Case Study: The Kavli Foundation achieves real-time, unified grants and financial management with GivingData

GivingData Digitizes Historic Grants Data to Empower a Foundation’s Future

The Kavli Foundation, a philanthropic organization with $600 million in assets that awards about $9 million annually, lacked a formal grants management system and relied on Microsoft Office tools, which created knowledge silos, manual reconciliation, and limited reporting. In 2015 they selected GivingData’s Grants Management System (GMS) and consulting services for its flexibility and experience integrating data and knowledge management to meet goals like a one-stop financial and grants data hub, cloud access, capturing historical institutional knowledge, better onboarding, and improved planning and relationship tracking.

GivingData delivered an incremental implementation: consultants configured a minimal launch set, the Foundation’s new Grants Manager migrated historic grants records, staff were trained, and usage expanded with refinements driven by feedback. Within months The Kavli Foundation gained real-time, cross-referenced grant and financial data access, flexible reporting, forecasting capabilities that inform budget planning, and mobile access to answer grantees — removing manual reconciliation and brokered data access. GivingData’s GMS is now in active use and the Foundation plans further integration with accounting, CRM, visualizations, and an online grantee portal.

The Kavli Foundation