At its best, grantmaking is all about building lasting relationships, empowering communities, and fueling transformative impact. Yet, for many —grant seekers, grant funders, and grantees—the grantmaking experience in practice often involves time-consuming administration, sifting through communications, chasing down reviewers, managing spreadsheets, and following up on compliance documentation. These tasks can overshadow the strategic and relational work that truly drives successful grant outcomes.
I spent six years writing fundraising proposals to grantmaking organizations of all sizes—from some of the largest U.S. banks to small community foundations. More often than not, the grant submission process meant uploading documents and attachments in several different places, with no way to check the status of our application. Most of all, it often felt like we were sending our thoughtful, heartfelt proposals out into a void rather than to a real person.
Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud for Grantmaking offers a new, reimagined approach to the grantmaking experience. By combining automation, digital collaboration, and a unified experience, it allows grant seekers, grant funders, and grantees alike to refocus on what matters most: helping their organizations get closer to achieving their mission.
Today’s Challenges in the Grant Lifecycle: Burdensome Inefficiencies
For foundations, corporate philanthropies, and community grantmaking organizations alike, familiar challenges in the grantmaking experience tend to surface and create inefficiencies:
- Manual, repetitive processes across disconnected systems: Grantmaking staff spend countless hours sifting through applications in their email inbox, entering applicant information into their CRM, calculating data in spreadsheets, and returning to their email inbox to send reminders.
- Incomplete or Ineligible Applications: Without proper compliance checks in place, grantees who are ineligible may submit applications. For example, a nonprofit that doesn’t meet geographical requirements may unknowingly submit an application – wasting time for both the grantseeker and the grant funder. Also, when applications are submitted by email, there is no way to enforce required fields or attachments, meaning the grant funder must spend additional time following up with a grantseeker.
- Evolving technology needs: As the philanthropy landscape continues to evolve and innovate, many funders want a solution that can adapt, especially with the increasing popularity of AI.
These challenges do more than create inefficiencies—they create an extra burden on grantees, who may end up spending more time on administration than creating impact, and they get in the way of a grantmaking organization’s ability to invest in relationship-building and strategic planning.
A Modern, Unified Platform for the Entire Grantmaking Lifecycle
Nonprofit Cloud Grantmaking brings every stage of the grant lifecycle together into one integrated platform. It goes beyond digitizing current processes by creating a collaborative, connected, and strategic experience for both grant funders and grant seekers.
Key benefits include:
- Automation: Routine tasks like sending reminders, generating award letters to grantees, and routing applications are automated, giving staff back more time for strategic work.
- A single source of truth: Funding decisions are informed by connected data across Nonprofit Cloud’s Fundraising, Program Management, and Outcome Management Modules.
- Modern, mobile-ready experiences: Applicants and current grantees can log in to the grant funder’s Experience Cloud portal to submit applications, track progress, and submit follow-up documentation and reports from any device.
- Future-ready AI: The platform is designed to evolve, supporting AI capabilities as organizations become ready for them.
Streamlining the Application and Review Process
Many grant foundations receive far more applications than they can realistically fund, sometimes thousands for just a handful of available grants. Without a streamlined review system, grantor staff can spend weeks processing applications, organizing files, and scheduling time for each stakeholder to review.
With Grantmaking in Nonprofit Cloud, the experience is transformed. Starting with a branded, user-friendly portal, applicants can seamlessly log in via SSO or traditional username and passwords, submit requests, open cases, and track the status of their requests. Saved information about the grant-seeking organization is auto-filled, further speeding up the process and reducing errors. Funders can also include due diligence checks in funding applications, including verifying that nonprofits are 501(c)(3) organizations and meet a minimum budget threshold, which reduces risk and saves time by ensuring only qualified applicants move forward. Once applications are submitted directly into Nonprofit Cloud, internal teams and external stakeholders (like board members) can score applications, which advances decision-making and reduces bottlenecks.
With the administrative burden lessened, grantors can offer so much more than funding, they can accelerate a grantee’s impact by sharing their expertise, resources, and network.
Supporting Grantees Beyond the Award Stage
The grants process doesn’t end once a grant has been awarded, and neither does the value of grantmaking. Selected grantees are expected to submit interim reports, update financials, and provide receipts or other documentation throughout the life of their grant. Thanks to Nonprofit Cloud for Grantmaking’s authenticated grantee portal, providing support for grantees becomes seamless:
- Through a single portal, grantees can check their application’s status and upload documents, financials, and reports directly into Salesforce.
- Grantees can self-report outcomes, giving funders real-time visibility into impact that can be easily digested through reports and dashboards.
- Interactions and documents are tracked, creating accountability and making it easy to understand a grantee’s journey and respond thoughtfully.
For funders, this creates a complete record of every grant, from application to final report. For grantees, it reduces administrative headaches and fosters a transparent, supportive relationship.
How Nonprofit Cloud Leverages AI for Smarter, More Efficient Grantmaking
Salesforce’s AI-powered Agentforce can take the grantmaking experience to the next level, and leveraging Cloud for Good’s Agentforce Accelerator alongside Nonprofit Cloud for Grantmaking can create value for your organization even faster. With conversational AI, organizations can:
- Automatically prompt applicants to fill in missing information.
- Summarize lengthy proposals for faster, more consistent reviews.
- Draft communications to applicants and grantees.
- Provide quick answers to frequently asked questions, reducing the load on staff.
These features aren’t about replacing people, but about empowering them to make faster, smarter decisions and focus on higher-value work.
What Nonprofit Cloud for Grantmaking Means For Grantees and Grant Funders
When grantmaking is at its best, it empowers people and communities to thrive. Yet, too often, inefficiency and paperwork get in the way. Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud Grantmaking offers a better way, streamlining core processes, strengthening relationships, and connecting every funding decision to measurable impact.
For funders, it means more transparency, efficiency, and strategic clarity. For grantees, it means a smoother, more supportive journey. And for both, it means more time and energy dedicated to the missions that matter most.
Choosing Cloud for Good as your implementation partner means you’ll benefit from powerful migration accelerators that reduce risk, speed up onboarding, and help your team unlock greater long-term value from Salesforce. As a Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud Design Partner, Cloud for Good has played an active role in shaping the very platform you’re adopting. With decades of collective industry experience and more than 600 Salesforce certifications, our team ensures your new solution is scalable, sustainable, and uniquely tailored to your mission.
To learn more about grantmaking with Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud, watch the on-demand recording of our webinar, or get in touch with our experts.
