Case Study: Edmonton Community Foundation achieves streamlined, automated grantmaking and robust reporting with SmartSimple Cloud

How Edmonton Community Foundation revamped and standardized its grantmaking with automation and configurable user portals

Edmonton Community Foundation was administering roughly $25 million in annual grants but was hampered by an unreliable, inflexible form‑based system that offered only surface‑level visibility, broke frequently (including exports and reports), and required heavy manual effort and slow vendor support. Seeking better workflow management, visibility, and advanced reporting, the Foundation selected SmartSimple Cloud and its SmartSimple Cloud for Grants Management product to replace their legacy solution.

SmartSimple Cloud implemented a configurable grants platform with applicant and reviewer portals, record linking, CRA integration, automated communications, and robust reporting—deployed in about 100 days without interrupting grant programs. The result: faster, same‑day vendor support (versus multi‑week responses previously), automated approval/decline emails and PDFs that cut hours or days from admin work, improved tracking and reporting across stages, and a standardized, more efficient grantmaking lifecycle for Edmonton Community Foundation.

Edmonton Community Foundation

Nick Diaz

Donor Grants Associate