The Christensen Fund Finds Grants Management Software That Grows As the Funder Grows

The San Francisco-based Christensen Fund focuses its philanthropic efforts in regions of the world chosen for their potential to withstand and recover from the global erosion of diversity. Most of the foundation’s program officers are located in these regions, including the African Rift Valley, Northwestern Mexico, Melanesia, and Central Asia. 

To fulfill its mission of helping create a more biodiverse world, the Christensen Fund realized it needed a more flexible and forward thinking grants management solution. By early 2013, the foundation knew there was a smarter, more efficient way to award its $15 million of grants a year, and that it was time for a change. 

“A lot of the products we were looking at felt old and rigid. They seemed to be trying to shoehorn new technology into an old outdated structure,” says Brian Burgin, a grants manager at Christensen who specializes in processes and systems at the foundation. Christiansen was searching for a “more dynamic” grants management software solution.

Fluxx was an attractive option, Burgin says, because it “was designed by grantmakers for grantmakers.” Additionally Fluxx’s vision for the future of the product and the future of the grantmaking space made it the foundation’s top choice for a new grants management system.

Christensen went live with Fluxx in August 2014. Since then, Fluxx’s configurable dashboards and intuitive interface has allowed the foundation to cut down on extraneous ­– at times cumbersome – processes and streamline their workflows.

What's more, the software has the ability to grow with the foundation as its processes grow and evolve.  “It’s going to be the driver of helping us do things a lot more efficiently in the future,” Burgin says. Christensen is secure in the knowledge that they have the tools in place to go where they want to go. Click here to get the rest of the Christensen Fund story, and hear how Fluxx will help take Christensen's grantmaking into the future.