The Carnegie Trust for The Universities of Scotland
"What used to take a month now takes a week. Hyphen8 has saved us hundreds of hours every month."
The Carnegie Trust for The Universities of Scotland
The Carnegie Trust for The Universities of Scotland is a historic grantmaking organisation founded in 1901 by the American philanthropist Andrew Carnegie.
The Trust aims to support education and research across Scottish universities by providing grants for tuition fees and funding academic research at various levels. With a legacy of over a century, the Trust continues to impact Scotland's educational landscape significantly.
The Challenge
Before implementing Salesforce, the Carnegie Trust faced several operational challenges.
The Trust were:
- Making human errors due to having to add information manually into spreadsheets and a small Access Database
- Completely paper-based
- The team were spending vast amounts of time doing things manually
- The turnaround for support for students needing tuition fee support was a month. For research funding schemes, it was 3-4 months.
A Digital Transformation
Patricia Krus, Director of Programmes at The Carnegie Trust for The Universities of Scotland, to find out what life was like before and after implementing Salesforce.
Patricia shared: "Our processes were incredibly time-consuming and prone to errors.
Everything was paper-based, and we only started accepting grant applications by email in 2012, which helped in some ways.
However, we still needed to manually input the data into Excel spreadsheets for some funding streams or add the information into a small Access database for some others. This led to inefficiencies and data inaccuracies.
This meant that the grantee experience wasn't what we wanted. We knew we needed a solution that would enable us to improve grantee experiences."
Choosing Salesforce Over Microsoft Dynamics
Patricia shared that she looked at different types of CRM systems to support the Trust's work and narrowed it down to Salesforce and Microsoft Dynamics before making a decision.
"We chose Salesforce because it offered greater flexibility and customisation. There was also a robust support network within the UK grantmaking community that used it with great results, and the advantage of free licenses for nonprofits was also a wonderful bonus for us as we are a very small charity. Salesforce also understood the grantmaking landscape, and it was clear they had brought in people to create this platform for grantmakers," Patricia explained.
"Another key consideration for us, as one of the oldest grantmakers in Scotland, was the lack of specialised knowledge in grantmaking among Microsoft Dynamics partners, which further reinforced my decision. When we met Salesforce and Hyphen8, it was like they just 'got' us, and they understood everything we were saying and were creative in their ways of working, which we loved.
The solution implemented:
Hyphen8, a specialist in implementing Salesforce solutions for grantmaking organisations, revolutionised the Trust's operations. Hyphen8 understood the unique requirements of the grantmaking sector, making them the ideal partner for the Trust.
"We chose Hyphen8 because of their deep understanding of the grantmaking sector and technical expertise. They could translate our complex requirements into effective solutions. After meeting some of their existing clients who were grantmakers and proudly demoed their own Salesforce solution built by Hyphen8, we knew Hyphen8 the unique, professional and credible partners we needed. They are also very pleasant to work with, which is also a bonus!" Patricia explained.
Enhanced Reporting and Tracking:
With Salesforce, the Trust can now generate live dashboards to monitor grant allocations and budget spending.
Dashboards offer a single screen view of everything that is needed to be seen by team members, and reports can be tailored to any aspect of a foundation or trusts needs to speed up the amount of time tasks take.
"We have real-time insights into our financial commitments and can manage cash flow projections more effectively," Patricia added.
Impact and Results
"The implementation of Salesforce had a transformative impact on the Carnegie Trust for The Universities of Scotland. The time required to process grant applications and make funding decisions has drastically reduced. What used to take a month now takes a week. Hyphen8 has saved us hundreds of hours every month.
This speed is life-changing for our applicants, who often need timely responses to plan their studies and personal lives." Patricia explained.
Let's take a deeper look into just three areas where Salesforce has enabled transformational impacts:
Automation of Processes:
Salesforce enabled the Trust to automate numerous critical milestones in the grantmaking lifecycle. This has saved the team countless hours and revolutionised the entire process, making it much easier.
Patricia noted, "We can now acknowledge applications automatically, send award letters instantly, and track peer review statuses in real time.
This automation has significantly reduced manual workloads and improved accuracy."
Enhanced Reporting and Tracking:
With Salesforce, the Trust can now generate live dashboards to monitor grant allocations and budget spending.
Dashboards offer a single screen view of everything that is needed to be seen by team members, and reports can be tailored to any aspect of a foundation or trusts needs to speed up the amount of time tasks take.
"We have real-time insights into our financial commitments and can manage cash flow projections more effectively," Patricia added.
Saving Weeks of Time Per Month:
"Salesforce and Hyphen8 have saved our staff weeks per month.
We now use this time to dig deeper into the ways in which we are making an impact and spend time understanding success stories grants have made to show to our board, which is hugely rewarding!" Patricia proudly shared.
Working with Hyphen8:
Choosing the right Salesforce partner is important for any organisation.
We are often asked what we would like to work with, so we will let Patricia explain that for us here;
"The partnership with Hyphen8 was instrumental in the successful implementation of Salesforce. Hyphen8 brought creativity and technical expertise to the table. They understood our needs and worked closely with us to build a system that truly supports our mission. Their honesty and professionalism were key reasons we chose them," Patricia stated.
Having Salesforce is Empowering!
Patricia went on to share her thoughts on having Salesforce, and what it has done for her team.
"Implementing Salesforce at the Carnegie Trust for The Universities of Scotland has been transformative. We've automated critical milestones in our grantmaking lifecycle, significantly reducing manual effort and errors. When an application is submitted, it's automatically acknowledged, and award letters are sent immediately upon grant approval. This replaces the lengthy process involving Word documents, spreadsheets, and mail merges.
Salesforce allows us to track peer review status in real-time, analyze application scores, and measure peer review quality. This enables us to eliminate underperforming reviewers and ensure high-quality feedback for decision-making.
We track grant spending against budget with live data, providing daily insights into our financial commitments. This real-time information helps us manage cash flow projections more effectively, ensuring funds are available as projects mature. Our head of finance can now accurately project cash drawdowns from investments, significantly improving our financial planning and stability.
We'd say that's a pretty remarkable result!"
