As federal funding wanes and competition for the mindshare and wallet share of private philanthropy surges, many of you are seeing increased inflows at the precise moment your resources are being pulled elsewhere to manage the attacks on your vision, values, and, in the most dire cases, your very existence. At a recent project kickoff, when asked to choose an image to express how they were feeling, our client asked if we had an image of a dumpster fire. That feels about right.
We are deeply saddened to watch as important work is being scuppered and professional and personal lives upended. In spite of this, we are also impressed by your courage, clarity, and deep commitment to vision and values that are serving as the antidote to fear and reactivity.
Grantbook is here to support you by doubling down on our own values. Here are some of the challenges we are facing in 2025 and the ways we are supporting our clients through this wavy terrain.
Whether it’s heightened data-security concerns, navigating the whiplash and uncertainty around federal funding, or the need to make decisions around the assaults on DEI, we are meeting our foundation partners where they are at and supporting a variety of creative strategies to avoid scrutiny, preserve funding, and maintain momentum on critical work.
Funder Challenges and the Ways Grantbook Is Supporting
Grantbook has long held operational excellence as both a superpower for resilience and a key way for grants management to move from compliance to courage. Here are the ways Grantbook can offer support on some of the challenges clients are facing:
1) Re-engineer operational priorities, teams, systems, and workflows to meet the moment. Organizations have seen major upheaval in ways of working caused by dramatic cuts, requiring them to reinvent entire departments, workflows, and processes. When faced with these cuts, organizations must also reduce the administrative burden on remaining staff to manage application forms.
2) Pivot rapidly by streamlining forms and fields to address any risks flagged by legal teams, preserve funding, get dollars out the door faster, or meet increased demand. As one client put it, we’re returning to the language of the “80’s” in order to avoid DEI scrutiny and prevent loss of funding. Since the beginning of the year we are using much of our support and subscription capacity to help clients spin up new grant programs and themes, add custom fields to flag requests with special consideration, and identify any opportunities for process, application and due diligence streamlining.
3) Add capacity to fill gaps due to scaled-down teams, shifting priorities, and diverted attention. Many of you are having to divert your attention to litigation efforts, with mission-critical work cancelled or paused. Grantbook is jumping in as extra hands on deck to extend operational and technical capacity while you ensure your existence for the long haul.
4) Adjust to increased scrutiny on data. Most of our clients have become hyper vigilant around what data is being collected and stored in their digital systems, reviewing potentially sensitive grantee data, along with options for data cleanup, backup, and extraction. As you examine and revise your data policies, we are helping audit your system integrations and data flows, and implement your plans to shore up any data vulnerabilities.
5) Press forward with AI experiments and pilots. While some funders are facing existential threats, others are facing increased demand for their philanthropic dollars and are steadfast in conducting business as usual. These funders are forging ahead with AI adoption and experimenting with the many ways AI tools can add operational efficiency in meeting increased demand for wallet share and mindshare.
6) Becoming change-ready. With the many changes flooding organizations and the terrain shifting daily, if not hourly, thoughtful change management seems a luxury. Even prior to the volatility of this precise historic moment, Grantbook has been nudging organizations into a stance of “change readiness.” While we don’t believe in going fast and breaking things, we do encourage agility while ensuring your vision and values remain intact.
Contact us if you want to learn how we can apply our Change Readiness toolkit and our holistic approach to operational change, so you can make your change with integrity.
Rapid Response as the New Normal
As we watch resilient funders respond and get creative, here is a round-up of some of the more immediate, tactical changes we are assisting with. Many of these changes were adopted during the COVID-19 era and are now accepted as best practices, not just approaches to haul out in times of crisis.
- Expediting payments by moving up payment dates and tracking which payments have been expedited.
- Adding helpful framing copy on grantee portals to address current uncertainty arising from Executive Orders.
- Ensuring express renewals by implementing copy/clone functionality to prepopulate draft applications.
- Streamlined applications that cut down on fields to focus on the core minimum.
- Converting grants to allow using funds for general operating support
- Allowing for verbal check-ins in lieu of reports
- Moving to multi-year, unconditional funding
Partner With Doers, Not Just Dreamers
Part of the magic of the Grantbook team and brand promise is our deep empathy and commitment to playing our part in a chain of good. We are not just a team of dreamers, but a team of doers—diving fearlessly into operational weeds, sorting through murky workflows, operational plans, and entangled tech stacks, and maturing the nexus of people-process-data and systems to future-proof your agility and operational excellence.
We hope that you will want to tap into our expertise and augment your team with more Grantbook. If we can play even the smallest part in ensuring the longevity of your social good enterprises, we will be able to stand proud with you all.
Resources
In case you haven’t already bookmarked these resources. Here are our top picks:
