Case Study: Creative New Zealand simplifies grants management with Fusion5

Simplifying the complex art of Grants Management

Creative New Zealand, the arts development agency for New Zealand, was struggling with a highly complex grants process spread across paper forms, spreadsheets and siloed systems. Its old 1999 grants management setup made it hard to manage multiple funding programmes, track applicants, and produce reporting efficiently, creating heavy manual work for staff and applicants alike.

Fusion5 implemented a new grants management solution based on Pivotal CRM, with an online web portal, streamlined workflows and integrated finance/banking processes. Fusion5 helped reduce application templates from about 60 to 3, cut paper handling dramatically, and expand capacity from 20 to 60+ programmes; expected impacts include reducing Arts Grant processing time from over 300 minutes to under 200, lowering processing costs by 14–22%, and shortening decision turnaround times from 12 to 10 weeks for Art Grants and from 6 to 5 weeks for Quick Response Grants.

Creative New Zealand

Angus Evison

Business Services Manager