"For the product that the Grant Frog team has put together, it's an incredible value for anyone. With Grant Frog, I can go to a single dashboard. My entire history was imported and uploaded, so I can click on any funder and see my history with them. On my dashboard page, I can see 30 to 90 days out and what's coming down the pipeline. That's critical to me." 

Lisa Pearce
Senior Grants Administrator
Charleston Animal Society

About

Charleston Animal Society is an animal welfare organization serving South Carolina's Lowcountry and special state-wide projects. Founded in 1874, it's South Carolina's first animal-protection organization and the group that led Charleston County to become the first No Kill community in the Southeast.

Today it's the state's largest animal lifesaving organization and a top-rated nonprofit with multiple consecutive years of exemplary financial audits. They care for over 35,000 animals each year, spay or neuter more than 15,000, and their grants power disaster preparedness and response, animal transport, spay/neuter and adoption, and statewide lifesaving initiatives.

Leading that grant work is Lisa Pearce, Senior Grants Administrator. Lisa has raised upwards of $10 million for Charleston Animal Society across corporations, foundations, private businesses, in-kind support, and donor-advised grants. In addition, she’s grown the Society's annual grant funding to over $1.2 million a year. She has built and cultivated relationships with multiple well-known national funders, many of which turned into multi-year support for staffing and capital projects.

Project Overview

Charleston Animal Society's grants program had grown into an operation spanning disaster response grants, transport, statewide initiatives, and relationships with some of the best-known national funders in animal welfare. Lisa helped build and organize the grants program and grant history for the society. But she needed as dedicated grants system that could continue to grow and support the organization long-term. And knew keeping grants data scattered in multiple places wasn't sustainable.

She partnered with Grant Frog to bring everything - grants, grant reports, funders, and deadlines - into one platform built specifically for grants work.

What Lisa needed most:

• A dashboard built for the daily work of a Grants Administrator, not a generic donor system or accounting software
• All of the Society's grant and funder history in one place she could open and use instantly with the ability to share with others in the organization
• Automated reminders that reach program leaders, not just her own inbox
• A 30-to-90-day view of what’s due, so no deadline is missed
• Grant files she can hand to finance and auditors the moment they're requested

What Grant Frog delivered:

• A centralized platform for grants, grant reports, funders, and deadlines, with an easy-to-use dashboard for her most important work
• White-glove migration that imported their grant history into the platform in a matter of days
• Automated deadline reminders that route to the right person
• Funder relationship management and reserach with Funder Intelligence, a database of 200,000+ foundations connected to the pipeline
• Reporting and record access built for CFO and audit requests

Challenge

Lisa had done remarkable work building Charleston Animal Society's grants program, significantly increasing annual funding with the tools she had. She had been running the program across a mix of tools - spreadsheets, an outdated grants system, and Google Calendar reminders. Those tools had carried the program a long way; she was ready to move to something purpose-built so the organization had dedicated grants management software.

Challenges before Grant Frog:

• Using a variety of different tools - Running the grants program across a system, spreadsheets, a calendar, and scanned folders meant her attention was split across several places. She wanted a single system she could open and trust for the whole picture.
  
  
• Grant and funder history in multiple places - She had spent time hand-organizing and scanning older grant records to ensure the organization knew their funding history. That history needed to be available and ready for the future of the organization.
  
  
• Deadlines that lived in various tools - With disaster, transport, statewide, and multi-year national grants all in motion at once, staying ahead meant juggling multiple deadlines, without a system built to back her up. 
  
  
• No cohesive team collaboration around grants - To hit grant report deadlines meant emailing each department head and project manager to capture their data. She wanted reminders that went out automatically to the person responsible.

Solution - Grant Frog

With Grant Frog in place, Charleston Animal Society's grants program runs with the same care and ambition it always had - now with more collaboration and a central place for their grants program. 

Instead of piecing the picture together from multiple places - spreadsheets, a calendar, and scanned folders, she opens one dashboard and sees where every grant, funder, and deadline stands. The time that used to go to tracking things down and following up with people now goes back to the work of building funder relationships and writing strong proposals.

• A central platform built for grants, not a generic add-on - She knew the big donor and accounting platforms well, but they aren’t made for the daily work of a Grants Administrator. She wanted software designed to ensure their grants program and revenue grew.
  

• White-glove migration from a decade of grant work - Grant Frog's team imported and uploaded their grant history into the platform, so Lisa can open any funder and see her full record with them instantly. The history she once preserved by hand now works for her, instead of waiting in folders to be dug through.
  
  
• The entire grants dashboard and calendar in one place - Lisa opens a single page and sees exactly what deadlines are up next, no more digging through Excel spreadsheets and Google Calendar reminders. Seeing the next three months at a glance keeps a high-volume program ahead of its deliverables.
  
  
• Automate reminders to multiple departments - Rather than trying to wrangle project details from project managers and department heads herself, Lisa can assign tasks with automated email reminder notifications to reach the person responsible for each grant and report. 
  

• Grant data ready for finance the moment they're asked for - Because everything sits in one place, Lisa can quickly provide accurate grant data for her CFO or auditors without rebuilding a thing. What used to mean digging through archives is now a quick pull from one source.

For Charleston Animal Society, Grant Frog matched the ambition of a grants program that grew from $330,000 to over $1.2 million a year for the animals in its care. And it gives the organization and Lisa a system dedicated to supporting the great work they do.

Real People Behind the Platform

For Lisa, part of what sets Grant Frog apart is that the platform is affordable and easy to move through - and there are real people behind it who understand the work. Having a responsive team who understands grants and built the system has made all the difference.