Using Pipelines to Manage Grant Applications in Humanitru

Humanitru Pipelines give your organization a structured, purpose-built way to track grant applications from start to finish — from the moment you identify a funding opportunity through submission, award decision, and post-award reporting. Rather than piecing together tags, campaigns, and manual notes, Pipelines keep everything related to a single grant application in one place, with clear stages, assigned owners, logged actions, and running totals.

This article walks you through how to set up and use a Grant Management Pipeline in Humanitru, with guidance on each stage and how to track your team’s work throughout the grant lifecycle.

Use this guide when you want to:

• Set up a Pipeline to manage grant applications to foundations, government agencies, or other institutional funders
• Track the status of individual grant opportunities across your team
• Log actions such as application submissions, site visits, and award notifications
• Understand how Humanitru’s pipeline stages can be mapped to your real-world grant process

Read the Pipelines Overview & FAQs article before this one if you are new to Pipelines and want a foundational understanding of how the module works.

Step-by-Step Instructions

Part A: Navigate to Pipelines

1. Log in to Humanitru and click Pipelines in the left-hand navigation menu.
2. The All Pipelines page loads. You will see two tabs: Pipelines (a summary view of all your Pipelines) and All Opportunities (a table of every individual Opportunity across all Pipelines).
3. To create a new Grant Pipeline, click the green Create New Pipeline button in the top right corner.

Fill out the Pipeline creation form with the following information:

1. Pipeline Name — Give the Pipeline a name that identifies the grant program or funder. For example: "Community Foundation Grants 2027" or "Capital Campaign Grants." Names must be unique across your organization.
2. Goal Amount — Enter the total funding you are seeking across all grant applications in this Pipeline. This becomes the benchmark for tracking progress.
3. End Date — Enter the target close date for this Pipeline (for example, the end of your grant cycle or fiscal year). End dates must be in the future.
4. Description (optional) — Add a brief description to distinguish this Pipeline from others, especially useful if you manage multiple grant programs at once.
5. Campaigns (optional) — Associate relevant Campaigns with this Pipeline so that all Actions logged to its Opportunities are automatically tagged.

When you configure your Pipeline’s stages, you define the steps a grant application moves through from initial identification to final outcome. The screenshot below shows a recommended set of stages for a Grant Management Pipeline. You can customize stage names to match your organization’s terminology and needs.

Note: Stages can be reordered by dragging and dropping them during Pipeline setup. The Declined and Stewardship stages are fixed and will always appear regardless of order.

Once the Pipeline is saved, you are ready to add individual Opportunities — one per grant application or funder relationship.

1. From your Pipeline’s Overview or Opportunities tab, click Add Opportunity.
2. Search for and select the constituent (foundation, agency, or individual funder) associated with this grant.
3. Enter the Ask Amount (the amount you are requesting from this funder) and, if known, a Projected Amount (your team’s best estimate of what will come in).
4. Assign the Opportunity to the staff member responsible for this application.
5. Set the initial stage. Most new grant applications will start in Application Due.

Actions are the heartbeat of an Opportunity — they record every meaningful touchpoint in the grant relationship. As your application moves through stages, log Actions to build a complete audit trail.

Common grant-related Actions to log:

• LOI submitted — log with the submission date
• Full application submitted — log with the deadline date and any confirmation number
• Site visit or funder meeting — log as a meeting Action with notes
• Award notification received — log as a Donation Action and verify it to populate the Actual Amount
• Decline notification received — log the date and move the Opportunity to Declined
• Progress or final report submitted — log when moving through Grant Outcome Reporting Due

Future-dated Actions are marked Unverified and excluded from summary statistics until the date passes and a user manually verifies them. Past-dated Actions are auto-verified.

You can add Actions directly on the Opportunity or you can add existing Actions to an Opportunity by applying the Opporunity ID Campaign.