How Andersen Corporation Scaled Grantmaking Across Nine Locations with a Two-Person Team

As Andersen Corporation’s grantmaking expanded from a local program to nine locations nationwide, its paper- and email-based processes could no longer keep up. With more than 200 applications per cycle and only a two-person team, manual data entry, compliance tracking, and applicant support quickly created bottlenecks.

Andersen Corporation adopted Blackbaud Grantmaking to bring structure and scalability to its operations. “We’re a very small team, basically two of us, and the foundation is only part of our roles,” Anna Bosak, manager of community relations and corporate giving explained. “I have all my assignment emails preset, many of them automatically scheduled, with reminders built in. I spend maybe 15 minutes a week on compliance tracking because it’s automated—it’s one click to send emails to a large group.”

With routine work streamlined, Bosak spends less time chasing requirements and more time supporting grantees and keeping programs on track. Over time, she has expanded how the team uses the platform, introducing conditional logic, automating coding, and building custom searches and views to simplify reporting. What was once a manual, error-prone process now runs efficiently at scale, enabling a small team to manage complexity with confidence.

Eliminating Manual Work with Conditional Logic and Automation

When Andersen Corporation redesigned its grant applications for Blackbaud Grantmaking’s new portal, Bosak saw an opportunity to rethink how data flows into the system. She introduced conditional logic so that applicant inputs—such as geography or request type—automatically trigger relevant follow-up questions. She also built hidden coding for fund, internal program, geography, and other categories, ensuring applications arrive pre-classified.

Previously, staff manually coded each submission after import, with five or six fields per application. Across more than 200 applications per cycle, that meant thousands of manual entries and frequent audits to catch errors. “When there’s two of us and over 200 applications coming in at a time, mistakes would get made—and then we had to go back and audit that,” Bosak said. “Now, with Blackbaud Grantmaking, applications come in already coded the way they’re supposed to be, and I don’t have to worry about the errors anymore.”

The foundation applied the same automation-first approach to acknowledgment letters. Previously, Bosak managed a fully manual process: sorting daily mail, scanning documents, uploading files, and following up when required language was missing. The process could take up to 60 days to complete.

Now, grantees upload acknowledgment letters directly within Blackbaud Grantmaking as a digital requirement. Bosak reviews submissions from a dashboard, spending just a few minutes each day over a short window to confirm compliance. “I have all of the acknowledgment letters collected and verified in our system within 30 days of checks going out now using Blackbaud Grantmaking,” she said. “That used to be more like 60 days because if somebody’s letter was wrong, the back and forth extended that process pretty far.”

By eliminating manual coding and digitizing compliance workflows, the team has reduced errors, cut processing time in half, and freed up capacity to manage a growing volume of applications without adding staff.

Improving the Applicant and Reviewer Experience

The migration to Blackbaud Grantmaking’s new applicant portal delivered an immediate quality-of-life upgrade for organizations applying for funding. The interface now aligns with what applicants expect from a modern online form, reducing friction from the start. Features like the ability to copy an application from one funder to another—or reuse a previous submission—help eliminate redundant data entry for grantees.

The impact on Bosak’s workload has been just as significant. “In an average grant cycle before Blackbaud Grantmaking’s new application portal, I would get five to ten questions a week from people saying they can’t log in, can’t reset their password, or don’t understand how to navigate the system,” she said. “That’s gone almost to zero.”

On the review side, approximately 30 employees across Andersen Corp’s locations—including plant managers, HR professionals, and finance staff—use the external reviewer module to evaluate grant requests. These reviewers are not part of the foundation team and typically engage with the system only twice a year. Despite that, they require no formal training because the system is so easy to use.

Once reviews are complete, Bosak seamlessly pulls that feedback into preconfigured board book reports, keeping the entire process—from evaluation to reporting—within a single system. “Blackbaud Grantmaking’s review module so intuitive that reviewers don’t need guidance—they can just jump in, complete their evaluations, and move on,” she said.

Powering Board Reporting, Audits, and Future Funding Decisions

Producing a 200-page board book, supporting an annual audit, and feeding an internal Power BI dashboard could easily consume an entire team’s bandwidth. Bosak has streamlined all three by building customized saved searches and views in Blackbaud Grantmaking.

Early on, she relied on preset reports, but over time recognized that combining saved searches with tailored views gave her far greater control—over which data fields appear, how they’re formatted, and how quickly they can be exported. Because auditors and board members require different formats and levels of detail, this approach allows her to maintain a single source of truth while producing distinct, audience-specific deliverables in minutes.

“Blackbaud Grantmaking makes it easy to pull exactly what each audience needs without recreating anything—it all comes from the same data,” explained Bosak.

For audit readiness, the foundation tracks three key tax status fields—509 status, public charity status, and 501(c)(3) status—along with verification dates and the staff member who completed each check using Candid verification. When auditors request details on a random sample of grants, Bosak can quickly locate the records, pull acknowledgment letter attachments and tax status data, and deliver a complete package without chasing down files across systems.

The same infrastructure also supports forward-looking funding decisions. Final report forms auto-populate with the outcomes each grantee defined in their original application, allowing organizations to report directly against their own goals. This keeps the process lightweight for grantees and ensures results are immediately useful for the board.

“Blackbaud Grantmaking gives us a complete picture, so we can connect past performance to future funding decisions all in one place,” said Bosak.