Blackbaud Grantmakingvs
SmartSimple Cloud
SmartSimple Cloud: Where the grant process is unusual enough that configuration beats a packaged workflow
Blackbaud Grantmaking
Grants management for foundations and corporate givers inside the Blackbaud ecosystem
As of 31 August 2026, Blackbaud Grantmaking's pricing is not published; the vendor quotes on request. The former GIFTS Online, now Blackbaud's grantmaking product for foundations distributing funds. Softwr lists it under Nonprofits. Blackbaud Grantmaking is made by Blackbaud, available on Web.
Overview
What Blackbaud Grantmaking does
Blackbaud Grantmaking manages the funder side of philanthropy: online applications, eligibility screening, due diligence including charity status verification, board dockets, award approval, payment scheduling and grantee reporting. It descends from MicroEdge GIFTS, acquired by Blackbaud in 2014, and remains one of the most widely deployed systems in established US private foundations. What distinguishes it commercially is the accounting connection. Foundations must reconcile grant liabilities, multi-year commitments and payment schedules against a general ledger, and the integration with Blackbaud Financial Edge NXT removes a reconciliation that is otherwise done by hand every month. For a foundation already running Financial Edge, that link is often the deciding factor rather than any feature in the grants module itself. Buyers are private and community foundations and corporate giving programmes, usually with a professional programme staff and a board that approves dockets. The trade-off is Blackbaud itself: pricing is quoted and never published, contracts are annual with multi-year terms common, implementation and migration are separately priced, and the pace of interface modernisation across Blackbaud's portfolio has been slow enough that long-standing customers have watched competitors ship faster.
What people use it for
- A private foundation already running Blackbaud Financial Edge that wants grant liabilities to post to the ledger without manual journals
- A community foundation managing hundreds of donor advised funds with separate grant recommendations
- A corporate giving programme needing documented US charity status checks before every payment
- A foundation whose board approves grants by docket and needs a repeatable, auditable packet process
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The honest half
Where it falls short
Concrete and checkable, so you can decide whether any of them matter to you. This is the half of a review a vendor will not write about Blackbaud Grantmaking.
- No pricing is published at any tier, and Blackbaud contracts commonly run multiple years, so a foundation that finds the fit wrong is locked in past the point where switching is cheap.
- Implementation and data migration from a legacy GIFTS or Access database are separately priced professional services and regularly exceed the first year licence.
- The interface carries a long lineage and feels dated next to newer grants platforms, which shows up as training time for programme staff and reluctance among occasional users.
- Value depends heavily on being inside the Blackbaud stack; a foundation running Sage or NetSuite for accounting loses the integration that is the main commercial argument for the product.
- Blackbaud disclosed a ransomware incident in 2020 affecting customer backups and later settled with US regulators, so due diligence teams at some funders now require additional security review before approving the vendor.
Cross-shopped
What people choose instead of Blackbaud Grantmaking
Each pairing was judged by two reviewers asking whether a buyer would genuinely weigh the two against each other. The ones that failed were deleted rather than published.
- Blackbaud GrantmakingvsSubmittable
Submittable: Cheaper and faster to launch when the problem is application review volume rather than ledger reconciliation
- Blackbaud GrantmakingvsBlackbaud Raiser's Edge
Blackbaud Raiser's Edge: The fundraising counterpart for organisations raising money rather than distributing it
Pricing
What Blackbaud Grantmaking costs
Taken from the vendor's own pricing page. Prices move, so check before you buy.
Blackbaud Grantmaking
On request
- Grant application, review and award management
- Applicant and grantee portals
- Payment scheduling and liability tracking
- Annual subscription, quoted by sales
- Implementation and data migration priced separately
Capabilities
Features
Online application portal
Applicant-facing forms with eligibility screening and document upload
Due diligence checks
Charity status and compliance verification for US grantees
Board dockets
Grouped recommendation packets for board review and approval
Payment scheduling
Multi-year commitments, instalments and liability tracking
Grantee reporting
Requirement scheduling, reminders and report collection
Financial Edge integration
Posting of grant liabilities and payments to the general ledger
Reporting and dashboards
Programme, geography and population-served analysis for board packs
Answered, with sources
Questions people ask
Each answer names the page it came from, so you can check it rather than take our word for it.
Is this the same as GIFTS Online?
Yes, in lineage. It comes from MicroEdge GIFTS, which Blackbaud acquired in 2014, and has been rebranded and reworked since.
What does it cost?
Blackbaud does not publish grantmaking pricing. Expect a quoted annual subscription plus a separate implementation and migration fee, and expect a multi-year term to be proposed.
Do we need Financial Edge to get value?
No, but the general ledger integration is the strongest single reason to choose it. Without Financial Edge, compare it more carefully against Foundant and SmartSimple.
Does it verify charity status automatically?
Yes for US grantees, using charity status data as part of due diligence screening before payment.
Keep looking
Where to go from Blackbaud Grantmaking
- Blackbaud Grantmaking alternativesEvery product people weigh against it
- Blackbaud Grantmaking pricingPlans, floors and what the tiers exclude
- Blackbaud Grantmaking badgesWhich rules it meets, and the figure behind each
- All Nonprofits softwareThe full category
- Best Nonprofits softwareThe shortlist, and how it was cut
Best Nonprofits software for
Compare Blackbaud Grantmaking with
- SmartSimple Cloud
- Submittable
- Foundant Technologies
- Fluxx
- GrantStation
- DonorPerfect
- Instrumentl
- CharityEngine
- Bonterra
- OpenGrants
- Handbid
- Charity Navigator
- Raisely
- SignUpGenius
- Sumac
- TechSoup
- Tendenci
- Trello for Nonprofits
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Softwr does not host reviews and shows no star rating for Blackbaud Grantmaking, because a rating we did not collect is not ours to publish. What is here is the pricing and platform detail from the vendor’s own pages, limitations we could state concretely, and alternatives a reviewer confirmed people weigh against it. Tell us if any of it is wrong.
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