One of the main reasons why so many funders choose Salesforce as their grant management solution is its flexibility. At Hyphen8, we often hear the frustrations of funders being forced to manage reports offline because their systems don’t easily allow them to adapt.  Funders need technology that will allow them to adapt processes to changing strategies rather than restrict them.

This blog summarises how this flexibility can be applied to grant reporting – often one of the main challenges for both funding organisations and the grant recipients.  

So how can the flexibility of Salesforce help with grant reporting?

• Create different grant reporting form templates related to different funding programmes to reflect different questions, scale the questions asked to the size of the grant
• Tailor the method of submitting information to the grantee’s preference or capacity whether it is:
  • completing an online form
  • allowing them to attach an existing document such as an annual report
  • providing a link to a video
  • log conversations that have taken place with related notes
  • not asking for any reports!
• Edit report due dates simply for specific grants where delays need to be negotiated due to unforeseen circumstances
• Option to replicate recognised impact models such as Sustainable Development Goals or to integrate with specialist impact evaluation products or sites or to replicate your own categories, outcomes and indicators
• Scalability to start simple for new programmes and evolve if you are not ready to define how grants will be evaluated

Funder case study – Jack Petchey Foundation

Let’s look at a recent example to demonstrate this.  Jack Petchey Foundation manages 9 different grant programmes to benefit young people across London and Essex.  Each programme has different reporting requirements that were previously all captured in different systems and data capture methods.   They also need to reflect the different requirements for youth organisations with multiple sites with several ongoing active grants.  Their grants and events team previously spent a huge amount of time managing grant reporting as they had to reference multiple data sources, duplicate data entry.   Now that they have transitioned to Salesforce, their grant reporting has been transformed.

Each funding programme has its own record where users can specify the reporting requirements – including different forms, submission methods and due dates

The Grants Team can mass-edit the status of reports to make them visible to grant recipients in the Salesforce community portal

All of the reporting requests and reminders are automated based on the status and due date with programme-specific email templates pre-filling grant-specific data

 

Grant recipients log into a Salesforce community where they can see grant reporting requirements and submit the information via a form or an attachment

Grant Managers can query reports by posting comments to portal users and controlling report editing permissions

The event management team can filter event invitees based on reporting data entered and print out citations to read out during award ceremonies

If you need help with grant reporting service design or how best to manage it on Salesforce, get in touch team@hyphen8.com