Fund at the LOI stage and Application stage
To decrease the burden on nonprofits, it would be great if we could add payments at both the LOI complete and Application complete stages. Then we can divert the NPOs who we don't need more information from straight to checks being cut and continue with those orgs we need more information from in the Application stage.
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Lori commented
It is not unusual for our Trustees to approve grants at the LOI stage. Our usual way to approve these is to move the LOI to the application stage, then complete the form on their behalf, with "dummy" answers for the required questions. We then proxy in as the applicant to submit the application. Then we can finally approve.
We've also tried setting up new processes so that we can copy the LOIs into Application-only processes without required fields. This really didn't seem to save much time either.
Would truly love an easier way to approve an LOI!
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Mary Nicosia commented
Hi Grant,
I've been commenting on this issue under a separate Idea Lab issue and it's gotten me nowhere. I see this was posted back in 2011 and that there were a few comments. I was just talking to Aaron about how frustrating this is (I currently have 46 approvals sitting in front of me that will require me to approve the LOI, log on as the applicant, submit a blank application, log on as myself, move the application along and then still approve the full application and make the grant). Any idea if granting from the LOI will ever be a reality? I have to go through this for two foundations; one of which has two grant cycles a year. Aaron has made some suggestions for work arounds, but I'm really hoping one of two things will happen:
1) straight approval from an LOI
or
2) allow admins to access an applicant account to be able to submit an application, if there's already an LOI, without having to log in and out.
Thanks,
Mary -
Mary Nicosia commented
I am hoping this has, finally, been revisited and that there's talk about this being a possibility. I am, again, going to be spending an hour logging about 30 grants. It's the most frustrating part of working in Foundant.
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Mary Nicosia commented
Hi Chann - I don't know if you've been contacted about this, but I went to our rep and received a response that way. There's a work-around using the third-party functionality.
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Chann Fowler Spellman commented
yes, me too. Need response!
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Mary Nicosia commented
I have yet to have any response to this at all, but I am once again bringing up because I'm going to be granting from LOIs again. Has there been any talk about this possibility at all? I'm a little surprised at the lack of response...
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Mary Nicosia commented
I am once again going to be granting on LOIs and was wondering if the
above is being considered at all. This round will be 38 grants on LOIs,
which means a whole lot of wasted time. -
Mary Nicosia commented
I'm updating because this client has just gone through another cycle and I, again, spent about 1.5 hours doing something that should have taken much less time. Also, I have never actually had any response to this issue in the Community, so I'm trying to make sure someone is seeing it...
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Mary Nicosia commented
Another update: I just spent 45 minutes moving 36 LOIs to full applications because we have another client (same family, different foundation) that also grants directly from LOI (asking for just two full proposals from the 38 LOIs. I know it's not high (or may at all) on your list, but I wanted to make sure the issue isn't forgotten, as it a lot of time spent and a lot of work just to simply move the LOIs to full application and there doesn't seem to be any sort of a workaround.
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Mary Nicosia commented
I'm revisiting this to give an update: The client I was referring to had their first grantmaking meeting and, as predicted, made three grants from full proposals and another 22 from the LOIs. Because I had to log in to each applicant's account, then back into my own, 22 times, making these 25 grants (with just one follow-up each) took over an hour. I know it's not high on the list (if it's on the list at all), but it would be great if you could give this suggestion another look.
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Mary Nicosia commented
Hi - We'd like the ability to make a grant directly from an LOI. We have a new client that has an open submission process for the LOI and will, in most cases, grant directly from the LOI. In some cases, usually when the grant will be for a higher amount, the client will go back to the applicant for more information or for clarification.
This will happen with maybe four applications out of the 50 that will be approved. For the others, I would, as it stands now, have to find a way to submit the blank application for the applicants that have been approved directly from the LOI. It doesn't make sense to contact each applicant to say, "Please log in and click submit on the blank application."
The next deadline for this client will be starting just after the start of the year.
Until the option to grant from an LOI is (hopefully!) possible, does anyone have suggestions for how to get around this?
Thanks,
Mary
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Ideas commented
Thanks for the clarification. We were rushing to meet a deadline and I was out of town (at the GMN conference). I'll try the work around well in advance of the next cycle. We only have one grant program (our largest grants) that uses LOIs. Is there anything I can or should do about the LOIs that are currently approved as grants? Is there a demo or way I can see how this process should work? Thanks.
posted July 14, 2011 by Erin Baird, Allegany Franciscan Ministries
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Grant Elliott commented
Hi Erin,
My apologies for the confusion on this and I can only imagine headache it's creating with your historical records! You are able send a process live without defining the application for the process and here's the workaround. Insert a dummy application while you are accepting LOI's and then when the application is ready, replace the dummy one with the correct one. The key thing to keep in mind is not to mark the LOI's complete until the correct application has been added to the process. If you have more questions we can discuss this over the phone or by email if you'd like. I should also make this note in our support system because I believe the answer tells you there has to be an application in a process but it does not explain the workaround, hence the confusion on this. Go ahead and send me any questions you have Erin.
