George Kaiser Family Foundation

One family foundation’s journey to grantee-centric, and scalable grantmaking

Many foundations recognize the costs of operational inefficiencies and organizational debt. What set George Kaiser Family Foundation (GKFF) aside was a willingness to step back, and consider their slate of process and technology choices holistically.

1

custom-built Salesforce instance

3

application integrations with Salesforce

18

months from initial engagement to go-live

30+

program officers supported by an enhanced grants management team

Embarking on transformational (rather than incremental) change in your grants management operations is not for the faint of heart. GKFF, like many of our daring funder partners, was up for the challenge. While GKFF’s granting strategy is, of course, unique to them, the operational challenges are ones many funders will recognize: siloed teams, friction-full grantee experience, and a weighty administrative burden overwhelming their grants managers.

GRANTBOOK SERVICES

Solution Comparison & Selection
Implementation Readiness
Salesforce Implementation

A Black elementary-school aged child is focused writing an assignment in a classroom.

A Grantbook flow chart for the GKFF project, depicting the project's process

Challenge

GKFF came to Grantbook aware their current GMS could no longer support their growing complexity or the ambitious growth path that lay ahead. The day-to-day grants management efforts were rife with manual workarounds, a lack of standardization for staff and grantees alike, and a lack of operational support for the grants management team, culminating in a considerable administrative burden.

We all knew change management would be crucial to alignment and project success. We baked in stakeholder mapping, a change plan and dedicated change meetings to hold space for shifting priorities and needs, ensuring timely adjustments to our approach.

Journey

By accurately sizing up the complexity of the interconnected operational challenges, GKFF and Grantbook were able to thoughtfully sequence our collaboration into three key phases. The goal: transformational and durable operational change for GKFF.

Integral to all three phases was the implicit goal of aligning teams by grounding in GKFF's commitment to flexible, responsive funding and collaborative grantee relationships, providing robust training and development for team members and grantees, and, of course, integrating robust change management.

Destination

Grantee-centric. Scalable. Operationally efficient.

GKFF can now boast a highly customized and fit-for-purpose Salesforce instance, capable of operationalizing their ambitious grantmaking strategy, and poised to scale with them as their ambitions grow.

Streamlined application forms and a grantee portal that integrates grantee feedback, an overhauled reporting and data strategy, and well-documented payment workflows and integration all add up to greater role clarity for GKFF team members and a much-improved changemaker experience for grantees.

A laptop showing the back end of Grantbook's GKFF Salesforce solution.

“Our partnership with Grantbook has been exceptional. Their subject matter expertise and ability to anticipate our needs and provide innovative solutions have been instrumental in enhancing our grantmaking practices. Their responsiveness and commitment to quality ensure that we are always well-supported, allowing us to focus on our mission. This collaboration has improved our processes and allowed for a smooth transition to a new grants management system.”

— Tania, Director of Grants and Systems at George Kaiser Family Foundation