by providing a centralized system. You can easily access related information for full visibility and control, ensuring no detail is missed.
This means you get intuitive role-based dashboards to visualize and streamline the grantmaking process, plus robust reporting to track funding and demonstrate impact. You can connect third-party tools and applications for improved efficiency and accuracy. Additionally, the collaborative grantee portal enhances communication and eliminates redundant tasks, improving the grantee experience.
The result is greater transparency within your team and increased trust with your grantees.
Key features:
- Centralized System: Streamlines grant processes for foundations, government agencies, and nonprofits, enhancing control and promoting best practices.
- Intuitive Dashboards & Reporting: Provides role-based dashboards and robust reporting tools to visualize progress, track funding, and demonstrate program impact.
- Collaborative Grantee Portal: Improves communication and eliminates redundant tasks for a better grantee experience, fostering transparency and trust.
Learn more about Fluxx features, pricing, & alternatives →
Verdict: Fluxx is the best grant management software for organizations seeking to reduce administrative burden and maximize impact. Its centralized platform, intuitive dashboards, and collaborative portal empower teams to streamline processes, making it ideal for foundations, government, and nonprofits.
5. Good Grants
Struggling with complex grant cycles and endless paperwork?
Good Grants offers sophisticated grant management software that’s designed for flexibility, helping you manage everything from planning to evaluation. This means you can easily handle open, closed, competitive, or formulaic grants.
You’ll find Good Grants highly intuitive, with features like a privacy-conscious form builder and duplicate management to save time and reduce application stress. Here’s how it smooths out your grantmaking process.
The result is efficient, risk-minimized grantmaking.
Good Grants simplifies your entire grant journey, providing tools for every stage. For pre-award, you can use built-in broadcast services and single-sign-on (SSO) friendly options to augment opportunity announcements. Additionally, Good Grants offers powerful review modes, multiple review rounds, and real-time results for confident funding decisions. This comprehensive suite helps manage performance and minimize risk. Plus, after awards are made, you can easily solicit programmatic and financial reports to monitor grant performance and impact, ensuring you track payments and KPIs.
This means you can power positive change.
Key features:
- Comprehensive application management: Save time with intuitive tools like a privacy-conscious form builder, moderation, auto-scoring, eligibility screening, and duplicate management for efficient processing.
- Robust review tools: Make confident funding decisions using five powerful review modes, support for multiple review rounds, panel management, and real-time results, including recusal and abstention options.
- End-to-end grant lifecycle support: Manage everything from pre-award planning and opportunity announcements to awarding grants with unlimited allocations and post-award monitoring of performance and impact.
Learn more about Good Grants features, pricing, & alternatives →
Verdict: Good Grants stands out as a best grant management software option due to its intuitive design, comprehensive feature set across the entire grant lifecycle, and commitment to security and compliance. Its flexibility for various grant types and robust reporting tools address core pain points for grant administrators, ensuring streamlined processes and confident decisions.
6. GrantHub
Is managing your grant applications becoming overwhelming?
Foundant offers products like Grant Lifecycle Manager to streamline your entire grantmaking process, from initial application to final reporting. This means you can focus on maximizing your community impact.
You can simplify and streamline your entire grantmaking process with tools built for transparency and impact, helping alleviate the burden of complex grant cycles. This ensures compliance and strong funder relationships.
It’s time to transform your grant management.
Foundant’s Grant Lifecycle Manager solves the problem of scattered data and manual workflows by offering full-cycle grants management specifically for grantmaking foundations. This allows you to regain control and efficiency.
You’ll find tools that simplify and streamline your entire grantmaking process, covering everything from application to detailed reporting. This helps maintain transparency and drive greater impact. Additionally, they provide SmartSimple Cloud, a configurable solution for more complex grantmaking needs, perfect for private and family foundations, and even government organizations.
This comprehensive approach supports not just grant management, but also fund accounting to ensure compliance and confidence in your finances, along with donor and relationship management for cultivating lasting connections.
Ultimately, you can focus on making a difference.
If you’re also exploring different types of specialized management software, my guide on Blood Bank Management Software is a helpful resource.
Key features:
- Full-cycle grants management: Simplifies the entire grantmaking process, from initial applications through to final reporting, for foundations.
- Configurable solutions: Offers SmartSimple Cloud for addressing more complex grantmaking needs, suitable for private, family, and government organizations.
- Integrated relationship management: Supports building and strengthening funder-grantee relationships to maximize community impact.
Learn more about GrantHub features, pricing, & alternatives →
Verdict: Foundant’s Grant Lifecycle Manager is designed to simplify your grantmaking processes, offering full-cycle management from application to reporting. Its focus on transparency and impact makes it a strong contender for the best grant management software, particularly for foundations aiming to streamline operations and build stronger relationships with grantees.
7. Submittable
Struggling to manage your complex grant applications?
Submittable’s platform helps you run grant, volunteering, and giving programs. This means you can easily build and launch any application-based program.
You can accept diverse submissions, review them collaboratively, disburse funds, track progress, and measure results, all in one place.
Simplify your social impact programs.
Submittable solves this by giving you all the tools needed to effect change from start to finish. You can use their drag-and-drop form builder and create custom, automated review workflows to launch programs in days or weeks.
This allows you to understand what’s happening in your program and act on that understanding with impact reports, comments, and shareable reviews. Additionally, you get automated and advanced reporting that’s simple to use and share, providing a clear view of how your program fulfills your mission. Plus, you’ll find it intuitive and easy to use.
The result is streamlined processes, allowing you to reach your goals faster.
Key features:
- End-to-End Program Management: Manage the entire lifecycle of your social impact programs, from launching with custom forms to tracking progress and measuring impact.
- Intuitive & Collaborative Workflows: Create automated review workflows that are simple for your team and applicants, allowing for seamless hand-offs and clear communication.
- Scalable & Accessible Platform: Address needs of any size with security and accessibility built-in, supporting efficient and equitable program delivery for diverse applicants.
Learn more about Submittable features, pricing, & alternatives →
Verdict: Submittable helps foundations, governments, and corporations streamline their grant processes by offering an all-in-one platform for managing applications, disbursing funds, and measuring impact. Its intuitive interface and scalable design make it an excellent choice as the best grant management software for organizations seeking to simplify operations and boost their reach, having supported over 165,000 programs.
Conclusion
Stop drowning in grant paperwork.
Choosing the right tool for your organization is tough. A poor choice just adds complexity instead of fixing scattered data, compliance risks, and missed deadlines.
Instrumentl reports that the right software reduces application time by 50% through automated tools. That’s a massive efficiency gain, enabling your team to pursue more funding opportunities without the usual burnout.
Here’s what I recommend.
From my experience reviewing these tools, AmpliFund stands out as the best choice for truly streamlining your entire grant lifecycle.
What I love is its powerful reporting engine, which helps nonprofits reduce time spent on tasks by 72%. It’s the best grant management software for boosting your impact and ensuring compliance.
I highly recommend you request a demo of AmpliFund to see exactly how it can transform your workflow and boost your team’s capacity.
You’ll focus more on your mission.
