Thursday, April 26, 2012

.NET Engineering and Integration Success Story

Grant Management - A Life Cycle Solution

The San Francisco Foundation (Foundation) faced a challenge regarding its non profit accounting, online fundraising and grant management systems. The legacy applications were outdated and needed to be replaced with a more dynamic and responsive system. The Foundation had a vision of giving the stakeholders in the Foundation more transparent access to information and control over their accounts with the Foundation.

The Foundation hired systems consultant to conduct a needs analysis. After extensive review of available products Blackbaud's Enterprise Financial Edge (FE) and Raisers Edge (RE) products were selected to address the Foundation's financial and online fundraising needs. However, there was still a critical application gap as the Blackbaud software did not address grant management. The consultant presented two options to the Foundation: systems integration with an existing software package with the chosen Blackbaud products or consider a custom software solution. The Foundation evaluated a number of preexisting software packages, but in the end a decision was made to build a custom grant management application with the VRP team.

When any non profit organization undertakes a custom application development process there is a natural tendency to customize the application to the unique processes that differentiates the non profit organization from the industry. However, VRP believes that the design phase is an opportunity to streamline idiosyncratic processes and save money and time through implementation of a more common set of business processes that are generic to the industry.

The San Francisco Foundation

The Grant Management System design team included a number of people with backgrounds in consulting, public accounting and investment management as well as a diverse group of future users of the new application. The team brought a broad based knowledge of the non profit industry to VRP's expert approach to custom application design. With the discipline of these backgrounds at the table and a commitment to open discussion, the Foundation took the opportunity to review and redesign workflows and processes that had taken on the individual personas of the departments and employees. In many cases, it was recognized that different grant making processes may be utilized depending on the nature of the grant and this was designed into the system as a set of business rules.

From a technical standpoint, VRP architected the system to be easily configurable to reduce ongoing maintenance related to the changes in these grant-making policies. All application parameters are stored in configuration files in the database and Foundation staff is able to make necessary changes when applicable. The systems integration with FE and RE was accomplished using Blackbaud's Application Programming Interface (API). To ensure license conformance and a clean upgrade path Blackbaud's technical resources were used to review the design. The design utilizes the strengths of the RE and FE applications, such as donor management and financial management and therefore duplication of data and data entry were avoided between the systems.

In addition to the systems integration of Blackbaud's products the Foundation was able to also address its major grant compliance need, which is to review the current tax status of applicants and potential grantee's. VRP worked with Guidestar to integrate tax data available through a nightly update. Research that previously required tax documentation and manual research has been nearly eliminated with this innovative idea.

The architecture of the Grant Management System was bookended with a set of web portals. The web portals address the Foundation's need to provide customer service and transparency to important stakeholders, mainly donors and grantees.

The Donor Portal, which targets the Foundation's Donor Advisor's, allows a donor to view information regarding his/her fund and also recommend grants from the fund that directly populate the Grant Management System database. Features available on the portal include:

  • Investments and cash account balance
  • Grant making funds available
  • History of fund contributions
  • A graphical representation of the donor's grant making trends
  • Overall Foundation's investment management results.
  • A five-year history of all grants made from the fund with the ability to give a repeat grant without data-entry
  • Ability to recommend a grant to an organization in which the fund has never granted
  • Search on the Foundations grant making to provide the opportunity for aligned giving.

The portal has received outstanding feedback from the donor community praising the 24/7 access to real-time account information. The portal has also provided internal efficiencies by decreasing manual processing and reducing staff data entry errors and creating an audit trail. The time gained by the system has also freed staff time to provide a more thorough review of grant making compliance issues and allows donors more one on one attention when questions arise.

The Grantee Portal is the donor portal's sister site and addresses applicant and grantee community that the Foundation serves. The Grantee portal is an online submission and monitoring environment that allows non profit organizations to submit grant applications, monitor application status, and review historical grant and application history at the Foundation. Features available on the grantee portal include:

  • Access to all current grant opportunities
  • Grant making funds available
  • Targeted applications to fit grant opportunities and collect relevant data from the grantee
  • Easy to complete applications featuring text boxes, drop down menus and check boxes and error checking to ensure that the grant submission follows guidelines
  • Ability to upload required documents electronically
  • View of applications in progress and view the status of each
  • View of historical applications that were not funded
  • Current open grants
  • Past grants (closed)
  • Online reporting and submission
  • View correspondence

The new portals have created staff efficiencies resulting in nearly six weeks of time saving processes that previously included manual data entry of each application. The improved process has also resulted in a decrease of paper files as all documents and data are now captured electronically and an audit trail is maintained.

VRP welcomes the opportunity to show how custom integrated applications can make your foundation or non profit organization more efficient! Contact us for more information on automating your Grant Management life cycle.

Tuesday, April 3, 2012

Building with Flash, A VRP Client Story

VRP Delivers Client Visions

Client: Film-maker Sebastian Marroquin
Goal: Create a Complex Flash Website Without Compromising Design

Stories can be shared through many different mediums, one of the most powerful being film. The Sundance Film Festival is world renowned for showcasing new film works and talent. In 2010, the film Sins of My Father, garnered critical acclaim and public attention at Sundance. Produced by Sebastian Marroquin, this film recounted the life of his own father, Pablo Escobar, a notorious Columbian drug lord.

Prior to the film's debut, producers wanted a website that would promote, entice and engage the public. The goal was to create a website that would match the vision of the project; created with collages of photographs, pop-ups, animated storyboards, and video. The incorporation of innovative graphics and flash animation was the perfect design choice and to accomplish this, producers needed a web developer with extensive technical expertise in Flash web design.

That's why VRP was hired for the job. With years of experience working with Advertising Agencies, Branding and Design firms, VRP has the experience of building websites which range from basic to complicated. The ability to use not only Flash, but also other web languages, is what differentiates our work from competitors. VRP knows that assembling a website is not difficult, but making it look beautiful is an art.

In the case of the Sins of My Father website, VRP executed the design exactly the way it was intended and delivered a final site according to the filmmaker's timeline. We invite you to visit the website Sins of My Father at www.sinsofmyfather.tv. Here you can experience final execution of this rich, multimedia website.

A client's website is their face to the world. VRP understands the importance of making that face look good and more importantly, we know how to make it look really good. Let us know how we can help make your vision a reality today!