Allow applicants to correct org information
It would be great if applicants could go in and correct their own organization's contact and EIN information.
Idea posted June 29, 2011 by Mary Nicosia, GMA Foundations
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Chris Dahl commented
Hi all -
Thanks again for your time and constructive conversations around this idea. As of the evening of Tuesday, November 17, this is currently in Production. Please contact support@foundant.com to have this turned on for your GLM site. Over time, we'll continue to improve this feature (such as potentially allowing users to change the primary contact, or only letting the primary contact change the organization information, or letting the primary contact add organization users). If you have additional feedback about this functionality, please let me know.
-chris
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Barb Owens commented
Chris,
This sounds perfect. Everything I could have thought of to save time for both the grantee and the Foundation and also provide controls for the Foundation is covered in your September message. I am one of those who prefers to make the changes on the Foundation end for so many reasons, yet can perfectly understand the rationale for those who don't want to mess with it!
This solution has something for everyone. Thanks again to you and your great team for listening and responding to your clients. You are all the best!
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Chris Dahl commented
Hi Chuck,
I sent you an email yesterday with times that work for me today and tomorrow - if you didn't get it, let me know!
-chris -
Chuck Hoblitzelle commented
Hi Chris - thanks for moving this forward. If it functions as you described last month, it sounds very helpful. If it's easy to look at it in Development, I'm interested in an advance look.
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Chris Dahl commented
Hi all,
This is currently in our Development environment. If you would like to see it and give me feedback, please let me know - you can just respond to this thread. While we probably won't be making any big additional changes prior to releasing this to Production, we are always open to feedback to help us identify ways we can improve it going forward.Thanks - and I'll update this when it is in Production!
-chris -
Mary Giraulo commented
Sounds great!
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Chris Dahl commented
Hi all,
As I noted in the September Connections, we are looking at doing this in our next major release. Based on your feedback on this thread, conversations we've had with numerous users, and internal discussions, here is a description of what the first version of this will look like:
By default, applicants will not be able to edit their organization information. You will need to contact us to turn this on, and once it is on, it will apply to all of your applicants.Given the concerns stated here over changing the organization name and/or EIN, we will have a setting to control the editing for each of these fields individually. By default, it will be off so that even if applicants can edit their organization information, they will not be able to edit these 2 fields. We will probably add a new notification type (something like "Organization Information Updated") to which you will be able to link an email template. By default, the administrator that adds this notification will be the designated recipient. However, this can be changed (and other administrators added) on the Edit Contact page for each administrator. This notification will contain the original organization information, the updated organization information, and the name and login of the applicant who made the change. We will also log this information, though at this point that log will not be accessible through GLM. Note: if you do not set up a template and link it to the new notification type, you won't receive a notification that an organization's information has been updated.We are thinking that the email would also go to the primary contact, assuming they are not the user making the changes, and assuming they have a valid email address.As we improve this feature, we will be making the audit of the changes accessible and probably offering a different type of notification so that you do not have to set up a template, etc. I'd like to ideally see more of a "message center" inside of GLM that would be the container for updates like this. However, we need to get some user interface work done to make this functionality simpler to implement and easier to use.Hopefully the changes I described here will go a long way to improving this part of GLM. If you have any feedback, please let us know. And thanks again for all the feedback so far!
-chris -
Chuck Hoblitzelle commented
Allowing applicants to update org info seems like important functionality that is missing, especially in situations where the applicant is not the Primary Contact. In that case, it seems the applicant can't easily tell who letters will be addressed to because they can't see the Primary Contact unless they print their last application packet.
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Mary Giraulo commented
My ideal world: if the applicant could submit changes for approval. Such as, applicant clicks beside a contact field, types a change and presses submit. I would have a bucket of address change requests, can see each one (organization name, change suggested) and press "approve" beside each one. That way, if the change affects our three other databases (none of which talk to one another!!), I can export and share with other staff. Right now, our workaround is to include a question on EVERY application and followup (actually, it's ballooned into multiple questions) to try to get the updates...
