Grouptrail CEO Justin Yuen will join leaders from The Collins Foundation and Colmena Consulting at Philanthropy Northwest’s PNW26 Conference in Anchorage, Alaska, for a conversation about reimagining grantmaking—and the role organizational culture, relationships and technology can play in making that change possible.
The breakout session, “Grantmaking Reimagined – From Job Titles to GMS and Beyond,” will take place Thursday, October 8, from 9:00–10:15 a.m. AKDT.
The session begins with a big question: What would you design if you could wipe the slate clean of traditional grantmaking practices and redesign the process with your values at the center?
The Collins Foundation has been putting that question into practice.
Building systems around values—not the other way around
The Collins Foundation, a place-based family foundation committed to a just and equitable Oregon, has been rethinking its grantmaking practices around relationships, community and reduced burden on nonprofits.
That transformation has gone well beyond changing forms or workflows. Collins has shifted internal roles and culture, reconsidered traditional applications and reporting, and built new organizational structures to support a more relationship-centered approach to grantmaking.
Technology needed to evolve alongside those changes.
Rather than beginning with the features available in a traditional grants management system and allowing those capabilities to define what was possible, Collins had the opportunity to first explore its goals, values and desired ways of working—and then collaborate with Grouptrail and Colmena Consulting to translate that vision into a working system.
That approach reflects something we believe strongly at Grouptrail: technology should support an organization’s goals and values rather than define the boundaries of what’s possible.
From technology vendor to technology partner
Grouptrail and Collins approached the project as an ongoing process of co-design.
As The Collins Foundation has described the partnership, Grouptrail and Colmena didn’t simply build a system for the foundation—they co-designed one with the team. The resulting grants management system focuses on connections and relationships with communities and organizations rather than primarily on transactions and compliance.
For Grouptrail, that means providing more than configurable software.
It means listening to what an organization is trying to accomplish, helping translate ideas into sustainable workflows and data structures, bringing experience from work with other organizations into the conversation, and continuing to adapt the platform as practices and priorities evolve.
The goal isn’t to require organizations to have every requirement figured out before implementing technology. Nor is it to build a one-off custom system from scratch. Instead, Grouptrail provides an established, configurable platform and an experienced team that can evolve alongside an organization’s work.
Turning values into sustainable practices
The PNW26 session will also explore an important consequence of rethinking traditional grantmaking: reducing administrative burden on nonprofits doesn’t eliminate the need for information, learning or accountability.
Instead, foundations may intentionally take on more of that responsibility internally.
Making that shift sustainable requires more than good intentions. Organizations need processes and systems that help staff capture relationships, activities, decisions, learning and outcomes without simply replacing nonprofit burden with internal administrative burden.
That’s where organizational design and technology intersect.
During the session, Justin will join Jackie Murphy, Chief Program Strategist at The Collins Foundation; Melissa Sines, Partner at Colmena Consulting; Tonisha Toler, Community Resource Strategist at The Collins Foundation; and Lauren Waudé, Community Resource Strategist at The Collins Foundation to share an honest, practical look at what it takes to turn ambitious ideas about grantmaking into day-to-day practice.
Attendees will explore not only what Collins changed, but how values can move from aspiration to organizational practice—and how the systems supporting the work can evolve with them.
Join us in Anchorage
Philanthropy Northwest’s PNW26 Conference takes place October 6–8, 2026, in Anchorage, Alaska, bringing together philanthropy leaders and practitioners from across the region.
Grantmaking Reimagined – From Job Titles to GMS and Beyond
Thursday, October 8, 2026
9:00–10:15 a.m. AKDT
Anchorage, Alaska
Learn more about the session and explore the full PNW26 conference agenda on Philanthropy Northwest’s website.
We’re grateful for the opportunity to join The Collins Foundation and Colmena Consulting in sharing what we’ve learned together—and to contribute to a larger conversation about how philanthropy can build systems around relationships, community and values.