New webinar on 3rd March 2026 | 9:00 am PT
In this webinar, discover how Sopact Sense revolutionizes data collection and analysis.
Looking for a Blackbaud Grantmaking alternative? Sopact delivers AI-native application review, partner data collection, and impact measurement
Blackbaud Grantmaking is an enterprise grant management solution designed to manage the entire grantmaking lifecycle — from accepting online applications and managing reviewer workflows to processing payments and tracking compliance. Originally built from Blackbaud's acquisition of MicroEdge (GIFTS Online), the platform serves foundations, government agencies, and corporate grantmakers who need centralized application management, reviewer portals, and financial reporting.
Blackbaud Grantmaking handles three core functions that foundations depend on: application intake and management, reviewer coordination and scoring, and compliance reporting with financial integration. It integrates with other Blackbaud products like Raiser's Edge NXT and Financial Edge NXT, creating a broader ecosystem for organizations already invested in the Blackbaud suite.
However, the platform was architected before the AI era. Its approach to data collection, application review, and impact measurement reflects a generation of software designed around manual workflows, siloed portals, and static reporting — leaving a significant gap for organizations that need intelligent automation, document analysis, and real-time insights from their grantmaking data.
The challenges with Blackbaud Grantmaking are well-documented across user reviews and reflect systemic architectural limitations rather than minor usability issues:
Fragmented Portal Architecture. Blackbaud Grantmaking requires users to navigate between multiple disconnected websites — an admin portal, application form builder, reviewer portal, and reporting interface. Each portal has a different user experience, requiring separate logins and workflows. Users consistently report that tasks requiring coordination across these portals take hours instead of minutes.
No AI-Powered Application Review. While Blackbaud has announced AI strategy roadmaps, the current Grantmaking platform lacks native AI capabilities for document analysis, essay scoring, or automated rubric application. Every application still requires manual human review — a process that can consume hundreds of staff hours per grant cycle when foundations receive 200-500+ applications.
Limited Partner Data Collection. Blackbaud Grantmaking was designed primarily for the funder's workflow, not for ongoing data collection from grantee partners. There's no built-in mechanism for longitudinal data collection, survey deployment to grantees, or qualitative feedback analysis. Impact data from grant recipients must be collected through separate tools and manually reconciled.
Static Reporting Without Qualitative Analysis. The platform provides standard reporting with filters and visualizations, but cannot analyze open-ended text responses, interview transcripts, or uploaded documents. When grantees submit narrative reports or progress updates, program officers must read and synthesize them manually — there's no automated theme extraction or pattern recognition.
High Cost with Lock-In Contracts. Starting at $325/month with custom pricing that can reach significantly higher for enterprise deployments, Blackbaud Grantmaking pairs premium pricing with restrictive contracts. Multiple users report being locked into multi-year agreements with no out clauses, even when the platform doesn't meet their needs.
The decision to evaluate alternatives typically stems from one or more of these operational pain points:
When a community foundation receives 300 scholarship applications, each containing essays, transcripts, and recommendation letters, the manual review process can stretch across weeks. Program officers read each application individually, apply scoring rubrics by hand, and aggregate results in spreadsheets. With Blackbaud Grantmaking, there's no automated way to pre-score essays against rubrics, extract key themes from recommendation letters, or flag incomplete applications before they reach reviewers.
After grants are awarded, the real work begins: collecting progress data from grantees, analyzing whether programs are achieving intended outcomes, and reporting results to boards and stakeholders. Blackbaud Grantmaking handles the application phase well, but grantee data collection and impact measurement require separate tools — creating data fragmentation that makes it impossible to connect application data to outcomes data without manual matching.
Most foundations using Blackbaud Grantmaking produce annual reports that summarize grant distributions, category breakdowns, and basic outcome metrics. But they can't answer deeper questions: Which programs actually produced the strongest outcomes? What do grantees' own narratives reveal about implementation challenges? How do outcomes compare across different program strategies? The platform's reporting capabilities end where impact analysis begins.