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Mary Giraulo commented
I would second Mary N's warning about the organization name - that should never be editable by applicants. Neither should the applicant's name. In addition to grant writers who work with multiple organizations, staff of one organization may take a job with another organization and try to use the same account, or staff remaining at the organization may try to use the old account to finish an application. If they are able to change the organization name or applicant name, it confuses our records about (a) which organizations we gave grants to (!!!) and (b) which staff person applied for the grant. I'm comfortable with other information being editable, just not the name of the organization or applicant.
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Amy commented
Chris...just wanted to share our thoughts about your Aug. 6th post.
#1: We are comfortable with anyone being able to see a list of open processes...like the idea of link on registration page with some text.
#2: We would not be opposed to any applicant changing organization info, as usually for us there is only one applicant managing the entire account. Maybe when this happens...an e-mail could be sent to the administrator so that there is a flag when this occurs.
#3: Having a customizable message by foundation would be helpful. I really like the idea of an error message coming up for duplicate organizations...and in the least to contact us to assess the situation rather than having to merge organizations later. (We do have some legitimate duplicates that warrant separate applications/organizations ...for example different departments in the school district, or "friends of" organizations using the same EIN#). At this time different departments can submit different grant apps and it works for us to keep them separate... and we wouldn't want to merge those unless each project's historical information could be easily organized in one place under that organization. I'm thinking the programming behind that could get kind of messy though. The recent improvement in merging organizations has been great and so this isn't a big problem for us.
These comments are coming from a foundation with low-volume applications (one cycle, 60-70 per year, most coming from local area where applicants are known in community...can understand that larger volume, national scope foundations might have other considerations).
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Chris Dahl commented
Hi all,
There's a lot going on in this thread, and I haven't heard much back from my Aug. 6 post, but I did want to make one comment. We are going to be displaying some organization information to applicants (in an "Organization Information" box, similar to the contact information box). There will be a note that we can customize on a per-foundation basis. By default it will tell the applicant that "If your organization information does not appear correct, please contact the funder. Thank you."
I realize this isn't the perfect solution, but we're trying to balance the need to increase the organization information visibility to applicants while also respecting the concerns of folks who do not want applicants changing organization information.
This will be going out with the 4.0.0 release. currently scheduled to go into production before the end of November. If you have feedback on this or on the other questions / observations in earlier comments, please let me know.
Thanks,
-chris -
Ideas commented
Hi Chris,
Because of an email I recieved today, I just thought I'd add another note on this. I'm all for the organizations updating their own information, but there are issues that come along with this. For example, I recieved an email from an applicant asking how she could change the organization information. After a couple of emails back and forth, I realize that she's a Grant Writer and was going to log in and change the information from one of her clients to another, thinking that was the way to submit for her other client, since it's "her" account.So, maybe a way to let applicants change their organization information, but with a warning page of some sort before they do that?
posted August 7, 2012 by Mary Nicosia, GMA Foundations
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Chris Dahl commented
Hi all,
Looks like there are some good ideas here. I'm seeing 3 separate threads:
1. Getting a question legend to potential applicants so they can see forms before they register
2. Determining how best to let applicants/organizations update their data
3. Preventing / better merging of duplicate information
In regard to #1 - are people comfortable with displaying a list of all their open processes to folks who haven't registered? I'm envisioning this as probably a link on the registration page with some text - If you just want to see the processes, questions, requirements ... click here. Otherwise register ...
In regard to #2 - are people comfortable having ANY applicant change the information for the organization they say they belong to? It seems to be that having an applicant update their own contact information is entirely acceptable, but having them change organization information and the EIN could pose some problems for at least some customers. At the very least, it seems that being more clear around how contact information is managed, and providing a link for the applicant to easily contact the foundation to change information, would be a step forward. Thoughts?
