Case Study: Vancouver Foundation maximizes grant funding and streamlines grantmaking with SmartSimple Cloud

How Vancouver Foundation created an efficient process to maximize its grant funding

Vancouver Foundation, a community foundation managing more than 200 distinct funds and hundreds of proposals each year, faced a disjointed, labour-intensive grant process spread across a legacy ERP, a homegrown portal, and many Word/Excel files. To simplify and scale its work, the Foundation adopted SmartSimple Cloud and its SmartSimple Cloud for Grants Management platform (SmartSimple client since 2018) to replace siloed systems and give the granting team ownership of the workflow.

Implementation partner reSolved configured SmartSimple Cloud for Grants Management, building integrations to centralize grant programming, volunteer reviewers and meetings, and creating taxonomy-based search-assist tools that code proposals, funds and reviewers across a four-level Purpose/Place/People taxonomy. The new system delivered a single online application form, faster reviewer pairing and fund matching, improved dashboards and reporting, positive user feedback, and a clearer ability to maximize available donor-directed funding and scale grantmaking.

Vancouver Foundation

Dave Doig

Director of Field of Interest Grants