Small to mid-size foundations with lean teams often find that Blackbaud Grantmaking's complexity exceeds their operational capacity. The platform was designed for enterprise grantmakers with dedicated IT staff and implementation consultants. Smaller teams report spending more time navigating the system's complexity than actually reviewing applications and measuring impact.
Sopact approaches the grant management challenge from a fundamentally different starting point. Rather than building a traditional workflow tool and attempting to add AI features later, Sopact was designed as an AI-native platform where intelligent analysis is the core capability — not an add-on or premium tier.
This difference in architecture matters because it changes what's possible at every stage of the grantmaking lifecycle: application intake, review, data collection, and impact measurement.
Every participant, applicant, or grantee in Sopact receives a persistent unique identifier from the moment they first interact with your system. This means:
Blackbaud Grantmaking doesn't provide this. Application data, reviewer scores, and post-award reporting exist in separate data stores that require manual reconciliation to connect.
Sopact's Intelligent Cell technology can analyze every component of a grant application — essays, uploaded PDFs, transcripts, recommendation letters — using plain-English prompts that mirror your rubric criteria.
Instead of manually reading 300 scholarship essays, you define your evaluation criteria: "Score this essay on clarity of goals (1-5), demonstrated need (1-5), and community impact potential (1-5). Flag any essays that mention first-generation college student status." Sopact processes all 300 applications and returns structured scores, themes, and flags — in minutes rather than weeks.
This doesn't replace human judgment. It augments it by ensuring every application receives consistent rubric evaluation, freeing reviewers to focus their attention on the most promising candidates and edge cases that require nuanced human assessment.
After grant awards, Sopact continues as the data collection platform for grantee partners. The same system that managed applications now deploys surveys, collects progress reports, and accepts document uploads from grantees — all linked to their original application data through persistent unique IDs.
Self-correction links allow grantees to update or fix their own data submissions without requiring admin intervention. If a grantee submits a quarterly report with a data error, they receive a unique link to correct it directly — eliminating the back-and-forth email chains that consume program officer time.
This is where the gap between Blackbaud Grantmaking and Sopact becomes most pronounced. Sopact's Intelligent Suite (Cell, Row, Column, Grid) transforms grant data from static reports into continuous learning:
This comparison focuses specifically on the areas that matter most for grant application management, partner data collection, and impact measurement — the three capabilities where Blackbaud Grantmaking users report the greatest unmet needs.
With Blackbaud Grantmaking:A program team of three people spends six weeks reviewing applications. Each reviewer reads 150-170 applications manually, scoring against rubrics in the reviewer portal. Incomplete applications require email follow-up. Final results are compiled in spreadsheets. Post-award tracking happens in a separate system. Year-end impact report takes two months to compile.
With Sopact:Applications are collected through customized forms with built-in validation that prevents incomplete submissions. AI-powered review scores all 500 applications against rubric criteria in under an hour. Reviewers focus on the top 100 candidates and edge cases flagged by AI analysis. Self-correction links resolve data issues without staff intervention. Post-award surveys deploy through the same platform, linked to each recipient's unique ID. Impact analysis is available in real-time as grantee data comes in.
Time saved: Application review compressed from 6 weeks to 3 days. Year-end reporting from 2 months to same-day.
With Blackbaud Grantmaking:Grantee progress reports arrive as email attachments or through a separate reporting portal. Program officers read each narrative report, extract key metrics manually, and update tracking spreadsheets. Quarterly board reports require compiling data from multiple sources. Identifying trends across all 50 grantees requires consultant engagement.
With Sopact:Grantees submit progress data through a branded portal linked to their unique ID. Narrative reports, uploaded documents, and survey data are all captured in one place. Intelligent Column analysis automatically identifies themes across all 50 grantees — what's working, what challenges are emerging, and how outcomes compare. Board reports generate in minutes with both quantitative metrics and qualitative insight synthesis.
Time saved: Quarterly reporting from 3 weeks to 1 day. Cross-grantee analysis from "never done" to automatic.
