Streamlining Grantmaking Processes: How Your GMS Can Double as a CRM

Managing grant applications is complex enough without the added frustration of maintaining two separate systems—one for funding requests and another for relationship management. When your grant management system (GMS) and customer relationship management (CRM) tool don’t speak to each other, you risk duplicate data, missed insights, and inefficient workflows.

Your GMS can do more than track applications—it can serve as a powerful CRM. By consolidating these functions into a single platform, you unlock the ability to streamline processes, strengthen grantee relationships, and make truly data-driven decisions.

Here are some best practices for how to effectively consolidate your GMS and CRM systems into one integrated tool that will unlock the full potential of your organization’s data.

Collect What You Need—and Use What You Collect

When requesting information from organizations and individuals applying for funding, don’t just capture the basics. Collect the data you need to make informed decisions and build stronger relationships. But the key is to make it easy for applicants and accurate for your team.

How do you do that? Enter APIs.

Modern APIs, like Blackbaud Grantmaking’s SKY APIs, allow you to pull verified data directly from trusted sources like Candid and other third-party repositories. Instead of asking applicants to re-enter information you could access elsewhere, APIs let you automatically populate fields with accurate, up-to-date details. This reduces friction for applicants and ensures your system stays clean and consistent.

For example:

• Tax Status Verification: Use SKY API endpoints to confirm nonprofit status against IRS or CRA records without manual entry.
• Contact Accuracy: Integrate email verification tools and leverage AI-powered duplicate detection to prevent errors before they happen.
• Financial Data Sync: Automatically pull grant amounts, payment dates, and balances from your financial system into your GMS—no more double entry.

Comprehensive, accurate data sets allow you to group contacts into meaningful categories and unlock insights through dashboards and reports. Imagine generating a list of scholarship recipients who graduated from Harvard between 2008 and 2018 in seconds—no manual cross-referencing required.

By combining thoughtful data collection with API-driven automation, you create a system that works smarter, not harder—streamlining your processes while giving applicants a better experience.

Keep Information Organized Based on Your Grantmaking Processes

Organizing your data helps you create a system that works for you and evolves with your needs. Many GMS platforms, like Blackbaud Grantmaking, allow users to configure custom fields and segment contacts in ways that reflect your unique processes. Whether you need to group scholarship recipients by GPA or flag individuals who should not receive solicitations, custom fields make it possible.

In addition to custom fields, here are a few other ways technology can help you keep that data clean and actionable:

• AI-Powered Duplicate Detection: Intelligent tools can automatically surface potential duplicate records, saving hours of manual review and ensuring your database stays accurate.
• Dashboards for Unused Fields: Use dashboards and AI chat to analyze historical data and identify unused or redundant custom fields. This helps you streamline your configuration and eliminate clutter.
• Automation for Data Validation: Built-in automation ensures applicants enter valid information—like correctly formatted email addresses or matching zip codes—before submission. These checks happen in real time, reducing errors and improving data quality without extra effort from your team.

Together, these capabilities create a system that’s not only organized but proactive. AI helps you optimize structure and reduce redundancy, while automation enforces accuracy at the point of entry. Combine these with tools like Blackbaud’s Tax Status Lookup, and you have a powerful foundation for clean, reliable data that supports smarter decisions

Connect the Dots with Your Data

Strong grantmaking organizations not only collect the data but also put processes in place to understand how that information fits together. Building relationship records in your system helps you see the bigger picture: who works where, who their colleagues are, and how individuals and organizations are connected. You can answer questions such as:  

• Where do they work? 
• Where have they formerly worked? 
• Who are their colleagues? 
• Who are their family members? 
• Where did scholarship recipients attend school? When did they attend?

Don’t forget to record new activity within your grantmaking software, as well. Keeping track of past phone calls, letters, and meetings will preserve key details about when interactions occurred, outcomes, and lessons learned. And don’t forget to use activity records to remind people about future interactions with contacts. That way, organizations can easily build “to do” lists of upcoming phone calls or meetings to ensure they do not fall through the cracks—and to catch past due actions that were not completed on time.

These connections unlock strategic insights. When you know how grantees relate to each other—professionally, personally, or through shared affiliations—you can identify collaboration opportunities, strengthen networks, and make more informed funding decisions.

For example, spotting a cluster of applicants tied to the same institution might reveal a chance to amplify impact through a coordinated approach. Recording past interactions and upcoming tasks ensures nothing falls through the cracks, helping your team maintain continuity and deepen relationships over time.

Manage Your Grantmaking Data with the Future in Mind

Put notes about all your funding decisions in your system. Your system is like a historical record book, telling the story of your past and current organization’s requests. As long as you are storing information consistently, your team can rely on your system for future decisions. Being diligent with data entry for interactions, contacts, and relationships gives you the opportunity to use your system as a research tool. If the potential grantee has previously applied, you’ll have data sets from their earlier application to consider. 

A best practice is to have a request record documented even if it is declined immediately. This gives you a full grant history for each organization. So, if an organization is requesting feedback for a declined request, you have a quick way to provide this information. On the other hand, you can scroll through approved requests to get an understanding of why they’ve been so successful.

Consider keeping track of the reasons for a request being declined or approved with a dedicated field. This could be done by building a custom field and preferably one with a value list versus being typable. Value lists will typically be more effective if there are only a few potential options. However, if there is more information to be mentioned, consider a typable field to write longer notes that are unique to that request.

Also think about what reporting tools you will use and organize your information to make those reports work like a well-oiled machine. If you know that you’ll need to report on organizations funded by region, be sure that you are tracking the region of the organization. Determine policies to track these details consistently, so you always have enough data to produce accurate reports and queries. Reliable data in means reliable reports out, otherwise we are looking at garbage in and garbage out – yuck!

Practice Good Data Health 

Clean, accurate data helps you make actionable and strategic decisions. Poor data slows you down—or worse, leads to misinformed initiatives. To keep your data clean, team members should commit to uniform data entry. Understanding the database and how to take care of it should be a priority before users get rights to their accounts, like getting their driver’s license before driving on the road solo for the first time.

Build a policy and procedure guide or even a one-pager for the most popular tasks the database users will need to accomplish. Lots of users may even stick this on the wall next to their view of their computers or add a link to their home page dashboard for easy reference.

Some examples of what to include can be:

• Address formatting (Avenue vs Ave vs AVE vs Ave.)
• Appropriate security rights by staff role
• Policies on marking fields inactive or deleting information
• Criteria for when a record needs to be added
• Field definitions – what goes where?

Be sure to review this data entry guide on a regular basis and communicate any changes to staff so that everyone is on the same page. Set reminders to revisit this and keep a document of any recurring issues. That way when you revisit policies, you can see if a new rule is needed or is being neglected. 

Ready to take the next step toward cleaner, more actionable data? Your grantmaking success depends on the quality of the information you collect and maintain. Explore practical strategies for improving data health and maximizing impact in our free white paper, How Grantmakers Can Improve Data Health and Maximize Impact.

This blog was co-written by Henry Wiencek and Chrissy Haskell. View more of Chrissy’s work here.