Case Study: City of Phoenix Office of Arts & Culture achieves faster, more resilient and efficient grantmaking with SmartSimple Cloud

How the City of Phoenix Office of Arts & Culture gained greater efficiency, agility and resiliency with SmartSimple Cloud

The City of Phoenix Office of Arts & Culture was struggling with an outdated online portal that lacked reporting, record-keeping and reliability — it even shut down on an application deadline — hampering their growing grantmaking needs. To centralize data, improve reporting and streamline payments and reviews, the agency moved to SmartSimple Cloud for Grants Management (SmartSimple Cloud).

SmartSimple Cloud implemented a centralized grants platform with tools like the Meeting Module, Submission Manager and filtered views, and SmartSimple stepped in at no charge to help roll out emergency funding during COVID‑19. The result: faster, more resilient grantmaking that enabled remote panel reviews, reduced applicant anxiety and set a citywide standard — the team rapidly disbursed $2.6 million in federal emergency funds and now manages its ongoing grant portfolio (about $1 million annually) more efficiently.

City of Phoenix

Sarah Leon

Community Investments and Engagement Director