One of the difficulties producing meaningful data on the impact of grants is the inconsistent way in which it is captured – both across organisations and even within the same organisation.  If data is held in multiple different systems or spreadsheets, chances are the format is not consistent.  We have seen SO many variations of grant beneficiary lists and demographic data and it causes a lot of confusion for organisations to categorise their impact accurately.

We have a dedicated Service Design team of experts recruited directly from nonprofit organisations.  They help funders to shape grant management processes and transform data collection for increased efficiency and improved user experience.

Hyphen8 has been huge supporters of 360Giving who continue to champion consistent and open data for grantmaking since they started.  Below is a link to a webinar that we hosted back in 2018.    We were excited to hear about their recent work with the DEI Data Group to extend the standard to include equalities data.  Of course, every funder does not capture data in exactly the same way as 

• Salesforce can be configured to output data in the required format to meet their standard
• Coding required to identify organisation types can be managed using formula fields
• Funders have complete control over the data that is shared beyond the 10 mandatory fields
• Flexibility to output as an Excel spreadsheet or fully integrated with web pages using code

Funder case study – UK Community Foundations

A great example of the importance of data consistency is an organisation that we have supported for nearly 10 years –  UK Community Foundations. 40+ independent regional Community Foundations currently all share a single Salesforce instance.  As a membership organisation, it is important that the UKCF team can run reports to evaluate grant-making across the network so this relies on data consistency.

• The network collaborated to define a framework of impact evaluation Themes, Outcomes and Indicators.  Each Community Foundation can select the ones that are appropriate for each funding programme and specify the options for selection in grant monitoring reports
• Different monitoring report form templates can be linked to programmes to reflect variations
• Questions in forms can be phrased differently to meet the requirements of funding partner or regional then map to the same fields in Salesforce for consistent reporting
• Data can be exported in 360Giving standard for sharing

Community Foundations were the first grant-makers that we set up to export data to comply with the 360giving standard.  Since then we have done this for many of our customers including  William Grant Foundation, Halifax Foundation for Northern Ireland and Esmee Fairbairn.

https://vimeo.com/301067538/99ef3b7609

If you would like help with data consistency for grant reporting or to export data for sharing with 360Giving, get in touch team@hyphen8.com