Managing grants can be one of the most rewarding aspects of driving social impact. However, whether you’re a nonprofit allocating funds to critical causes or a corporation running community impact programs, manual grant tracking often leads to inefficiencies, missed deadlines and compliance headaches.
That’s where grant management software comes in. This technology helps organizations streamline the grant lifecycle — from application to approval, reporting to impact measurement. By automating time-consuming and tedious administrative tasks and offering real-time visibility into outcomes, it empowers both corporations and nonprofits to grant smarter and make a measurable difference.
What is grant management software?
At its core, grant management software is a digital platform designed to simplify, harmonize and automate the process of managing grants — whether your organization is giving or receiving them.
For corporations, grants management software often serves as corporate giving software, and powers workplace philanthropy, employee grant programs, and corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives. These solutions allow companies to efficiently manage applications, vet recipients and report outcomes to stakeholders, while maintaining standards compliance.
For nonprofits, the same technology centralizes everything from application tracking to fund disbursement, ensuring transparency and accountability, every step of the way. This type of nonprofit grant management system helps teams spend less time on spreadsheets and more time driving mission impact.
Ultimately, grant management software connects philanthropic intent and measurable impact, helping every dollar donated to go further.
Why companies need grant management software
Social impact has evolved with employees increasingly demanding a say in where their companies give. In fact, data from Benevity Impact Labs shows that 86% of employees agree that customers, employees and investors should be involved in corporate giving. That’s why many corporations are evolving their programs beyond employee giving and volunteering to involve their people in strategic granting decisions, too. But organizations can take advantage of several benefits when switching from managing grants manually to a grants management software solution:
- Improved efficiency: Email threads, spreadsheets and paper applications can quickly become overwhelming — especially for large-scale programs.
- Program officers can spend hours manually updating multiple spreadsheets to track application statuses.
- Reviewers often need to exchange long and multiple emails to coordinate scoring, leading to missed deadlines and duplication of efforts.
- Better compliance oversight: Without automation, staying compliant with funding guidelines or CSR requirements can be error-prone.
- A missing audit trail may cause delays during external reviews because supporting documents are scattered across emails.
- Manual reporting can increase the risk of non-compliance with donor or CSR requirements due to inconsistent data entry.
- Enhanced visibility and impact tracking: Tracking the flow of funds and how grants translate into real-world outcomes can be difficult without the right tools.
- Grant managers often struggle to measure the social impact of funded projects when outcome data isn’t centralized.
- Leadership teams who don’t have real-time dashboards may find it hard to identify which programs deliver the best ROI.
- Simplify and streamline the nonprofit experience:
- Nonprofit resources are often limited.
- By keeping tasks and administrative work within a grants management solution, nonprofit administrators know exactly what they need to do and when so they can focus on their mission and more accurate use of funds.
- Enhance alignment with program goals and build stronger nonprofit relationships:
- Grant managers and leadership teams can better align their grant programs to key corporate goals, value or mission at scale.
- Shift from transactional to partnership-based funding with trust-based partnerships with key nonprofits.
With philanthropic technology, such as grant management software, organizations can expedite and simplify the application process and minimize the administrative burden; accelerate the review process to summarize applications; facilitate partnership with eligible grantseekers; communicate the impact to all stakeholders; and streamline completion with secure payment processing and transparent fund disbursement. Together, this enables more strategic grants management aligned to program goals.
This shift doesn’t just make giving easier; it makes it smarter, more transparent and more impactful.
Key features of grant management software
Modern grant management software offers robust capabilities that help empower both funders and recipients. Here are the most important features to look for:
1. Centralized application and review
Manage every grant application in one place. Review committees can evaluate proposals collaboratively, standardize scoring and communicate efficiently with grantseekers.
2. Automated reporting and compliance
Automation helps ensure that reporting deadlines aren’t missed and compliance documentation is complete and centralized. This is especially valuable for organizations managing grants across multiple regions or partners.
3. Donation and outcome tracking
The best solutions include dashboards that track where funds go — and what results they produce, as well as other ways to measure outcomes. These impact measurement tools are essential for demonstrating transparency and accountability to stakeholders.
4. Artificial Intelligence (AI) capabilities
AI-driven insights can help summarize applications, help save time during the review process and help identify high-performing programs and forecast impact trends, allowing organizations to make data-informed funding decisions.