In regard to #3 - we are currently working on is a better approach to preventing and better merging of duplicate organization and contact information, and we'll be discussing this more at the Summit here in Montana next month. At this point, some thoughts around prevention include a simple message - the content of which could be managed by the foundation - that would display when a user tried to create an organization with a duplicate EIN. It woudn't prevent the user from creating a duplicate but would allow the foundation to customize their messaging in those cases. Thoughts?
Overall, we are also looking at better ways of managing the foundation-organization-contact relationships. Some folks want applications to be more "organization-centric" (and want at least one person from an organization to be able to see all the grant history). We also want to make the contacts more clear (i.e. which is for the applicant, which is the executive director for the organization), etc. There will be more to come around these as we get further along.
Thanks
posted August 6, 2012 by Chris Dahl, Foundant Technologies
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Ideas commented
Hi Ray - I just had another call from an applicant who had clicked all around looking for a way to correct their organization contact information before giving in and calling. She was glad to hear that she wasn't missing it, but also couldn't figure out why it wasn't something they should be able to do on their own.
posted September 12, 2011 by Mary Nicosia, GMA Foundations
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Ideas commented
We've added a pdf of the question legend as part of our intial information to folks. But with every tweak we (I) have to remember to create a new pdf and upload it to the website. Wouldn't it be great if the applicant could do it from GLM so as to always see the current application? Best spot for it may be a link next to the description on the "Apply" page.
posted September 2, 2011 by Anne Rogers, Mass Humanities
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Ideas commented
This may be one of the best threads in the idea lab! It's helpful to see the thoughts you all have around organizations as well as to get a better understanding of the level of pain with the system as it stands. I've got some ideas that need a little more thought around all the issues we've talked about here. Though none have posted here, I know we have folks that are not comfortable with organizations editing their own information once it is in the system. I'll see if I can get some of them to post their thoughts here too so we get a better balance in the conversation. I do believe we can come up with a solution that will come pretty darn close to meeting everyone's needs and will greatly reduce the amount of pain on a daily basis we are experiencing in managing organizations and contacts. Thank you all for partnering with us to make this a better product.
posted September 2, 2011 by Raymond Burket, Foundant Technologies
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Ideas commented
I agree users need to be able to see their organization information and be able to make changes or have a link on the page to send us changes. I had an applicant call last week and ask where her organization information went and how could she access it.
posted September 2, 2011 by Erin Baird, Allegany Franciscan Ministries
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Ideas commented
I'm new to the system, but I agree very much with the points Mary made. I've only had a couple organizations sign up so far, but most of them did not enter complete or accurate information (e,g, a filler for the EIN) with the assumption that they could go back and update it with the accurate information later (which is not possible).
At minimum, individuals within organizations should be able to SEE their organizational information, so they can identify possible spelling errors or address changes, etc. Even if they can't make the changes themselves (which I wish they could), they would at least be able to let me know if there is an error or change.
posted September 2, 2011 by Debra Veth, Imago Dei Fund
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Ideas commented
I really like Aaron's suggestion around allowing folks to preview applications or LOIs. It seems like most of our clients do a pretty good job of describing the parameters around who should apply, but I wonder if applicants are simply looking to gauge how much work it will be? Since we have the "Print Question Legend" capability, would it be helpful for folks to post a PDF of the question legend as part of their grant guidlines area?
Would stronger language (perhaps some FUD) in the registration page be helpful? Should we allow folks to see the application page without registering then?
I also agree with Aaron on the larger conversation. It's one I've been having with various individuals for some time now. Aaron? Would you be willing to post a new Idea around duplicate organizations and how best to handle them? I hate for it to get lost in this related but also somewhat different Idea. I'd also like to post on the concept of organization transparency as you mentioned.
Thanks to Angie for the editing suggestion. It is not obvious that folks can even edit their own contact information and it needs to be so!
posted August 3, 2011 by Raymond Burket, Foundant Technologies