This would be very helpful. Currently, when a follow-up report gets submitted, I have to manually download and send it to the evaluators via email. Then they have to review it on their own and let me know when I can mark the report as "complete" in the system. It would be helpful if there was a way that I could assign a follow-up report to evaluators, then they review it online the same way they can review applications/LOIs. Their review bucket would not mark the follow up as complete. It would move it to the a new bucket, perhaps it could look like this, "Follow Ups: Submitted --> Follow Ups: Evaluator Assigned --> Follow Ups: Evaluator Complete -> Follow-Up: Administrator Complete."

It would be really helpful if we could assign a follow-up to our board members to review in the same way we assign them applications to evaluate. For the specific follow-up (in our case, the grant status report) they wouldn't need to evaluate them, but they would have them all in one place on their dashboard to read and review.

I agree that it needs to be easier for board members to access FollowUps. Could the board member dashboard have a "bucket" for recently submitted Follow-Up forms with each one having a link that takes you directly to the form? Even if board members couldn't fill out an evaluation form in Foundant, at least they could access the Follow-Up forms themselves with one click, rather than me downloading them and uploading them to Dropbox or some other place on the cloud. Also, if I have to make any changes in the FollowUp form (sometimes the uploaded table isn't formatted well or applicants ask to make changes), I wouldn't have to download another packet and re-upload it to Dropbox if they could easily access it themselves on Foundant.

I currently download our final reports from previous grants and attach them to an agenda I send via email to the committees that review requests for funding. It would be so helpful to have a quick, easy way for the board to review final reports in the portal as they are reviewing the current request. I am aware that they can access the final reports by clicking into “Requests and Decisions” and finding the specific historic request, but it is quite time consuming for both me explaining the steps and for the board to do it. I would love to see an enhancement to the portal that would make viewing final reports easier. Thank you so much!

Any updates from Foundant yet? We've been trying for years to make the process more efficient for Board Members and for staff. It's incredibly cumbersome and time consuming when you have 70+ processes.

Hi Sammie,

I just obtained the Standard + 2 package, and my assumption was that for each grant we could then tag evaluators/board members on follow up reports. So isn't Anonymous' idea as mentioned at the outset of this thread now available?

Thanks, Sammie. Ideally I'd like to see the toggle built into GLM at the Form-building level. In other words, make a follow-up visible to certain roles (Board Member/Evaluator) or not. In our case, evaluation tools wouldn't be needed, as report review and sign-off is a staff task.

To follow up, I don't think these reports need evaluation, because for our Committee members/Board purposes they are only informational and there would be no action required.
Thanks again. I'm curious to see where this idea stands??

I like Mike's idea. A toggle for reviewers to see the follow-ups would be so much easier. The work-around we're doing now is to make the applicant upload their previous year follow-up report to their current application. This is turning out to be a total nightmare, as most of our applicants are NOT tech savvy enough to navigate the system to do this and it's making them crazy and ME crazier troubleshooting the how to's with them. There must be a better way.

For me, I'd like to just have a toggle to make certain follow-ups visible to Board Members. They'll need to see grant reports, but not things like agreements and request for funds forms.

Totally agree and same issue here. This particular use case is the one we're working through now. However, it would be a great advancement if the dashboard can be configured/customized for a given user and/or role. Much like other dashboards offered in cloud based apps.

I would love for our board to see the follow ups of previously awarded grants as they review current applications. It would be helpful for them to see on the dashboard not only the due date but also the completed date. Sometimes our board might not want to review the follow up but they do like to check that a previous grant applicant got all the follow up reports in on time. We just converted and I had to create a spreadsheet for each applicant that showed all past grants for each organization with due dates and completed dates of all previous grants. It worked but a way for them to check quickly as they do their reviews and during discussions would be very helpful.

1) Access to completed follow ups would be great and very helpful. We would be OK with ours having access to submitted Follow Ups as well, but I would anticipate that would not work for everyone. Our board would only be interested in interim and final reports, not follow ups along the lines of the grant agreement.
2) Ours would be most interested when looking at new applications from an organization. A few may be interested in seeing those from previous grantees who did not reapply, however that would only apply to a few of our processes in which regular repeat grants are allowed.
3) Either. If we had to assign them, we would probably only assign them when the grantee is applying for a new grant, or if there is something very specific in the follow up that we want the board to read. Would assigning the follow ups require some action on the board's part? If so, our preference would be for them to have access to all.
4) Just looking and reading

I would like to add that it is definitely important for a Board member or Committee evaluator to be able to see all the completed follow-up reports for the processes they have reviewed. They need to see not only the follow-ups from an organization that is submitting a new application but those who have not applied again as well. I hope this is helpful.
Many thanks for the consideration of this much-needed refinement of the workflow for staff. It will alsp improve our outcome assessment if our Board members and committee evaluators can read for themselves the reports of grantees about the good work they are doing.
Thanks,
Andrea Grout

1. For my foundation, they would only care to see completed follow ups
2. Most likely when they are evaluating an application from a new organization. However, there might be in instance they'd like to see report when the org has NOT reapplied.
3. All
4. Just reading

Thanks for considering this.

Thanks for following up! 

1) This wouldn’t be ideal. I think people would get confused seeing all our other grant programs mixed in when really they want to look at a specific process or organization.
2) Timing might be either as follow up grant reports are completed OR as they are evaluating a new application for the organization.
3) Assigning them would be best. We would be assigning not only board members but committee members. Similar to evaluators.
4) For us, they would probably only be looking and reading.

We have grants committees who help us with evaluating new applications and visit organizations. It would be great if I could assign them follow up grant reports to be able to read after the grant period ends because a) they are invested in that organization and just curious to see how it went b) will be visiting with that same organization the following year and want to feel informed on how the last grant went.

Happy to talk more if you’d like! Thanks so much for working with us to try to make helpful changes! You all are so appreciated.

I like the idea of being able to assign the follow-ups to Board members/Committee Evaluators rather than giving them blanket access. And only to completed ones...not draft..
It would be good to be able to selectively assign the follow-ups. I would also like to give them a comment field so they can make notes for themselves and staff if they think additional follow up or more info is needed.

Hi Sammie,

1) I would rather NOT have the board have access to the Follow Ups bucket. Having it similar to assigning them an application evaluation, I would like to be able to assign a Follow Up evaluation.

2) Timing. As they come in for us. I would like to be able to assign a certain board member a Follow Up Evaluation once the Follow Up has been submitted (for example: when a Post Grant Report comes in). I would like the board members to be able to review and comment on the report.

3) I think I covered this one, but I would like to be able to assign them. Not all board members would need to be assigned to any particular follow up evaluation.

4) I would like a place for comments. They wouldn't need to give a score like evaluations do now, but I would like to be able to "require" a comment.

I hope this helps.

Thanks so much!
Lynn Larson

Yes having access to seeing follow ups would be great. My guess is they will look at follow ups when reviewing the next grant vs. when they come in.

I second Andrea's comment above!