5. CSR software integration
Many organizations integrate their grant platforms within an Enterprise Impact Platform software to connect grantmaking with broader social impact initiatives, such as volunteering, payroll, matching gifts and sustainability programs.
By bringing together data from these efforts, companies can measure their total impact — not just dollars granted, but lives changed.
Benefits for corporations and nonprofits
For corporations
Many businesses recognize that giving back strengthens both community relationships and corporate reputation — and can positively affect the overall business. Here’s how grant management software can support their mission:
- Stronger workplace giving programs: Platforms that connect grants with employee giving and grants programs enable employees to nominate causes, apply for matching funds or volunteer in community initiatives.
- Streamlined community investment solutions: Companies can better manage their local and global impact strategies with grants management solutions that track budgets, measure ROI and communicate outcomes.
- Data and insights: With built-in analytics and reporting, corporations can more clearly demonstrate the results of their CSR efforts to boards, investors and the public.
For nonprofits
Nonprofits, too, benefit from automation and centralized management:
- Improved efficiency: Less time spent on administrative tasks means more time dedicated to mission-driven work.
- Greater transparency: Automated workflows create clear audit trails and fund-tracking capabilities.
- More impactful fund distribution: Data-driven insights help nonprofits allocate grants where they’ll make the greatest impact.
For both
- Corporations and nonprofits both benefit from closer, trust-based partnerships and the ability to leverage storytelling about the impact of grants programs. These impact stories can be used by corporations for reporting to stakeholders and can be repurposed by nonprofits to attract new corporate donors.
Whether you’re a grantmaker or a grantee, the right platform helps your organization operate with confidence, clarity and purpose.
Why Benevity Grants Management stands out
When it comes to scalable, trusted and impactful grant management software, Benevity stands out as a global leader.
The Benevity Enterprise Impact Platform (EIP) brings together grant management, employee giving, volunteering and impact measurement — an end-to-end experience. This integration allows companies to manage every aspect of their social impact strategy from a single platform.
Here’s what sets Benevity apart:
- Scalability: Designed to support organizations of all sizes, from local foundations to global enterprises. The modular platform fits clients’ needs today and over time. It provides robust functionality to support complex programs.
- Automation and compliance: Streamlined workflows ensure transparency and adherence to corporate or nonprofit standards.
- Integrated impact measurement: Built-in tools help you quantify and communicate the difference your programs make.
- Trust: The Benevity Grants Management solution is trusted by some of the world’s largest and most established corporations and nonprofits in the world. It offers industry-leading security and risk mitigation with ongoing monitoring.
- Global reach: Benevity powers programs in over 200 countries, helping organizations create meaningful change worldwide. It provides a truly global offering and reliable and transparent disbursement
By combining grants, workplace giving programs and employee giving and grants, Benevity software helps organizations maximize participation and amplify their collective impact.
The Sage Foundation story
Benevity clients are proof that strategic technology can transform giving programs. Global technology leader, Sage, through their charitable arm, Sage Foundation, helps break down barriers to create equitable opportunities in entrepreneurship, digital skills development and social mobility.
Sage has always been committed to community investment. However, they struggled to streamline grant distribution, align funding with their mission of "removing barriers so everyone can thrive” and measure impact across diverse regions like the UK and North America. They also wanted to provide grantees with support beyond just funding.
To address these challenges, Sage Foundation adopted Benevity Grants Management to bring structure, transparency and efficiency to their grantmaking. This enabled them to:
- Align grants with their strategic areas
- Automate impact measurement
- Enhance employee engagement
- Build more sustainable nonprofit partnerships
Today, organizations can no longer afford to consider grant management a manual, disconnected process. Grant management software simplifies operations, ensures compliance and provides data-driven insights that lead to greater transparency and measurable outcomes.
Whether you’re managing nonprofit grant management programs or investing in corporate giving software, the right platform can help you do more good.
With integrated philanthropic technology, your organization can unite grants, employee giving, volunteering and impact measurement into one cohesive ecosystem that drives change.
Ready to simplify your grantmaking and maximize your impact?
Discover how the Benevity Grants Management solution can help your organization give smarter, scale your impact and do more good.
