Tolland Education Foundation

What was the problem to be solved?

The client wanted a better way to manage their grant-giving process, including tracking the status of grants and displaying grant history on the front end of their website.

What was the old system?

In their old system, grantees had to download and fill out a PDF, then email the PDF to the foundation. A volunteer on the board would manually enter that information into a spreadsheet which would then be emailed out to the Board to be discussed. This spreadsheet would have to be updated and then re-sent to the board.

How did Civi provide a solution?

Greenleaf leveraged the existing CiviGrants plugin to create a customized workflow for the grant process. We created a CiviForm for grant applications, with twenty-nine custom fields, available directly on the front end of the website. All grant applications are automatically linked to the CiviContact that created them. Greenleaf imported all past grants from the existing spreadsheet so that the institutional history would be safely maintained.

Grants Management Dashboard

Using SearchKit, Greenleaf created a Grants Management Dashboard so that permissioned Board members can easily see all grants, who requested them and when, the amounts requested, the status of the application, grant type and date of decision, amount of decision and amount paid.

Front-End Grant Displays

In addition, Greenleaf used a YooTheme integration with the Civi back end to generate a Past Grants page. Once a grant is paid, it automatically shows up on the front end of the site. This way, potential donors can easily see the important work the Foundation is doing.  

In addition, Greenleaf used YooTheme templates to generate single-page details displays of each grant.

What were the Operational Benefits of Our System?

By using CiviCRM’s CiviGrant module in conjunction with FormBuilder and SearchKit, Greenleaf provided a stable, standardized and replicable Grants management system without custom code. Instead of relying on a spreadsheet kept by an individual board member, the Foundation Board can view real-time status of all grants, thus keeping the history of the Foundation safe through changes in personnel.