When your grantmaking group first began, you didn’t want lots 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 can assist you navigate this transition, listed here are some key questions to think about, 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 provides 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 along with your long-term wants.
In case you can’t discover a publicly going through roadmap, that needs to be trigger for concern.
2. What vendor help and coaching alternatives can be found?
Consider the extent of help and coaching the seller offers. Will they provide complete onboarding and ongoing help? What does their GMS implementation seem like? Verify if they’ve a strong data base, person communities, and accessible customer support—by a number of channels, like e mail, cellphone, and chat. These sources are essential for a easy transition and ensuring you might be getting what you want from the system.
3. Do you will have the precise individuals in place?
Ensure you have the precise individuals in the precise roles to handle the swap. This features a grants supervisor to deal with day-to-day implementation duties, in addition to constant management to help the change. In case you don’t have the precise individuals in place, chances are you’ll contemplate suspending the transfer to a brand new grants administration system.
4. Have you learnt what wants to vary—and what wants to remain the identical?
Conduct a radical wants evaluation to establish the options and functionalities important to your group. Dive into your present grantmaking processes and decide what’s working nicely and what isn’t. This could embody 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 finished and the way they may change with the brand new software program. For instance, the Middle for Catastrophe Philanthropy is required to verify organizations in opposition to the Workplace of Overseas Belongings Controls (OFAC). What was a handbook course of is now automated with the precise grant administration software program. “It’s one click on and finished—an enormous timesaver for our employees. We actually respect the recordkeeping as a result of now we will truly present proof that we ran a verify 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 potential. Establish duplicative knowledge or data that needs to be archived or deleted. Clear, well-organized knowledge and robust knowledge administration practices will make the migration course of smoother and extra environment friendly.
Contemplate if the seller affords any providers to assist with knowledge migration. Will you will have using customized fields and templates so you may personalize varieties? How will you make the most of that? Will you might want to transfer knowledge at the moment saved outdoors your system to populate these fields?
6. How will you give attention to the applicant expertise?
Take a detailed have a look at your purposes to establish locations to simplify and presumably remove questions. Perceive the instruments out there in your new system to see if there are methods to streamline your utility process, corresponding to by conditional logic, which may make the applying course of extra environment friendly to your grantees.
7. What integrations can be found?
Decide how nicely the brand new GMS integrates along with your present methods, corresponding to accounting software program, fundraising platform, and different important instruments. Seamless integration will save time and cut 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 along with your group. Make 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 may stop the necessity for future migrations.
9. Does the seller have a give attention to safety and privateness?
Guarantee the brand new GMS complies with all related laws and trade requirements. This data needs to be publicly out there on their web site. Security measures corresponding to knowledge encryption, person entry controls, and common safety audits are important. Your grantees’ knowledge have to be protected, and compliance with laws will mitigate authorized dangers.
10. Have you ever talked with individuals who use that system?
Earlier than totally committing, learn case research and speak with organizations that use the system you might be 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 providers and evidence-based practices.
“I by no means imagined our grantmaking system and processes would look so completely different in the present day than they did 20 plus years in the past,” mentioned Sue Fulton, Chief Monetary Officer for the Endowment for Well being. “In partnership with Blackbaud, we’ve been capable of make the most of modern applied sciences to implement streamlined processes and be as environment friendly as potential.”
Are you prepared for a grant administration system that has a transparent plan for innovation and offers the flexibleness to fulfill you the place you might be in your grantmaking? Take a look at Blackbaud Grantmaking in motion with our on-demand product tour.
