Case Study: Grand Rapids Community Foundation achieves streamlined, user-friendly grants management with SmartSimple Cloud

How the Grand Rapids Community Foundation created a versatile grants management platform that improved their customer service and user experience

Grand Rapids Community Foundation, which manages a permanent endowment and has distributed over $172 million through 22,000 grants, needed to retire its long‑running in‑house grants management system in favor of a more user‑friendly, configurable platform. The foundation chose SmartSimple Cloud’s configurable cloud‑based grants management solution to reduce end‑user friction and remove known barriers for grantees while retaining the flexibility to personalize functionality and user experience.

SmartSimple Cloud implemented the replacement over six migrations across three years, delivering a configurable, cloud‑based system and hands‑on implementation and support. The result was a smoother, less cumbersome experience for staff and grantees, successful multi‑stage migrations, and a vendor relationship that Grand Rapids Community Foundation now recommends for its consistent, professional, and client‑focused support.

Grand Rapids Community Foundation

Ann Puckett

IT Manager