Author: Andrew Thompson
Tips and tricks on Grants IT systems from our IT guru Andrew, who runs our GEM Portal subscriber tutorials and refreshers, and knows our GEMS systems like he knows his Thunderbirds references!
“5”, “4”, “3”, “2”, “1” Thunderbirds are go!
Having good IT systems in place will go a long way to ensuring you have a great grants program in place.
With the plethora of IT software available today there is no excuse for not having good systems in place for managing your grants program and reporting on outcomes of grants projects. Are your systems “All systems are go?”
Our Director Jo, recently attended a Masterclass run by Dr Squirrel Main of the Ian Potter Foundation at the Philanthropy Australia 2016 Conference. One of the key messages was the emphasis on good data management.
- What data are you collecting to evaluate your programs?
- What data do you have to demonstrate success of your outcomes?
- How many and which outcomes have you achieved, or why not?
- What percentage of success can you report from the grant dollars you spent?
An IT system doesn’t need to be a complex beast of unnavigable forms and cumbersome data entry, with no idea of how to ever pull together what you typed into various programs into something resembling a funder or board report.
Your system could start with something as simple as an Excel spreadsheet or an MS Access database to commence capturing the important data that your organisation has.
We too regularly hear comments from staff new to an organisation, who are trying to understand where the grants program is up to, that what their predecessor left behind is less than informative (and we have another blog on what detail you MUST be recording here).
If only their predecessor had kept good records. * If only their predecessor had kept any records!
The Strategic Grants GEM Portal is a great resource for providing you with your list of relevant upcoming grants, in the Grants Calendar.
But it is and can be much more than that. The simple screens allow you to capture all of your grant applications and keep a history of where each program is up to. Through easy to use tabs you can have a snapshot at any point in time of where your entire grants program is up to, what is a prospect, what is in progress and where you have been successful and where you haven’t.
By recording details on your applications and projects as they move through the different project phases, you will be in a great position to be able to report back to your board and Funders on each grant application and your entire grants program. And if you want to do more complex analysis of the data, you can export it out of the GEM Portal into a print-friendly Excel spreadsheet.
Start simple, keep it simple.
When you're choosing your IT System, ask yourself:
- What is it you would like to manage and report on?
- What is it that you are required to report on?
A few columns in an Excel spreadsheet can be a simple enough system for beginning your grants journey (and your journey to getting great IT systems in place). Then when you have mastered the basics, the internet provides a plethora of free and cheap software solutions for recording and reporting:
- Map your outcomes via a free interactive google map
- Track your financial spends through an online subscription finance tool
- Slice and dice your program data with a swish graphical reporting tool
- Package it up in a free online Prezi presentation. (Wouldn’t your Funder love that!)
If you would like more on how you can improve the grants systems in your organisation, let us know by dropping us an email or commenting on facebook/twitter and we can blog some more on these topics!
“5”, “4”, “3”, “2”, “1” <insert your Organisation Name> are go !
Author: Andrew Thompson
Sometimes you need to think outside of the box, or in this case, what was inside the box!
An Amsterdam based bicycle manufacturer was faced with the situation where their bicycles were arriving at the customer destination, damaged in transit. As a high end product, an electrified innovative bicycle, VanMoof were faced with the situation of how could they freight their bikes so that the transport companies could not cause damage to their product.
A simple solution from some outside of the box thinking was needed.
Simple! Design your box packaging to look like the box contained a very large television screen. Freight companies immediately started to treat the packages with care, thinking they were transporting high end large flat screen TV’s.
"And just like that, shipping damage to our bikes dropped by 70-80%"
(Bex Radford, creative director of VanMoof, in Cycling Weekly).
Funders are looking for innovative ways to achieve the greatest bang for buck. Innovative new ways of delivering projects, collaborative approaches, shared resources, multi-organisation alliances. How can your organisation change the world and have the greatest impact for the lowest spend?
Questions you can ask when building your case for grant funding:
Q do we have clearly defined goals?
Q how do we engage, enable, empower, inspire others to replicate our innovation?
Q how can we enable others to take forth our message?
Q what other organisations are doing similar work that we could partner with?
Q what are the measurable tangible outcomes that we will achieve with this money?
Q what data can we collect to monitor our outcomes?
Q how will we measure those outcomes, analytically, statistically?
Don’t overthink
When do our best ideas come to us?
- That 2am idea in the middle of the night - “If only I had my notepad next to my bed!”
- When you’re out walking in the park
- On the commute home from work
- Sitting on the loo (at least you have loo paper for a notepad!)
Just like repackaging the bicycle to be shipped in a television box, funders are looking for new ways of achieving outcomes that don’t take the same old approach as it has been done before.
Don’t accept “that’s the way it has always been done”
- Just because that is the way it has always been done, doesn’t mean that’s the way it should be done this time around.
- How could we do it different this time?
- Why did we do it like that last time?
- What worked last time?
- What didn’t work last time, that we should do differently this time?
You might be the person in your organisation that comes up with the next bicycle packaged in a flat screen box solution.
Embrace new ideas, think outside and inside of the bicycle box, build that project that will impact your sphere and bring positive change to benefit others.
Photo source: https://www.vanmoof.com/media/wysiwyg/IMG_0901.jpg
Quote source: http://www.cyclingweekly.co.uk/news/latest-news/bike-manufacturer-reduces-delivery-damage-70-per-cent-printing-tv-box-285180
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