SmartSimple Blog

2021 was a challenging year. While the pandemic continued to impact nearly every aspect of our lives, it was not a lost year here at SmartSimple. In fact, quite the opposite.

2021 was a year to celebrate. With a long list of successes, we’re an even stronger global technology provider heading into 2022.

Security update regarding the critical Apache Log4j Security Vulnerability

Bigger Impact Together: SmartSimple Cloud for Grants Management, Vancouver Foundation & Amazon Web Services

We are proud to be featured on AWS.com.

Amazon Web Services, the world’s largest cloud service provider, recently profiled Vancouver Foundation in a featured story highlighting their efforts during the pandemic.

2020 and 2021 have been extremely challenging for all of us. A global pandemic, the adoption of remote work, and taking the precautions necessary to keep friends and family safe have exhausted many of us.

SmartSimple acknowledges this and has invested heavily in the health and well-being of all employees. Key initiatives include reduced summer hours, a "work doula," monthly mental health all-company huddles, and now – Global Recharge Week – for all SmartSimple staff.

Imagine two grantmaking organizations, A and B. They each need to buy software to manage their contact relationships, operations, and finances, but they go about it very differently. Grantmaker A buys a technology suite from a single vendor, and uses it for everything. Grantmaker B, on the other hand, buys a specific solution for each function from different vendors, and then integrates them all.

Both approaches can be successfully implemented if done right, but organizations of all sizes are increasingly adopting the “best-of-breed” model in order to maximize their productivity and impact. With best-of-breed, you select the best solutions to solve each of your organization’s functional challenges and integrate them together where needed.

The upside to the best-of-breed approach is clear enough. That is, its intent is to leverage the best technologies to manage each functional need with the idea that if you’re using the best, you get the best results. Of course, in practice that isn’t always the case. There are a million and one cases of organizations that have cobbled together multiple technologies only to end up with a Frankenstein-looking tech stack where technologies can’t fit together well because there’s incongruent flow of data between the various technologies.