Case Study: How Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors unified contract lifecycle management with Gatekeeper

Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors (RPA) advises on and manages philanthropic giving for individuals, families, corporations and major foundations. It also acts as fiscal sponsor to around 120 projects, allowing smaller and newer organisations to operate under RPA’s nonprofit status while RPA manages the associated contracts, grants, funds, HR, payroll, legal, compliance and administrative responsibilities.

Across the organisation, RPA manages a few thousand agreements a year spanning at least 18 different types. These range from supplier contracts and property leases to funder-drafted grant agreements, memoranda of understanding, non-disclosure agreements and honoraria.

Operating in a highly regulated environment, RPA needed more than a repository for those agreements. It needed consistent supplier checks, controlled approvals, reliable Legal review, clear financial oversight and an audit trail across a decentralised process.

With Gatekeeper, RPA is building one governed process to:

• Control vendor onboarding, with screening and approvals verified in process.
• Apply risk, compliance and approval controls consistently across teams.
• Focus Legal review on the exceptions, while standard agreements follow RPA’s approved rules and templates.
• Connect agreements and spend, bringing NetSuite payment data onto the same record.
• Drive adoption across the organisation through 21 internal Gatekeeper Contracts Management System (CMS) Champions.
• Extend consistent review to complex funder agreements, with Gatekeeper AI & Agents to surface missing clauses and changes while RPA retains judgement.

The challenge: Managing vendors and agreements without a centralised platform 

RPA had no centralised platform dedicated to contracts management. Internal departments and sponsored projects engage their own vendors and manage their own agreement reviews, so there was no single entry point for entering into a new agreement.

Over time, RPA accumulated a few thousand legacy vendors. Those vendors were onboarded through various systems, ultimately reaching NetSuite, but each system held part of the record.

Contract templates lived in a shared drive. Teams downloaded agreements, saved copies and completed them independently. RPA could not easily see which version had been used, what conditions an agreement carried or how much of its value had been paid. Questions that should have taken moments could take weeks because answering them meant reading individual documents rather than querying a system.

The lack of visibility was also a risk issue. RPA could not readily answer basic questions about its contracts, who was signing them or what terms the organisation was agreeing to.

Fiscal sponsorship added another layer. Each sponsored project needs visibility of its own agreements and spend, but nothing beyond them, while RPA’s core teams need the complete organisational view.

“We were operating with a limited view of our vendors, agreements, risk and spend. We couldn’t easily see who we were working with, what we had committed to or where our obligations sat. In an organisation like ours, that lack of visibility creates real risk.”

Luba Palionny, Contracts Manager, Senior Advisor, Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors

Why RPA chose Gatekeeper 

Luba began the buying process with internal interviews to understand what different teams needed. She went on to meet with over a dozen vendors before narrowing her recommendation, with Gatekeeper her first choice.

The decision came down to several requirements: addressing RPA’s contract risk and visibility problem, connecting contract and spend data, NetSuite integration, unlimited seats and giving staff one place to create, request or upload an agreement.

“Gatekeeper gives us one place to manage the whole relationship, from onboarding a vendor and completing the right checks, through to agreements, approvals and spend. That means our teams can work from the same information rather than managing each part of the relationship separately.”

Luba Palionny, Contracts Manager, Senior Advisor, Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors

Building vendor, risk and approval controls into the process 

Gatekeeper’s Professional Services team configured the platform around the requirements of RPA’s different teams and agreement types.

When staff start a new agreement, they can select from vendors already onboarded and screened by RPA. New vendors are routed into the onboarding process rather than creating another free-text vendor entry. Sanctions and watchlist screening, as well as EIN/TIN matching, are completed before a new vendor appears in Gatekeeper, supporting vendor verification.

RPA’s delegation of authority determines what happens next. Agreements that exceed a specified monetary threshold require higher levels of executive review and approval, while agreements of lower monetary value may be reviewed at the department level or by the receiving team. International agreements receive parallel Legal and Finance review based on the counterparty’s location.

