The Grant Catalog is a crowdfunding and co-funding feature in CommunitySuite that connects donors, fund advisors, and nonprofits around specific funding needs. Donors and fund advisors browse a curated list of grant requests on the Giving Hub or Portal and contribute directly, and those donations are tracked through to the resulting grants paid out to nonprofits. Running a grant catalog requires going through planning, setup, request processing, and post-catalog reporting.
Who: Donor relations teams, grant program staff, finance teams, and administrators who plan, set up, and manage grant catalogs.
How the Grant Catalog Works
A grant catalog is highly configurable. Settings control when it is open for funding requests and donations, whether it is public or private, and how it displays to donors and fund advisors. More than one grant catalog can be active at a time. Once a grant catalog is set up, it can be found on the Grant Catalog tab of the Giving Hub, on the Fund Management tab of the Portal, or both.
Grants in the catalog are organized by grant category or grant type, which determine how requests are grouped and filtered for donors. At least one grant category should be configured before adding grants to the catalog, or grant types can be enabled to populate as categories automatically.
Plan Before You Build
Planning helps align a catalog's purpose, audience, and timeline before setup begins. Key areas to plan for include the catalog's goals, marketing strategy, and how grant requests will be created, along with a budget and timeline for launch. Planning ahead of time also means considering post-catalog steps, like reporting and fund distribution, before the catalog opens.
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Set Up the Dedicated Fund
A dedicated fund acts as the pass-through fund for a grant catalog, holding donations as they come in and paying out grants once they are fully funded. It is recommended to create the dedicated fund before creating the grant catalog record, since CommunitySuite requires the fund to exist first. Setting the fund's structure and settings correctly from the start helps its balance reconcile cleanly to catalog activity.
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Create and Configure the Catalog
Setting up a grant catalog involves creating the catalog record and choosing how grantees and grant requests will be added. Grantees can complete an online request form, staff can create requests in bulk in CommunitySuite without grantee involvement, or grants can be added manually. Grant categories or grant types can be used to organize how requests display and filter within the catalog. Additional settings control how the catalog and its requests appear to donors and fund advisors once it is live. Each catalog has a unique URL and QR code that can be shared publicly or with a private group.
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Process Grant Requests
Submitted grant requests move to the Grants Catalog bucket, where staff can review and approve them individually or in bulk before they appear in the catalog. A fund and grant category are selected during approval, unless a Fund and Use Grant Types for Categories is already set on the grant catalog. Requests can also be edited or rejected before moving forward.
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Grant Catalogs on the Giving Hub
The Grant Catalog page of the Giving Hub is where donors browse and fund individual grant requests, searching or filtering by grantee, fund, service area, or grant category. Each listing displays an image, short description, and progress toward its funding goal.
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Integrate the Grant Catalog with GLM
Organizations using both GLM and CommunitySuite can promote GLM grant requests directly into a CommunitySuite grant catalog, either before or after the GLM approval process. Funding progress on a synced request stays visible in both systems.
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Offset Credit Card Fees and Distribute Matching Grants
Public donations to a grant catalog are commonly made by credit card, and the associated processing fees can be offset rather than absorbed by the receiving fund. The Adjust Net of Fees bulk action automatically reduces grants by their associated credit card fees. Matching grants can also be distributed as a total amount divided proportionally, a specific amount per grant, or a percentage of each grant amount, using a matching fund that is distinct from the grant catalog fund.
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Close the Grant Catalog
Once a catalog closes, partially funded or overfunded grants are edited to match the actual donation amount, holds are removed from zero-dollar grants, credit card fees are adjusted and matching grants applied if applicable, and fully funded grants are posted and approved. Donor information can then be exported and shared with grantees, either by staff or directly by grantees with Portal access.
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