Foundations & grantmakers
Move faster without compromising stewardship.
Foundations hold sensitive information, public trust, and board oversight with lean teams. We help you use Microsoft 365, Microsoft Copilot (formerly Microsoft 365 Copilot), agents, data, and automation to create capacity while keeping governance visible and defensible.
Had a security incident, or does the board expect its data secured with the care of a financial institution? Start with Secure & Govern Microsoft and CompleteCare Shield, managed security operations.
What foundation leaders are balancing
Start with the pressure on the institution, not the product.
Foundations carry sensitive information, public trust, board oversight, and lean teams at the same time. The right first move depends on which of these is under the most strain right now.
01
Capacity and operations
Staff time goes to coordination instead of judgment.
Due diligence preparation, board and committee materials, recurring reporting, and document movement crowd out the work that requires people.
Where it pays off: Intake and eligibility screening preparation, due-diligence packet assembly, board and committee materials, reminders and routing, document movement between approved systems.
Explore this pressure in the Finder 02 Grantee and stakeholder relationshipsRelationships with grantees, partners, and community are harder to sustain than they should be.
Follow-up, context, and communication depend on institutional memory that lives in a few people.
Where it pays off: Relationship context and history, follow-up preparation, communication drafts for human review, partner and community engagement coordination.
Explore this pressure in the Finder 03 Impact and accountabilityBoard-ready summaries take too long to assemble.
Grant, financial, and program information is fragmented and reconciled by hand.
Where it pays off: Board and committee reporting, grant outcome evidence assembly, financial and program data integration, recurring dashboards.
Explore this pressure in the Finder 04 Access and institutional knowledgePolicies, history, and precedent are hard to find when decisions need them.
Knowledge lives in inboxes and folders rather than governed sources staff and AI can use.
Where it pays off: Governed policy and precedent retrieval, historical grant context, staff search across SharePoint and Teams, onboarding knowledge.
Explore this pressure in the Finder 05 Trust, stewardship, and resilienceAI is arriving faster than the board’s comfort with it.
Microsoft Copilot can surface anything staff can already reach. Permissions, sensitive board and financial data, responsible AI, and continuity questions slow confident adoption, and the board expects that data secured with the care of a financial institution.
Where it pays off: Identity and Conditional Access, guest and external sharing, sensitive board and financial data controls, Purview, agent ownership and lifecycle, managed security.
Explore this pressure in the Finder Not sure which one fits?Take the three-minute Opportunity Finder.
Five questions, about three minutes. The result names one place to start and what to check before you commit. No email required.
Start the FinderFrom pressure to path
Where each pressure leads, and the path under all of them.
The cards above name the work where Microsoft capabilities, applied carefully, tend to pay off. These are the services that carry each one. They are directions to explore, not a menu.
02 Strengthen grantee and stakeholder relationships
03 Accelerate outcome and stewardship reporting
04 Make institutional knowledge usable
05 Build board-reviewable AI governance
AI prepares summaries and assembles evidence. It does not make grant decisions.
Four stages, each built on the one before.
Capacity for the work, governance for the institution, in four rungs.
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01 Prepare
Get Microsoft 365 in order
Secure the Microsoft environment and organizational knowledge: SharePoint, Teams, permissions, Purview, and knowledge structure, so Copilot and agents retrieve from better-defined sources.
Secure & Govern Microsoft -
02 Adopt
Put Copilot to work
Help program, operations, finance, communications, and executive teams use Microsoft Copilot safely and repeatedly in the work they already do.
Microsoft Copilot -
03 Agentify
Hand repeatable work to governed agents
Automate well-defined grantmaking workflows: intake, review preparation, document movement, routing, reminders, and reporting.
AI Agents & Automation -
04 Operate
Keep it secure, current, and reported to your board
Board-ready governance: know what AI is in use, where sensitive information can flow, and who owns each agent. We manage inventory, identities, policies, costs, usage, and lifecycle, co-managed with your staff rather than handed off.
Agent Governance & Operations
Under every rung
Data and reporting. More reliable operational and board reporting with Microsoft Fabric, Power BI, and connected data where appropriate.