Legal review follows the same principle. Agreements using RPA’s approved template, with the terms intact and below the relevant threshold, can be completed without requiring a higher level of approval or Legal review. Exceptions are routed to the team. Templates now reside within Gatekeeper rather than on a shared drive, giving RPA control over the versions being used.

Driving adoption through internal Contracts Management System (CMS) Champions

With contracting distributed across the organisation, RPA involved its teams directly in how Gatekeeper was configured and rolled out. RPA created a group of 21 CMS Champions from across the organisation, with an average of two representatives per department.

The CMS Champions began with an open invitation following an all-staff announcement, followed by direct nominations from department leaders.

CMS Champions received access and training and represented their departments' requirements throughout the development and implementation process, giving RPA a network of people who understood both their teams’ needs and the new processes being introduced. The CMS Champions will serve as a resource at the department level. Change management and CMS adoption require a multidirectional approach, supported by in-person meetings, chat groups and on-demand training materials.

“Gatekeeper is a significant change in how we work, so we wanted people across RPA to be part of that change from the beginning. Our CMS Champions can see what Gatekeeper will make possible for their teams, help shape how we use it and bring that excitement back to their colleagues. It’s about helping people see how the change can make their working lives better, not simply asking them to adopt a new system.”

Luba Palionny, Contracts Manager, Senior Advisor, Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors

Reviewing complex agreements with Gatekeeper AI

Complex agreements, such as inbound grant agreements, present a different challenge. RPA reviews a high volume of third-party agreements, some of which may include audit requirements, restricted-use conditions, flow-down terms and reporting obligations that can continue for years. In cases where RPA is the grantee of record, it may have limited scope to negotiate those terms.

As part of RPA’s planned use of Gatekeeper AI, Gatekeeper Agents will read incoming agreements against instructions written by RPA, flagging missing clauses or wording that does not match the record and summarising what has changed. RPA’s goal is for Agent instructions to include a baseline of RPA’s obligations as a charity. The Agent will surface the findings, while the reviewer decides what action to take.

This will provide RPA departments such as Legal & Compliance, Finance, and RPA sponsored projects with a consistent basis for review while keeping the judgement call with RPA. All agreements will follow the same review standard, regardless of value, in line with RPA’s obligations.

“Many of the agreements we receive come from third parties, so we are reviewing agreements with their preferred terms and conditions rather than starting from our own template. Gatekeeper’s native AI can identify what is missing or what has changed against the instructions we have set. The final call still sits with us, but we can make that judgement with the relevant information already surfaced.”

Luba Palionny, Contracts Manager, Senior Advisor, Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors

Connecting agreements, restricted funds and spend

As a fiscal sponsor, RPA commits and spends money across around 120 sponsored projects, each with its own funders and restrictions. Role-based access plans are to give each project visibility of its own contracts, vendors and spend, while RPA’s core teams retain the full organisational view.

NetSuite payment data flows onto the contract record, putting the value committed and the amount paid against it in the same place. Teams can see how much remains on an engagement, with alerts flagging agreements approaching their limits in time to amend, extend or close them.

Approvals, reviews and vendor documentation also sit against the relevant agreement, helping RPA maintain the evidence required in a highly regulated environment.

Governance that stays with the organisation

Fiscal sponsorship creates obligations that can run for years and outlast the people who originally negotiated an agreement.

RPA therefore has to define who approves each agreement, at what value, which departments review it, which agreements teams can complete independently and who can access each sponsored project’s information. Gatekeeper encodes those decisions within the workflow, turning RPA’s working practices into a repeatable risk management and governance model.

RPA is rolling out Gatekeeper in phases. Its next priorities include deepening its socialisation among staff, verifying connections, improving interoperability, and using Gatekeeper Extract to extract terms and obligations from agreements in review. The final phase of the rollout is capturing all signed agreements that predate the introduction of Gatekeeper.

“Gatekeeper connects the vendor, the agreement, the approvals, the obligations and the spend behind each relationship. That gives us stronger oversight of what RPA is responsible for and a governance model that can stay with the organisation as our people and projects change.”

Luba Palionny, Contracts Manager, Senior Advisor, Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors