Grant administration can often mean piles of paper, cutting and pasting from one document to another, tedious rekeying of data from applications to your internal systems, multiple crammed filing cabinets, postage and shipping of boxes to geographically dispersed review committees, distribution of application packets to board members, hours at the copying machine….a lot of work and quite distracting from your overall mission! It’s very easy to be consumed by the administrative aspects of grant making, but there are ways for technology to help.
Spend LESS time: Re-keying data Reviewing incomplete applications Copying applications multiple times Collating multiple documents per application Worrying that an application has slipped through the cracks Filing paper Manually logging data from interim and final reports Compiling and recompiling data for management and board reporting Tracking misplaced documents throughout the review process Creating correspondence to applicants and grantees How much time in a given year or grant cycle do you spend sitting at your computer rekeying information from paper based grant proposals? How much time is spent playing phone tag as you try to help your applicants ensure a complete and compelling proposal? How much time at the copier? How much time collating committee and board packets? Schlepping to the post office to mail the packets? Filing all of those paper applications and corresponding documents Fusion Laboratories, Inc 5420 LBJ Freeway � Suite 850 � Dallas, Texas � 75240 Phone: 2147395454 � Fax: 2147395455 http://www.fusionlabs.net
at the end of every cycle? How much time hand compiling data from past grant cycles in order to analyze past results and areas of focus? The question is, can you easily report and analyze the fruits of your labors? Can you say that all this work has helped strengthen your relationships with your grantees? Remember too, that time costs money. This is in addition to the actual hard dollars you might be spending! Spend LESS money: Using up reams of paper to print grant applications Shipping boxes of paper to geographically dispersed committees Paying storage fees What if there was a system that could dramatically reduce time spent on the activities above? What would you do with all that time? Could saving some of the hard dollars you spend on paper, shipping and storage be redirected towards your philanthropic purpose? Spend MORE Time: Building and nurturing you relationships with your grantees Supporting your grantees as they deliver on grant objectives Understanding if those grant objectives are delivering change Assisting your grantees as they translate their mission to programs Partnering with other organizations Developing greater knowledge around community issues Spectrum is a comprehensive system that handles the entire grants management process from initial inquiries to application submission, to internal due diligence and review, to committee review and scoring, to board review, to grant award and finally to analysis and reporting on your funding activities. It covers the entire spectrum of the grant making cycle! Fusion Laboratories, Inc 5420 LBJ Freeway � Suite 850 � Dallas, Texas � 75240 Phone: 2147395454 � Fax: 2147395455 http://www.fusionlabs.net
Not only does Spectrum support the entire cycle of grant making, it supports these cycles for all of the following types of grant activities: standard grants, grant commitments, competitive grants, donor advised grants, scholarships, quick scholarships. Letter of inquiry
Application
Due diligence
Committee Scoring
Board Approval
Grant Award
Reporting and analysis
Fusion Labs was founded by a trio of executives, who have a long history of successfully building products for foundations and managing technology consulting companies. The executive management team previously founded and built BRBA, a highly profitable Dallas-based technical/consulting firm with several hundred employees and annual revenues in excess of $30 million. The team navigated the company into a successful merger with six other corporations to launch an IPO for the public company Brightstar. This corporation had operating revenues in excess of $100 million and over one thousand employees. The executives left to found Fusion Labs in 2001. The company is headquartered in Dallas, Texas with offices in Houston and Charleston, South Carolina. Fusion Labs currently offers two primary products for foundations: GrantedGE for community foundations and Spectrum for private, family and corporate foundations. One of the products for this division is GrantedGE, a full-featured grants management system for community foundations and other foundations with donor advised funds as well as discretionary funds. GrantedGE is specifically built to manage grant process and programs when the funding sources are multiple and varied and when each of those funding sources carries its own set of program and funding criteria. GrantedGE manages the multiple variations of grants associated with multiple funds: donor-advised, interfund transfers, competitive grants, scholarships, designated grants, project grants, and others. GrantedGE manages each grant type through the entire cycle – from online submissions through multiple due diligence workflows to eventual resolution and payment. GrantedGE is fully integrated with Blackbaud’s CRM system, The Raiser’s Edge as well as its financial system, The Financial Edge. Spectrum is a second grants management offering designed and built by Fusion Labs. This product also manages the entire grant lifecycle from online submission through due diligence, committee and board review to final resolution. Spectrum is a point solution for grants management that can be integrated with your existing financial system. Spectrum offers constituent relationship management for each of the constituencies with which a foundation interacts – grant and scholarship applicants and recipients, board and volunteer committee members, funding and joint venture partners and to a limited degree, donors. Call us today to discuss which of our offerings will best serve your foundation’s operational needs.
Fusion Laboratories, Inc 5420 LBJ Freeway � Suite 850 � Dallas, Texas � 75240 Phone: 2147395454 � Fax: 2147395455 http://www.fusionlabs.net
Spectrum Feature Set Portals for Grantseekers, Grantees and Review Committees
Take your grant application/proposal process on line: Easily create and publish single or multi stage grant applications Drag and drop functionality to set up new grant and scholarship applications Manage multiple grant programs Easily create and manage scholarship applications Embed grant applications forms on your existing website Enable the attachment of supporting documents User logins for grantees enable them to save their work and continue later Reduce the administrative burden on your grantees by prepopulating fields Customize messages Create help messages All data entered by the grantees as they create and submit their on line application or proposal flows seamlessly into the back office to kick off the internal review processes. No export/import of data required! Once a completed application is submitted by a potential grantee, the staff can begin their review and due diligence including: Email capabilities for correspondence with the applicant Verification of nonprofit status and standing Ability to assign tasks and track the completion of those tasks Budget checking for one or multiple funds Fusion Laboratories, Inc 5420 LBJ Freeway � Suite 850 � Dallas, Texas � 75240 Phone: 2147395454 � Fax: 2147395455 http://www.fusionlabs.net
Allocation of funding recommendations Ability to add notes Ability to review past aspects of an applicant’s relationship with your foundation Capture and track information about the applicants programs, executive management as well as contact information Create and manage review committees After the staff has reviewed the application and supporting documents for completeness, done their initial due diligence and perhaps made budgetary recommendations, they can then assign the application to a review committee. Staff makes the decision as to how each application within a specific grant program should be scored and by whom. Spectrum offers tremendous flexibility around committee scoring. It supports multiple scoring rounds and multiple types of scoring. In addition, Spectrum supports initial automatic scoring for those that receive a great many proposals and need systematic help in ensuring that they do see and consider the highest ranking proposals. The automatic scoring can be overridden by staff if necessary. Since review committees are often spread across diverse geographies, Spectrum supports on line committee portals. Each committee member has a login to their work space to read and score the applications assigned to them. The committee member can make notes, ask questions and generally discuss a particular proposal with other members or staff. Committee members can score by question, by section or by proposal.
Fusion Laboratories, Inc 5420 LBJ Freeway � Suite 850 � Dallas, Texas � 75240 Phone: 2147395454 � Fax: 2147395455 http://www.fusionlabs.net
Application Review Committees have: On line access to the proposals assigned to them The ability to print the proposals if desired The ability to make notes or ask questions to staff or other committee members The ability to score a proposal by question or by section The ability to assign an overall score to a proposal. Scores can be either numeric or text, i.e. “Yes”, “No”, “Maybe” The ability to save their work and come back later
Workflow Spectrum allows you to configure the steps and tasks to manage your foundation’s processes. The system is extremely flexible and designed to support steps in the order that works for you. These steps can be changed by you should your processes change, expand or shrink. The workflow process is entirely configurable! Workflow capabilities enable you to ensure that each application moves through all the required steps established by your organization for each of your funding programs. Workflow builds confidence that each proposal is moved through your due diligence requirements in a timely manner and that nothing falls through the cracks. Assign tasks to users to establish clear lines of ownership Assign deadlines to ensure a timely response to every proposal Create as many different workflows as required to support your programs Configure workflows based on grant type and/or dollar amounts Establish and track prerequisites Categorize task types – Review tasks, Create Grant tasks, Due Diligence tasks Fusion Laboratories, Inc 5420 LBJ Freeway � Suite 850 � Dallas, Texas � 75240 Phone: 2147395454 � Fax: 2147395455 http://www.fusionlabs.net
Specify user defined potential outcomes associated with a task Attach notes to each task in the workflow for a complete audit trail Once the committees have made the recommendations and funding decisions are complete, Spectrum supports the necessary correspondence and payment scheduling.