Bring these to your next leadership or board meeting
The questions we ask a foundation before we recommend anything.
Grantmaking decisions cross program, finance, operations, technology, and the board. These are the questions we work through with each role during a 90-Day AI Roadmap. Use them now, with or without us.
- Which institutional outcomes are you accountable for this year, and which is most constrained by staff capacity?
- If program staff had meaningfully more time next quarter, where would you want it spent, and what prevents that today?
- What has the board asked, or what will it ask, about how AI is used with sensitive information?
- Where does manual coordination across intake, due diligence, payments, and reporting consume the most staff time?
- How confident are you in the accuracy and timeliness of the financial and grant data leadership relies on?
- Which audit, privacy, or fiduciary expectations must any new technology respect from day one?
- Where do preparation and paperwork take time away from grantees and community?
- How do you assemble outcome evidence today, and how much of it is reconciled by hand?
- Which grant decisions must always remain a human judgment, and how should technology support that judgment without replacing it?
- Can leadership say today what sensitive board, financial, and grantee information any AI tool can reach?
- What visibility into AI use, ownership, and cost would the board want before adoption expands?
- What would a responsible-AI position for this foundation need to include to be defensible to the community it serves?
- What AI tools, Copilot use, and automations already exist, sanctioned or not, and who owns each one?
- Are identity, Conditional Access, guest sharing, and Purview controls consistently enforced across SharePoint and Teams?
- What would production agents need in identity, permissions, monitoring, cost visibility, and lifecycle before you would trust them with institutional data?
These questions are the front half of the 90-Day AI Roadmap. The back half is the written plan.
Stewardship first
Better intelligence should strengthen judgment, not hide it.
AI prepares. People decide.
A foundation’s value is not simply processing applications faster. It is exercising judgment, listening to communities, stewarding resources, and making accountable decisions. Useful patterns often include:
- Preparing summaries rather than making grant decisions
- Assembling evidence rather than inventing conclusions
- Drafting communications for human review
- Retrieving policy and historical context
- Organizing due-diligence materials for review teams
- Tracking recurring obligations across the grant cycle
- Preparing board and committee materials on a reliable cadence
- Automating routine movement of information between approved systems
Where the action carries institutional consequence, human approval remains explicit.
AI agents for foundations
Agents for the information work grantmaking runs on.
Start with Grant Review Copilot: a grounded reviewer brief for every application, read from the grants management system you already use, with your staff making every funding decision. Then add agents built from proven patterns for institutional knowledge, grantee questions, research briefs, and board reporting, each governed before it is turned on.
Security is part of AI quality
Copilot will respect your permissions. That makes your permissions more important.
Grantmaking is information-intensive work. AI can help staff work across that information more efficiently. It can also increase the consequences of weak permissions, poorly organized knowledge, and unclear governance, which makes the Microsoft foundation and the intelligence layer one conversation. Before expanding AI, Centered Networks helps foundations examine eight areas, starting with how sensitive each kind of donor data is.
What a foundation may manage
The information AI would work across
- Grantee and applicant information
- Due diligence and program records
- Board and committee materials
- Donor or fund data
- Investment and financial information
- Internal policies
- Institutional knowledge
- Community research
- Recurring reporting
- External communications
- Identity and Conditional Access
- Guest and external sharing
- SharePoint and Teams permissions
- Sensitive board and financial information
- Retention and data lifecycle
- Microsoft Purview controls
- Unmanaged devices
- Shadow AI and unsanctioned tools
This reduces the gap between “what the policy says” and what the environment actually allows. It starts in the Secure & Govern Microsoft stage of the operating model.
Community foundations, private foundations, and grantmakers across the country.
- In business since 2004.
- Serving nonprofits and mission-driven organizations the entire time.
- Five Microsoft Solutions Partner designations.
Flagship work: the National Mall Gateway on Microsoft Azure for the Trust for the National Mall, a featured Microsoft Customer Story, with application development delivered with project partners. Read the Microsoft Customer Story (opens in a new tab)
Build AI capacity your board can understand and your staff can actually use.
We will map the highest-value opportunities, readiness gaps, governance requirements, and next 90 days, in language the board and the audit committee can review.