Knight Foundation: Poised to Revolutionize Grantmaking

The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation makes 450 to 500 grants a year worth some $125 million. The foundation is considered one of the premier grantmakers in the country. But that didn’t stop the folks at Knight from wanting to be even more impactful.

About two years ago Knight began looking for a grants management system that was configurable and would facilitate a more efficient grantmaking process. At the time, Knight took anywhere from 30 to 60 days to make a grant. And the whole process was less than transparent, both internally and to Knight’s grantees, according to Dan Schoenfeld, Knight’s Director of Grants Administration.

Knight also asked their grantees what they needed to do to improve the grantmaking process. The grantees said they wanted more transparency and better ways to collaborate.

Knight’s solution? The foundation decided to switch to Fluxx, and now about 64 of Knight’s internal staff and trustees, as well as more than 300 of their grantees use Fluxx on a daily basis.

Schoenfeld told us how life has changed since making the switch.

Fluxx is not only a robust, technologically advanced grants management system, it’s also highly intuitive. Fluxx dashboards, for example, have given Knight complete visibility and transparency into the entire grantmaking process. “From an efficiency standpoint, it’s just night and day,” said Schoenfeld.

Fluxx dashboards and its defined workflow have shifted the accountability to where it needs to be in the foundation, according to Schoenfeld. There’s a lot less confusion now. It simplifies an unnecessarily complicated grantmaking process, he said.

Plus, the portability of a cloud-based solution like Fluxx is also a big win for Knight because their program staff travel extensively. “We were in Chicago at the art museum where we’ve funded several grants in the past,” said Schoenfeld. “A reporter asked us what Knight has given to the museum, and about four of us whip out our iPhones and look in Fluxx to see how many grants we’ve given, at what dollar amount, and when the last grant was given.”

Fluxx completely changed the way Knight goes about the business of making grants, according to Schoenfeld. “You don’t really think a nonprofit or a foundation needs to deal with efficiency, but when you’re talking about grants and grantee relationships, it’s not as simple as just giving away money,” he said. “Now, we have the advantage of being part of the Fluxx community. We could actually revolutionize this space.”

Thanks to Dan Schoenfeld, the director of grants administration at Knight Foundation, for sharing his success story with us.

See how Knight reduced the grantmaking process from 22 steps to 11 and improved its grantmaking speed by 60 percent.