Case Study: GuideStar achieves 4x faster search, 34% higher engagement, and $100Ks+ in savings with Elastic Cloud

Guidestar Powering the Search for a More Philanthropic World

GuideStar, a nonprofit that aggregates data on more than 2 million nonprofits to help donors and grantmakers make informed decisions, faced a critical search infrastructure challenge after Microsoft changed support for FAST ESP. FAST’s XML-based, on-premise setup was costly, hard to maintain, and didn’t meet GuideStar’s performance or scalability needs, prompting a search for an open, JSON-native, horizontally scalable solution with strong support.

GuideStar migrated its APIs and search platform to Elasticsearch and Elastic Cloud (using X-Pack and dedicated Elastic Support), which simplified operations and improved reliability. The move delivered 2.5–4x faster query performance, a 34% increase in user engagement, reduced maintenance from daily checks to monthly, and freed up hundreds of thousands of dollars in infrastructure, licensing, support, and labor—enabling faster upgrades and greater product agility.

GuideStar

Shane T. Ward

Data Architect