We only release payments if a grantee's interim report(s) is reviewed by the Grants Manager and then approved by the Executive Director, so it is an integral component of our grants management. I could also see situations arise where a board member would like to see the reports. Since I am a new user, I hope I am understanding this correctly, that grantee reports cannot currently be seen on the dashboard of specified users and maintained as sharable records into the future?

I agree completely and would love to see this feature implemented!

More than happy to volunteer to beta test this possible new tool!

Malcolm Furgol
United Way of Frederick County
USA

I'm just joining this thread now but this has become one of our main challenges as we move through our granting cycles with Foundant. Lacking an ability to effectively evaluate followups is a glaring gap in the GLM process. We do a great job of receiving and analyzing applications, but if we are not able to effectively evaluate followups, I feel we are not doing our jobs well as philanthropists.

Our work-around solution is similar to others - we have previously uploaded pdfs to Shared Documents for our evaluators to read and review. But it is a very clunky process.

My respectful request is to please introduce the ability to evaluate followups which are linked to the original grant application. It would make our process move much smoother.

Gratefully,

Mark Petersen
Bridgeway Foundation
Canada

i also would like to be able to email the evaluator the follow up report forms when completed.

I too think it is important to allow our evaluators to review grant reports (a follow-up form) as a lead up to the next grant cycle. I've heard that in an upcoming release follow-ups will become a separate stage in a process, so having an evaluation stage after each follow-up will be valuable to us.

This is a high priority for us. I am hopeful we can also assign our evaluators as reviewers of followups. Our purpose is not to approve/deny them, but just to be able to view the report back from the organization on the activity the reviewers initially approved. I think it is essential that the circle is completed and our reviewers can see the results of their approvals.

I agree with Malcolm. It would be incredibly helpful to us as well if we could assign an evaluation for the final reports that come in. Right now you can't easily see if you have gone in and reviewed a final report unless you go in again and see if any comments have been made in the comment boxes.

It seems like such a natural progression for the process, but then I am not a programmer! :)

Please consider looking at this possibility again, because it would be a wonderful way to complete the full circle of our process.

Thanks!
Lynn Larson
Fred & Jean Allegretti Foundation

Please keep on trying to figure this out, would be incredibly helpful even if it was limited at first to just indicating whether or not a report met the minimum requirements of what was agreed to in the original grant agreement. Thanks!

Thanks for all the valid input. I've added this to our product backlog. Given other efforts underway and given the complexity of this change (as Raymond noted, Follow-ups are definitely more "ad hoc" than other forms), it's not likely we'll be able to do much in the near-term. However, as we continue to refine how processes can be configured, we will definitely keep these suggestions in mind.

It's challenging (and frustrating) because it's one of those things where we have a lot of the pieces in place to implement this. Without some significant re-work, though, we just can't wire those pieces together to achieve the desired functionality. We certainly try to design things in a way to keep us out of situations like this, but it's not always possible.

Thanks again,

-chris

posted July 20, 2012 by Chris Dahl, Foundant Technologies

This is also an issue for us, so I'm happy to see the good ideas shared.

We do not need to assign Final Grant Reports for review, but we would like to share these documents with our staff who are not Foundant Administrators. Currently we save the print packets of the reports to our shared drive which does not allow the staff to refer back to the original application. We could combine it with the print packet of the application, but that would take add another step that we may not be able to take the time to do. But if you were able to at least provide a way to add a Staff Evaluator to a report with access to that applicant's entire application, then it would really streamline the process and make it so much easier to keep our other staff updated and connected to our grant programs.

posted July 16, 2012 by Teresa Crane, National Environmental Education Foundation

Hi Sally,

This is in response to your post on February 1st.

You can assign as many follow ups as you would like to a grant. You can assign them when you are approving a grant or you can go back into your granted list and add additional follow ups as necessary.

Any active follow ups that you have built in your site will be available to you once you have approved a grant.

Thank you,

Betty Bloomer

Foundant Technologies Client Support

posted February 9, 2012 by Betty Bloomer, Foundant Technologies

Thanks for your comments, Sarah. As I started reading your post I was thinking I could save the followup and evaluation as a pdf and attach it to the new application, which I currently do with the grantee's followup reports. I will be working on this when we finish our first round of grants on Foundant. I think this is a good way to handle it.

posted February 2, 2012 by Laura Gilbertson, The William Bingham Foundation

Hi Laura, as noted in my post above we have been trying to find a solution for this same issue too. I think if you use the suggestion by Ron in his post above it would let you do what you are describing. You would make a new "Application Process," but it would have the form of the grant follow-up report form that you are using. Then you can ask grantees to fill out the f/up report just as they would an application and submit it, and then you have the ability to assign it to a Board member and it will show up on their Dashboard as a new "Application" (except it will have a different Process name to help them distinguish it as a f/up report). Big con to this work-around: the follow-ups are no longer linked in the system to the grant they are related to, and you can no longer search for them as "Follow-ups" -- they are technically Applications and you would have to narrow down by process name.

