Children's Transplant Initiative · Customer Story

"Grant Frog gives me structure. I can find any information I need on any of the foundations we're working with — the whole history of everything we've done is in there. It's easy to navigate, and it's invaluable. Anybody running a nonprofit, I highly encourage them to check it out, because it's well worth it."

Ross Witty
President & CEO, Children's Transplant Initiative

• Every Foundation Relationship in One PlaceFor a two-person team and CTI’s dedicated grant consultant
• Nearly 500 Families Helped, Nearly 20,000 Nights of Free HousingSince CTI launched in 2017
• A Dedicated Grants Process, Finally in One PlaceHome to every grant, foundation note, and proposal CTI tracks

About

Children’s Transplant Initiative (CTI) supports children and families through every stage of a pediatric organ transplant — heart, liver, kidney, or lung. Since launching in 2017, the Houston-based nonprofit has grown to operate 16 fully furnished apartments free of charge near children’s hospitals in Houston, Austin, and Dallas, to give families a place to stay while navigating their child’s transplant journey, alongside financial assistance covering parking, food, gas, medicine, and co-pays. The organization has now helped nearly 500 families and provided nearly 20,000 nights of no-cost housing.

Ross and Cheryl Witty founded CTI in 2016, out of their own family’s transplant journey. Their daughter Kimmy was diagnosed with a rare genetic kidney disorder at 12. Both parents were tested as possible donors and were each an unusually close match. Ross gave Kimmy his kidney in November 2011. Five years later, at 17, Kimmy told her parents she wanted to use what she’d been through to help other kids facing a transplant - and CTI was born.

Ross Witty, President and CEO, runs the organization’s fundraising and funder relationships, largely built through direct outreach to the private, corporate, and community foundations across Texas that fund CTI’s programs. Cheryl Witty serves as Director of Operations. In June 2026, the story came full circle: Kimmy joined CTI full-time as Family Services Coordinator, after several years working as a child life specialist at a children’s hospital — now working directly with families facing the same transplant journey she once did.

Overview

CTI has grown from a two-person effort into an organization running housing programs in three major Texas cities, with its first capital campaign now underway for a new apartment complex near Texas Medical Center. Grants from foundations across those cities are what let CTI offer that housing to families at no cost, and what will help fund its upcoming capital campaign. A growing grants program needs a dedicated process behind it, and Carol, CTI’s grant consultant since 2021, brought that expertise. They needed a system built for that process.

CTI partnered with Grant Frog, grants management software for nonprofits to give that process a permanent home — one place for grants, grant reports, funder relationship cultivation, notes, and the history behind it.

Challenge

CTI has run a dedicated grants process since Carol came on as grant consultant in 2021. When the system they’d relied on was discontinued, they needed something built specifically for a real grants program. Specifically, CTI needed:

• Migrating without losing years of grant history — When CTI’s previous system was discontinued, foundation relationships and grant work needed a new home.
• One home for grants work across three major Texas cities — Proposal strategy and funder outreach for Houston, Austin, and Dallas needed one place the whole team could rely on.
• One system for the whole grants lifecycle — Foundation research, proposal tracking, and grant reporting needed to work together, not live in separate tools.

Solution — Grant Frog Grants Management Software for Nonprofits

Grant Frog gave CTI’s grants process a permanent home: every foundation relationship, the notes behind it, and the funder history, all in one system.

• White-Glove Data Migration — Grant Frog’s team migrated years of CTI’s foundation relationships and grant records out of its previous system, so nothing needed to be rebuilt from scratch.
• One system behind the whole team’s grants work — Foundation notes and grant history sit in a shared workspace, so nothing about the grants program depends on any one person’s memory.
• One system for the whole grants lifecycle — Foundation research, proposal tracking, and grant reporting all live in Grant Frog together, so nothing has to be pieced together from separate tools.

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• White-Glove Data Migration
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Nonprofit organizations using Grant Frog

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Why Ross Recommends Grant Frog to Other Nonprofits

CTI has fully adopted Grant Frog, and Ross doesn’t hesitate to recommend it when other nonprofit leaders ask what software he uses. The platform holds the foundation relationships and grant history behind CTI’s fundraising, migrated over without losing a thing when their previous system went away.

What all of that supports is CTI’s real work: showing up for families in the middle of a pediatric transplant, from the day their child is listed through however long treatment takes. Whether that’s a gift card to cover parking and meals near the hospital or a fully furnished, no-cost apartment two blocks from Texas Children’s, Dell Children’s, or Children’s Health, it’s the same mission the Witty family has carried since 2016 — when Ross, Cheryl, and Kimmy turned their own transplant journey into support for the families who’d go through it next.