Any fair comparison should acknowledge where Blackbaud Grantmaking has genuine strengths:
Ecosystem Integration. For organizations already using Raiser's Edge NXT for donor management and Financial Edge NXT for accounting, Blackbaud Grantmaking provides native integration that maintains data flow across fundraising, grantmaking, and finance. If your organization is deeply invested in the Blackbaud ecosystem, this integration has real operational value.
Compliance and Auditing. Blackbaud Grantmaking has mature compliance capabilities including audit trails, user permission management, and integration with Candid for tax verification and CSI WatchDOG for watchlist screening. Organizations with strict regulatory requirements benefit from these built-in safeguards.
Established Grant Lifecycle Workflows. The platform has been refined over many years for standard grantmaking workflows — LOI intake, multi-stage applications, reviewer assignment, board approval, payment processing, and reporting. For organizations that need a traditional workflow tool without AI capabilities, Blackbaud Grantmaking delivers a complete lifecycle solution.
Multi-Entity Management. Foundations managing multiple grantmaking entities can maintain separate data, reporting, and user access within a single platform — a capability that simplifies administration for complex organizational structures.
Blackbaud Grantmaking may be the right choice for your organization if:
Sopact is the better choice when:
The best Blackbaud Grantmaking alternative depends on your primary need. For organizations seeking AI-powered application review combined with partner data collection and impact measurement, Sopact provides a modern alternative that compresses review cycles from weeks to hours. Sopact's unique ID management and integrated qualitative analysis address the data fragmentation that Blackbaud Grantmaking users most commonly report as their primary frustration.
Blackbaud Grantmaking starts at $325/month with custom enterprise pricing that typically ranges from $4,000 to $20,000+ annually depending on organization size and features. Many users report restrictive multi-year contracts with no exit clauses. Sopact offers competitive pricing with unlimited users and forms included — eliminating the per-seat cost model that drives up Blackbaud licensing as teams grow.
Sopact manages the complete grant lifecycle through a different architectural approach. Application intake uses customizable multi-stage forms with built-in validation. AI-powered review replaces manual scoring. Post-award data collection happens in the same platform through persistent unique IDs. Impact analysis uses the Intelligent Suite for automated qualitative and quantitative analysis. The key difference is that Sopact treats the post-award phase — data collection and impact measurement — as equally important to the application phase.
Sopact is platform-agnostic and integrates through standard data export capabilities. While it doesn't have native Blackbaud ecosystem integration, organizations can export data from Sopact in standard formats compatible with Financial Edge NXT and other accounting systems. For organizations not already locked into the Blackbaud ecosystem, this independence is an advantage — avoiding vendor lock-in while maintaining data portability.
Sopact's Intelligent Cell analyzes application components — essays, uploaded PDFs, recommendation letters, transcripts — using natural language prompts that mirror your scoring rubrics. You define criteria in plain English ("Score on clarity of goals, demonstrated need, and community impact potential") and the system evaluates every application consistently. Results include structured scores, extracted themes, and compliance flags. Human reviewers then focus their expertise on top candidates and edge cases rather than reading every submission from scratch.
Sopact supports data import from existing grantmaking systems. Historical application data, grantee records, and reporting data can be migrated to maintain continuity. Sopact's unique ID system then provides persistent tracking going forward, connecting imported historical records with new data collection automatically.
Sopact was designed specifically to reduce operational burden for lean teams. Unlike Blackbaud Grantmaking, which requires significant administrative overhead and often dedicated implementation consultants, Sopact's AI-native approach means smaller teams accomplish more with less manual effort. Self-correction links reduce back-and-forth communication with grantees, AI review eliminates manual application scoring, and automated reporting replaces month-long compilation processes.
Sopact provides complete data traceability through its unique ID system, with full audit trails on all data modifications. The platform supports GDPR and US data privacy compliance. While Sopact doesn't include Candid or CSI WatchDOG integrations natively, its data architecture ensures every interaction and modification is logged and traceable — meeting the fundamental compliance requirement of knowing who changed what, when, and why.
