When your grantmaking group first began, you didn’t want loads of performance to handle your single program and a handful of grantees. However as your grantmaking has gotten extra complicated, you want a system that may evolve with you.
With the a number of mergers taking place within the grantmaking area, understanding the GMS panorama is trickier than ever. That will help you navigate this transition, listed below are some key questions to contemplate, ensuring your new vendor meets the wants of your grantmaking group.
1. What’s the vendor’s roadmap?
Earlier than selecting a brand new vendor, assessment its product roadmap. Search for sources or webinars that lay out future developments and enhancements. This will provide you with perception into the seller’s priorities and dedication to steady enchancment. Guarantee the seller plans for continuous product enhancements and main performance upgrades that align together with your long-term wants.
For those who can’t discover a publicly dealing with roadmap, that must be trigger for concern.
2. What vendor help and coaching alternatives can be found?
Consider the extent of help and coaching the seller supplies. Will they provide complete onboarding and ongoing help? What does their GMS implementation appear to be? Examine if they’ve a sturdy data base, person communities, and accessible customer support—by way of a number of channels, like electronic mail, cellphone, and chat. These sources are crucial for a easy transition and ensuring you’re getting what you want from the system.
3. Do you’ve the correct individuals in place?
Ensure you have the correct individuals in the correct roles to handle the change. This features a grants supervisor to deal with day-to-day implementation duties, in addition to constant management to help the change. For those who don’t have the correct individuals in place, you could contemplate suspending the transfer to a brand new grants administration system.
4. Have you learnt what wants to alter—and what wants to remain the identical?
Conduct an intensive wants evaluation to determine the options and functionalities important to your group. Dive into your present grantmaking processes and decide what’s working properly and what isn’t. This could embrace enter from all stakeholders, together with database managers, program employees, and IT personnel. Prioritize these must information your choice course of.
Know the important thing duties that need to be accomplished and the way they may change with the brand new software program. For instance, the Heart for Catastrophe Philanthropy is required to examine organizations towards the Workplace of Overseas Belongings Controls (OFAC). What was once a handbook course of is now automated with the correct grant administration software program. “It’s one click on and accomplished—an enormous timesaver for our employees. We actually recognize the recordkeeping as a result of now we are able to truly present proof that we ran a examine and it got here again clear.”
5. Is your knowledge prepared to maneuver?
Use the time earlier than you progress to scrub up your knowledge as a lot as doable. Establish duplicative knowledge or data that must be archived or deleted. Clear, well-organized knowledge and robust knowledge administration practices will make the migration course of smoother and extra environment friendly.
Think about if the seller provides any companies to assist with knowledge migration. Will you’ve the usage of customized fields and templates so you’ll be able to personalize types? How will you make the most of that? Will you’ll want to transfer knowledge presently saved outdoors your system to populate these fields?
6. How will you deal with the applicant expertise?
Take an in depth take a look at your purposes to determine locations to simplify and presumably remove questions. Perceive the instruments accessible in your new system to see if there are methods to streamline your utility process, comparable to by way of conditional logic, which might make the appliance course of extra environment friendly to your grantees.
7. What integrations can be found?
Decide how properly the brand new GMS integrates together with your present methods, comparable to accounting software program, fundraising platform, and different important instruments. Seamless integration will save time and scale back the chance of errors. Ask distributors about their API capabilities and help for third-party integrations.
The Headwaters Basis for Justice streamlines their cost course of between grant program managers and finance employees members by auto populating expense request knowledge and attaching grant agreements to expense requests, simplifying the audit course of.
8. How will you want the system to scale?
Select a system that may develop together with your group. Be sure that the GMS can deal with a rise within the variety of grants, purposes, and customers with out efficiency points. Scalability is essential for long-term sustainability and might stop the necessity for future migrations.
9. Does the seller have a deal with safety and privateness?
Guarantee the brand new GMS complies with all related rules and business requirements. This data must be publicly accessible on their web site. Safety features comparable to knowledge encryption, person entry controls, and common safety audits are important. Your grantees’ knowledge have to be protected, and compliance with rules will mitigate authorized dangers.
10. Have you ever talked with individuals who use that system?
Earlier than totally committing, learn case research and discuss with organizations that use the system you’re evaluating. Ensure you perceive the system’s efficiency in a real-world situation that appears like how you’d use it.
Discover a System that Will Evolve with You
In 2014, the Endowment for Well being started shifting their grantmaking philosophy to a field-building strategy. This included constructing new partnerships to advocate for kids’s psychological well being within the state’s 10-year plan, an introduction of Speedy Response cell psychological well being disaster items, and the creation of a middle of excellence to advertise high quality companies and evidence-based practices.
“I by no means imagined our grantmaking system and processes would look so totally different immediately than they did 20 plus years in the past,” stated Sue Fulton, Chief Monetary Officer for the Endowment for Well being. “In partnership with Blackbaud, we have now been capable of make the most of modern applied sciences to implement streamlined processes and be as environment friendly as doable.”
Are you prepared for a grant administration system that has a transparent plan for innovation and supplies the flexibleness to satisfy you the place you’re in your grantmaking? Try Blackbaud Grantmaking in motion with our on-demand product tour.