Correspondence Spectrum supports templates for both email and hard copy correspondence. Letters and emails can be queued and tailored with individual details about a specific proposal. Invitation and confirmation templates can provide a more personalized experience for an on line applicant. Any correspondence generated is then saved and stored on the applicant’s or grantee’s record, thus enabling you to have a complete record of correspondence at your fingertips. No more hunting through file cabinets and folders! Create correspondence templates for letters and emails Configure messages for applications submitted via the Web Link correspondence to the grant or proposal record Single letters/emails Mass mailing to a group Merge Spectrum fields into Word documents
Fusion Laboratories, Inc 5420 LBJ Freeway � Suite 850 � Dallas, Texas � 75240 Phone: 2147395454 � Fax: 2147395455 http://www.fusionlabs.net
Grant Payments Spectrum offers robust capabilities for payment scheduling and tracking. Grant payments can be made through multiple funds. Grant awards can be broken into multiple payments. Payments can be scheduled and broken into installments. Contingencies can be attached to payments or payment installments. Once all the decisions have been made around who will be paid, how much they will be paid and when they will be paid – all of this information can be gathered up and batched in an export file that is sent to the accounting office. Once the finance office has cut the checks for the grant awards, information about the check number and check date can then be imported back into Spectrum. No more telling grantees you will have to research and call them back when they call to inquire about a grant payment, it will all be in the system! It is also possible to automate this transfer of information between Spectrum and your accounting system. Schedule payment amounts and dates Link contingencies to payments Tie payments to single or multiple funds Check and allocate program and fund budgets Process as single payments or batches Export payment file to your accounting system Import payment information back into Spectrum
Fusion Laboratories, Inc 5420 LBJ Freeway � Suite 850 � Dallas, Texas � 75240 Phone: 2147395454 � Fax: 2147395455 http://www.fusionlabs.net
Reporting Spectrum offers comprehensive functionality for tracking and categorizing descriptive characteristics for applicants, grantees, funds, and even donors. These characteristics can be used in reporting, querying and analyzing data to help fine tune the match between your funding areas and your overall mission. How many times have your spent hours compiling the data for a new report for a board member who has asked to see information from a new and different perspective? With Spectrum, as long as you have tracked the information in the first place, you will be able to report on it within a few clicks. In addition, Spectrum includes over 80 preconfigured reports out of the box. Each of these reports offers that flexibility of filtering by date range or by characteristic as well as a number of other criteria. Once you have created the report with specific filters, you can save it and either publish it within the system for other users OR you can publish it on the web for board members, committee members, other groups or the general public. No more printing and mailing reports! Over 80 configurable, parameter driven reports Robust querying tool for creating your own reports Publish reports to other users or to the Web 990 reporting Report designer Add custom reports to the reports menu
Fusion Laboratories, Inc 5420 LBJ Freeway � Suite 850 � Dallas, Texas � 75240 Phone: 2147395454 � Fax: 2147395455 http://www.fusionlabs.net
Administration The robust feature set of Spectrum ensures that you can configure the system to support your foundation’s business and data management requirements. If those requirements change over time, it is simply a matter of changing the configuration. No need to enlist professional services every time a process or data tracking requirement changes. Spectrum enables you to set roles and permissions around records and data. One of the most robust features of Spectrum is the ability to set up unlimited descriptive characteristics for grantees, proposals, grants and even donors. Using these characteristics to consistently describe your funding or program areas, fields of interest, population groups, age groups, other demographics and geographic areas served will greatly enhance your ability to report on your activities from a variety of perspectives. Manage characteristic (Form 990/NTEE) code tables Manage security and permissions Import and export data Configure workflows Configure application stages and cycles Manage correspondence templates, Manage data import, delete, global change Manage custom profile fields Perform system diagnostics Fusion Labs builds and supports products for grant making foundations. Call us to day to learn more about options available for your foundation!
Fusion Laboratories, Inc 5420 LBJ Freeway � Suite 850 � Dallas, Texas � 75240 Phone: 2147395454 � Fax: 2147395455 http://www.fusionlabs.net