I absolutely support this thread- it's necessary for them to see a "Granted or Denied." I'm fielding calls about the status being vague- the several people who complained about seeing the "denied" status before they received their official letter doesn't outweigh the utility of having this feature- it seems like common sense.

posted July 19, 2012 by Kara Smedley, American Geophysical Union

I have a suggestion for how to make the status of applications clear to applicants. If you go to the Project Name and insert a dash after the name and then type in Application Approved; $10,000 Grant Awarded or Application Declined, the information will be easily visible to applicants when they check on their status. Otherwise, there is no way for an applicant to ever be sure except to see if a report is due. The problem with the current system is that there is NEVER a time when the status information is clear. And if you manually enter a grant from the past, there is no "Grant Report Due" clue. Very confusing--and time consuming to have to explain to applicants over and over that they cannot have this information. I will now manually enter the decisions as a brief comment attached to the Project Name so that all applicants can see their status in an instant. Perhaps Foundant could do a survey of clients to find out how many would prefer to change to a system where grant status is obvious as soon as the grants are entered. For those who do not want the status to show immediately, there is a simple solution: delay entering the grants until the grant letters have been mailed and received. That way, those of us who would prefer to have the status available for viewing online would not feel disgruntled.

posted March 15, 2012 by Leslie Wozniak, Five Bridges Foundation

I agree with Leah that an explanation of "Decision complete" would help clear up some questions about status. Frankly I would prefer to see "Granted" or "Declined" rather than a vague term that leads to confusion. I'm surprised that a letter of denial is still considered personal--it's not that much different than an email of denial. Neither has a very personal touch to it.

posted March 1, 2012 by Leslie Wozniak, Five Bridges Foundation

Perhaps to avoid any negative reaction to denials the status could be changed to "Decision complete, Please contact the Foundation if you have not been formally notified of their decision on this request.” Or some wording to this effect. The current "awaiting Foundation Action" or showing the grantees Draft, Submitted, or Complete does not relay in any way that a decision has been made.

posted March 1, 2012 by Leah Zamora, Strategic Philanthropy, Ltd.

Very interesting idea to use color to help indicate status, Leslie. We definitely have an opportunity to provide better status information to applicants and the solution will need to give you some ability to choose how much information you want to provide via GLM. As Raymond mentioned, we have many customers that are very concerned about providing some personal touch, especially around denials. However, we have many other clients, especially those with very high application volume, that don't have time to provide personal touch and want GLM to be the sole solution for providing status feedback to applicants.

posted June 16, 2011 by Daren Nordhagen, Foundant Technologies

Being rather new to GLM, we have noticed this as well. While we see the the denial explanation as workable for some, it wouldn't work for us. Our volunteers who review applications often know whether they want to fund an application or not, but in the latter case, it would be hard for them to coalesce around a single reason or several for not funding.

We don't see an issue with listing a denial on the Status page for applicants. Most don't go there on a regular basis, so we would like to have this updated on the Status page for each program.

posted June 16, 2011 by Ron Katz, United Way of Asheville and Buncombe County

Option 1 works for us. Our foundation still sends paper letter notifications and would like to have the opportunity to reveal decisions in a personal way before seeing DECLINED from the system. I appreciate the denial explanation field but don't think we would use it. Optional would be great.

posted June 6, 2011 by Erin Baird, Allegany Franciscan Ministries

Great conversations happening here! This is precisely the type of interaction I was hoping for in the Idea Lab. Based on ideas and input from Mary, Prentice and Erin, let me to throw out another proposal:

1. Allow for optional "Post-dating" of denials (and perhaps grants too?) to allow Foundations (if they so desire) time to send out denial letters before the applicant portal shows a status of "Denied."

2. Allow for an optional denial explanation as described in my earlier post.

BTW, I complete agree with Prentice and everyone that applicants do need to be able to check the status of their requests. The push back we had from some clients was that it was too impersonal and uninformative to find out about a denial in that fashion. Many clients are much more comfortable with the personal touch of a letter. As in many things, there is no right answer here for all clients and the many variations around post are all entirely valid depending on context. Our goal is to meet the sometimes quite diverse needs of our customers without making the software too onerous or complex. It's a fine line and I very much thank you all for participating. Keep it coming!

posted June 8, 2011 by Raymond Burket, Foundant Technologies

Denial rationales: Great option but not without its challenges

I love Raymonds idea of having an optional comment field regarding denials.

It is not without its challenges. Sometimes you just don't want to get into a complicated conversation with a high-maintenance applicant.

And let’s not forget that foundation decisions often lack well-grounded or fully reasoned rationales. It might take a lot more effort to finesse a useful rationale than many foundations are used to.

Having a comment field there does advance the idea that grantees are eager to have more open and honest conversations with donors.

I would use it to show the ranking or scoring relative to other requests. I might also deploy it in the instances where projects were outside the guidelines or a lower priority relative to other requests. I often do this in a written email anyway when people ask.

If you can check the status of most retail orders, why shouldn't you be able to check on the status of your proposal?

I'd like control over the ability for applicants to check on the status of their proposal.

It would reduce many phone calls and emails and reduce the stress of not knowing.

The other problem I have noticed is that sometimes organizations say that they have not received notice of a decision.

This happens for several reasons: 1) it goes to junk mail; 2) it goes to the wrong person; 3) they lose it or overlook it in the daily in-box deluge; 4) other

Does the lost denial email ever happen to any of you all?

posted June 6, 2011 by Prentice Zinn, GMA Foundations

I agree that the status page appears confusing to applicants. I am referring to applicants that have been notified of grant decisions. When they login to applty again or review their requests, it looks like the application is still pending. I understand the concern about immediately posting decisions but what about allowing the status to be posted by a certain scheduled date. We send out decision letters on the same date for most of our applications and at that given time we expect to receive calls regarding funding decisions. The default date could be the current date or you could schedule.

posted June 6, 2011 by Erin Baird, Allegany Franciscan Ministries

Hi Raymond,

I don't see how seeing a Denial decision before you got the letter would make anyone angry, but I'm not on that side of it. The decision is the same, regardless of when/how the information is conveyed.

I think this is one of those things that would change by organization, so maybe have a way for each of to customize how it would read?

Thanks

posted June 6, 2011 by Mary Nicosia, GMA Foundations

Thank you for bringing this up Mary. We do need to do something in this area. Originally we displayed the true status, but some of our customers said that it engendered angry calls from applicants who saw a denied status before recieving a denial letter with an explanation, so we changed it.

I have an idea I'd like propose around this challenge. Upon denying a grant request in the system, what if we provided a field for "Denial Explanation" that would be available for the applicant in the portal as well as be used as a merge field in a denial letter?

I would love to hear thoughts from others on this subject. Join the fray!

posted June 6, 2011 by Raymond Burket, Foundant Technologies