The Grantpocalypse is Coming

The Grantpocalypse, the askhole, the real, looming collapse of our major philanthropy system. If you work in or around charitable giving, you can already feel the tremors.

When I was in a charity seat, I thought institutional donors were just playing hard to get. Turns out, it’s not a game—it’s survival.

For donors, the challenge is getting funds out the door quickly while juggling fit, stakeholder demands, due diligence, and proof of impact.
For charities, it’s finding the right people at the right time, while staying authentic, timely, and visible enough to survive.

It’s a perfect storm: a crisis of trust, of time, of impact. Each side wants to do right by the other, but the system has locked us in a chokehold, what I call the Grantpocalypse, where the only thing moving faster than the deadlines are the ghostly, endless asks sliding into inboxes.

This is the system we’ve built. And it’s killing us.

What the Grantpocalypse Looks Like

• A flood of zombies: Hundreds of thousands of nearly identical proposals, now multiplied by AI. They look real(-ish), sound real(-ish), even video call you—but without a human heartbeat. If banking executives can be fooled to wiring millions by deepfake video calls, how long before donors face an endless AI-driven siege?
• No real map: Donor-Advised Fund software often offers little actual “advice,” leaving funders at a fork in the road with no guide to the safest path. Advisors are stuck with internal tools, spreadsheets and PDFs like it’s 2005. It’s not for a lack of reports but a lack of direction.
• Donor retreat: Funders barricade inside trusted networks. Only the big, well-fortified organizations get through, while smaller, high-impact groups die off, reinforcing the inequity that leaves only 4% of funds reaching minority-led charities.
• Trust decay: Only 8% of Canadians have high confidence in charity leaders. CRA audits are up 50% and revocations 104%. It’s the equivalent of authorities raiding your safe house, just as the horde arrives.

Left unchecked, the noise drowns out the signal.

More zombies get through, more brains (donor attention and trust) are eaten, and the communities we serve take the hit.

Why You Can’t Win by Fighting One Zombie at a Time

If you’ve ever seen a zombie movie, you know you don’t survive by trying to kill every single one. You survive by changing the game — building fortifications, creating safe zones, and securing a sustainable supply of food (in our case, funding).

Current grant management systems (e.g. Foundant, SMApply, and others) are like better swords. Helpful for slaying one or two zombies at a time, but they don’t stop the endless swarm.

We need a whole new way of being.

How to End the Grantpocalypse

Other sectors already solved their zombie problems:

• Bloomberg standardized financial reporting.
• LinkedIn standardized resumes.
• Realtor.ca standardized home listings.

We can do the same for philanthropy by:

1. Aligning on common structures: One charity profile, used everywhere.
2. Putting up guardrails: Standard due diligence done once, not 100 times.
3. Rewarding impact, not grant-writing skill: Use Canada’s Common Grant with a few targeted filtering questions to identify the most aligned charities—eliminating the “best grant wins” problem.
4. Giving data in context: The biggest needs in a city, who’s tackling them, and how to help should be visible instantly—no zombie grants required.

The Future Isn’t Inevitable, but It’s Possible

If we do nothing, the Grantpocalypse will keep chewing through retention, trust and impact. More cheques will be cut mindlessly, or not at all.

If we act now by standardizing, centralizing, and modernizing our approach, we can build a philanthropic sector that’s more effective, equitable, and resilient.

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If you believe we can’t keep doing the same thing and expect different results, join us:

Charities – Create your free Common Grant profile

Donors – Sign up to connect with trusted charities

Let’s build the infrastructure philanthropy deserves before the Grantpocalypse arrives.