Charleston Animal Society

Nonprofit and Grantseeking Clients

Client Background

The Charleston Animal Society’s mission has always stayed the same: The Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. In 1874, it became one of the nation’s first shelters, and since its establishment, it has never turned local animals away. The Charleston Animal Society has a vision where all healthy and treatable animals are saved. It’s a vision where all people and animals are treated with respect and kindness. And it envisions a world where cruelty is not tolerated.

Challenges

Worrying about missing deadlines
Difficulties researching and accessing 990s
Having to manually create multiple grant reports for the CEO or board

At my previous organization, I managed our grant process with Excel spreadsheets, templates, and loads of meetings with project staff. It was manageable until I came to Charleston Animal Society. The previous grants administrator had implemented GrantHub here for upwards of 46 awards. They ranged from $500 to $138,000, mostly from foundations and smaller private foundations. Before starting at the Charleston Animal Society and using GrantHub, I often faced the nightmare of missing a deadline or report. GrantHub’s email reminders eliminated those. Once I set up an opportunity with a funder, it's easy! At the time of the award/check deposit, I add the required reporting dates and forget about it! I generally set a 30-day reminder, as that lead time is key to activating program staff and department heads that we must report on impact. The second pain I faced was researching and accessing 990s. With GrantHub, I can click the resource icon and access GrantStation. Also, clicking into a funder profile to upload their Candid profile is super easy. I very much appreciate both GrantStation and the ease of interface with Candid. Generating multiple grant reports for my CEO or the board was another challenge I faced. I can now download a graphic along with CSV/Excel reports, such as Opportunity Win Percentages, to work with my chief financial officer. There is so much more in reporting—I’m sure I’ve only touched the tip of the iceberg!

Solution

GrantHub has changed the way I work, providing me with a dedicated space to get organized and feel confident in my workflow. As a one-person department, I need to stay on top of multiple processes, and with my GrantHub dashboard, I feel that I can. GrantHub has also allowed me to do things I couldn’t do with my previous system, such as pulling reports in minutes and having automatic email reminders go out to key leadership when reports are due.

Aside from GrantHub, partnering with Foundant has been beneficial to our organization. One of the best things about Foundant is that when I contact support through the GrantHub chat feature, a human actually responds! Every time I have reached out via chat with a question, it has been addressed in a timely or near-immediate fashion with clear and helpful responses. This is a point I make when I advocate for using this management system. There is nothing worse than being trapped with a bot under a deadline.

Aside from Foundant support, Charleston Animal Society subscribes year after year to GrantHub because of the price and the product. It is reasonable!