Posted July 14, 2011 by Grant Elliott, Foundant Technoloiges
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Ideas commented
Meredith, Leslie and Katie,
This great input! I will add and intermediate LOI complete/pending bucket to our list. I can't yet tell you when we might implement this, but it certainly seems like it would be helpful for a number of folks. Something related to this we've been considering is allowing folks to have a report field or their choice display as a column in grant/request listings. In this way one could have a custom criteria to differentiate between different requests in various dashboard "buckets."
Erin,
I've asked Grant to contact you. I think there may well be a better way to handle your workflow in GLM using just one process. Would you mind if I moved your question to the discussion forum as it's own post? I think it might be better seen and served there. If we can resolve the scenario you described above, we'll post the solution as well.
Thank you everyone!
posted July 14, 2011 by Raymond Burket, Foundant Technologies
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Ideas commented
We are new to Foundant and I had set up our pre-application (LOI) and was ready to go live with it when I learned that I needed to have the application ready as well. We revise our application every year and sometimes use feedback from the pre-application to do so. I didn not have the full application ready. We ended up making the pre-application (LOI) a regular application. The invites pre-applications were approved with a $0 grant amount so we could keep their history. I do not like this. It inflates our grant numbers. I would like to fix the process for next year but am pretty confident we won't have both the LOI and application available at the same time. Does anyone else have a more staggered process? Once the "full" applications are approved I want to go back and decline the approved pre-applications. I wish I could make them LOIs.
posted July 14, 2011 by Erin Baird, Allegany Franciscan Ministries
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Ideas commented
I would echo Leslie and Meredith's comments. We use the LOIs as a pre-screen and sometimes it takes a while for a decision to be reached. It would be helpful to have a "waystation" for these. Meredith's suggestion of "Pending" is one that would work well for us, too.
posted July 6, 2011 by Katie Briggs, Laird Norton Family Foundation
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Ideas commented
Meredith-
I have a report field set up for issue areas, but the classifications only show up in data exports. Since the board reviews all applications in a single batch through GLM, I want them to be able to see the groupings when they go into review mode. The only solution I've found is to insert something like Domestic Violence (and include a colon) before the project name. It works, but some groups are taken aback when they see that I have changed their project name. (I can't take credit for the idea; Betty Bloomer was the inspiration for the solution.)
posted July 5, 2011 by Leslie Wozniak, Five Bridges Foundation
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Ideas commented
Leslie -- thanks for adding your perspective and for offering the idea of the work-around of adding an asterisk before prokect name -- this is a great idea, in the event that this "fix" takes a little while for our buddies at Foundant to implement.
I want to return the favor and offer some advice on sorting by issue area groups. you could add this question as a report field to the LOI and/or application and let applicants self-select which issue area they most closely align with (you could always reassign them if you don't agree with their assessment). OR...becuase our issue areas can be very nuanced, I chose not to allow applicants to self-select -- so we made the question an internal field on the application. so when revewing full applications, we assign the issue area classification, and we can sort on that in a data export. Feel free to call me if you want to discuss offline: 610-832-3813.
posted July 5, 2011 by Meredith Huffman, Genuardi Family Foundation
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Ideas commented
I have the same issue as Meredith--needing another option other than approved/declined for LOIs. I make first round cuts but these are reviewed by the board president. Currently I add an asterisk in front of their project name so they can be sorted into a group by the president when he is reviewing my recommended cuts. I'd love to have a bucket for these if possible. That brings up another issue: there's no process to group LOIs or Applications into issue area groups short of inserting the issue area in front of the project name, which I am currently doing. Although I can export data into groups on Excel spreadsheets, I can't arrange organizations as I would like within the system so the board can review like organizations sequentially.
posted July 5, 2011 by Leslie Wozniak, Five Bridges Foundation
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Ideas commented
Hi Raymond --
Yes -- another option beyond approved/declined. I personally would like it to be "pending" but "complete" would work too.
Howeer, I don't want to make it a necessary step for all submitted LOIs. Many I can approve immediately upon reading their LOIs, and I want to continu to be able to quickly aprpvoe these.
To (hopefully) better illustrate, I'll provide two examples of situations for which I need this separate "bucket" for LOIs that woudl remove them from the "submitted" bucket (which I consdier to bascially be an inbox that requires my immediate attention):
(1) Those LOIs that I have reviewed, and have "earmarked" for declination. However, I give my Board members an opportunity to review all proposed declinations before they are final, in case I have unknowingly rejected an organization they have a personal interest in.
(2) Those LOIs that I have reviewed, but we are waiting on some other information, such as additional 501c3 verification if their EIN is so new that it didn't show up on Charity Check.
Right now, in dashboard view -- if I want to get an accurate idea of LOIs "Real" status, I take the number I ahve in submitted and manually back out those that I've earmarked for declination to get an accurate idea of how many applications I have in each bucket.
It would also be nice to see how many we;ve declined in a given cycle on the dashboard.
posted July 5, 2011 by Meredith Huffman, Genuardi Family Foundation