I was concerned about these cons, so I spoke with Mark L. from Foundant the other day and he had what I thought was a good alternative suggestion that we are going to be trying in our upcoming grant round. After a grantee submits a Follow-Up report (in the regular "linked" way), staff downloads the PDF of that report and then attaches it as a "Supporting Document" to an application (using the "Add Document" internal option on the application summary page). However, in our case our practice previously was to send the prior year grant reports to our Board along with new applications, so we are going to be attaching the PDF f/up reports to the new applications (we have a lot of repeat grantees). I am not sure this solution would be helfpul for you if you want to attached to already-funded grants, because then I don't think there is a way to have a funded grant "re-show up" on a Board dashboard -- so then Board members would still have to search for the old grant using the search feature to see the f/up, and at that point they might as well search for the f/up report itself, or just search for the org. itself as you describe above.

I hope one of these solutions may be helpful -- I have spent a lot of time considering their pros and cons in the last few days!

posted February 2, 2012 by Sarah Kelley, Island Foundation

Also, is there any way (other than have the grantee click "Save as draft" 6 months after the application was granted then "Submit" a year after) to allow the grantee to have some kind of mid grant report that fits into the process like the followup? I can only find the ability to attach one followup report.

posted February 1, 2012 by Sally Weldon, Community Foundation of Western North Carolina

We are new Foundant users currently going through our first round of grant applications and have not yet started working on followups. However our procedure has been that when we receive a final report from a grantee it is evaluated by at least one board member, who shares the evaluation with the other board members. Staff sets up the follow-up evaluation and sends to the board reviewer as an email attachment, it would be great if this could be done in the same place as the applications. During the training of our Board members on Foundant one of them asked about this and everybody agreed it would be helpful to have this capability. Currently we are uploading evaluations of closed-out grants to the organization so board evaluators can see the ratings of previous grants.

posted January 26, 2012 by Laura Gilbertson, The William Bingham Foundation

Hello All, We are new Foundant users as well and have quickly come across this same issue of needing a streamlined way for Board members to review and evaluate grant Follow-ups.

Previously, we used a process identical to Susan's -- groups would send in their grant reports (in fact, returning grantees were required to submit their reports before a new proposal could be considered), and we would include these in the mailed paper packets that we sent to Board members, so that they could review groups' reports before turning to their renewal applications.

Using the current Foundant set-up of attaching the Follow-ups to prior year grants, I count 5 different "clicks" before a Board member would be able to see a group's grant report, and they would have to know it was there in the first place (as opposed to being able to see it on their dashboard). Not to get too philosophical about it, but with so much emphasis on grant evaluation in the philanthropy world in general, and with all the effort that groups put in to their grant reports, we feel that having our Board review grant follow-ups is just as important as having them review new applications, and we would like to see the system reflect that.

So, we would like to add our vote -- please make a way that Board members could see grant Follow-ups right on their Dashboard, and have a way to evaluate and comment on them!

Raymond, I can see your point about how multiple follow-ups could be assigned, but I don't see why that should prevent staff from being able to choose some or all of them to assign to Board evaluators?

And Ron, I thought that was a great idea to create a new Follow-up Process using the Application form, so I did that, but I am wondering if you have any solution for how to link those follow-up reports to the prior year grants?

Thanks a lot,

Sarah Kelley

Island Foundation, MA

posted December 9, 2011 by Sarah Kelley, Island Foundation

Thank you for your comments thus far. With the ad hoc nature of Follow-ups (assigning as many as one wants) versus our other forms, this implementation could be a bit daunting. Please keep the comments coming. I'm going to retreat into my cave :-) to consider this and come back with some questions and perhaps ideas.

-raymond

posted August 3, 2011 by Raymond Burket, Foundant Technologies

We have a similar issue. We decided to create the follow up report as an "application" which has the capabilities we desire, but ideally, it would be good for follow up reports to have this flexibility.

posted August 1, 2011 by Ron Katz, United Way of Asheville and Buncombe County

You are not alone Susan. Our follow up reports need to be evaluated by the appropriate program officer and in some cases the ED. It seems ashame to have to do this outside of the system where it is much harder to track. I'd like the evaluation option on the follow-up forms in place as soon as possible.

posted July 25, 2011 by Anne Rogers, Mass Humanities

Hi Gloria,

I've only heard this idea mentioned in passing a few times, so at this point it's not very high on our priority list. Part of the reason is that there is some complexity around what the approval or denial of a follow-up report means. While the assignment of a follow-up report to a reviewer would not be hard, this idea has implications for workflow, statuses, and reporting. With an application, it's pretty straightforward - a denial means the application doesn't get approved / funded. But with a follow-up report, I can see there being different interpretations of what a denial, in particular, would mean.

As we move forward in 2013, there are some things we'd like to improve in terms of the evaluator and board member experience in using GLM. If we get more definition and hear more from users about a significant need for this feature relative to other things we are working on, it's something we could take a harder look at. If you have time and feel it's a high enough need, please expand on how you see this working beyond just the assignment portion (which is probably the simplest part).

Thank you for the suggestion, and have a safe and happy New Years!

posted December 27, 2012 by Chris Dahl, Foundant Technologies