There are two ways to add a new user to an existing organization. To add a new user to an existing organization in GLM follow either of the workflows below:

Create a New User from the Add New User Page

1. The first way to add a new user from an existing organization is to start by clicking the Search dropdown at the top of the page then click Users.
   
   
2. Click Add New User.
   
   
3. Click the drop down under organization and select the existing organization you want the user to be added to as shown below. 
   
   
4. Then follow this article to add the new user to the system as usual. 

Create a New User from the Organization Summary Page

1. The second option is to start by clicking the Search dropdown at the top of the page then click Organizations.
   
   
2. Search for the existing organization then click Search.
   
   
3. Click on the Contacts tab.
   
   
4. Click Add Contact.
   
   
5. You will notice that the organization will be auto-filled.
6. Then follow this article to add the new user to the system as usual. 

In some cases it's helpful to sort items on a workload or search page by more than one column. For example, sorting requests by both process and applicant. 

Follow these steps to sort by multiple columns: 

1. On the page you'd like to sort, click the first column header you'd like to sort the list by. 
   
2. Hold the Shift key down on your keyboard while clicking the next column header you'd like to sort by. 
   
   • Repeat this step for other columns if desired. 
3. If you would like to remove the sorting from a column, hold the Ctrl key down on your keyboard while clicking the column header. 

Within the full rich text editor (available when editing a process description, email template, instructions in a form question, etc.), you can add an image.

To add an image within the rich text editor:

1.  Place your cursor where you want the image to appear and click the Image icon.
   
   
2. Enter the URL of the image. 
   
   
   
   • The image must be hosted online - for example, on your foundation's website.
   • Depending on how the image was inserted into your foundation's website, you may be able to right click on the image and select Copy Image Address to copy the URL of the image. 
   • You may also use image hosting services such as postimages.org to generate an image URL. 
3. Click Insert to place the image at the site of your cursor.
   
   
   
4. Click the image to access editing options.
   
   

• These options include aligning the image, inserting a link, and replacing or removing the image. 

GLM does offer a search to check an organization's status against the OFAC terrorist watch list via our integration with GuideStar Charity Check. 

If you open the GuideStar Charity Check tab of the Organization Summary you will see a line item called OFAC Organization. The response to this item will say No if the organization is not on the terrorist list or Yes if they are on the list.

The document viewer feature allows administrators, evaluators, and applicants to efficiently view documents uploaded to a form. This feature is available when editing a form or viewing a submitted form (e.g. the application). 

Open the Document Viewer

There are two ways to open the document viewer:

• Click Document Viewer at the top of the form. 
• Click the Eye icon next to any specific document uploaded to the form.

Use the Document Viewer

The document viewer gives you several options: 

• Click a document listed on the right side of the screen to view it. The document viewer lists all documents that are uploaded to the form. 
• Click any options at the top of the screen to navigate the document. This allows you to view different pages in the document, rotate it, or zoom in/out. 
• Click the Download icon for a document to download it to your computer. 
• To exit the document viewer, click Close. 

As an administrator, you can access the Status Change Log to view each status change the request has undergone, who made the change, and when. To view the status change summary for a specific request:

1. Access the Request Summary.
2. In the Request tab click Status Change Log under the stage history.

The table on the Status Change Log page will display the date the change occurred down to the second, the status it was changed from, the status it changed to, and who made the change. All dates on the Status Change Log will reflect the time zone set for your site. 

Within the full rich text editor (available when editing a process description, email template, instructions in a form question, etc.), you can add a hyperlink to text. Please note that the rich text editor that can be allowed on form questions (for users responding to those questions) does not give the option to add a hyperlink to text.

1. Highlight the text you would like to attach the link to.
2. Click on the link (chain) icon.
3. Enter the web address of the hosted document into the pop up box.
4. Click Insert.
5. When you are finished the question will look like this:

On pages where there are tables of data that can be sorted, the sort order on each table will be saved for each user across sessions. These pages include the Payment Tracking page, workload pages (buckets on the dashboard), etc.

For example: 

• If a user sorts the list of requests on the Application Submitted workload page by project name, then navigates to another page, when they return to to the Application Submitted workload page, the requests will still be sorted by project name.
• If that user logs out and logs back in on a different computer, the next day, and goes to the Application Submitted workload page, the requests will still be sorted by project name. 
• This will hold true until the user sorts those requests by a different column.

When you log in to your Foundant GLM site do you feel that your Dashboard looks more cluttered with requests than it should be?  Does your list of active organizations, or list of active processes seem too long and need to be trimmed down?  Do you have applicants who have created duplicate organization accounts?  Well, it sounds like you’re ready to start cleaning up your site.  We’ve put together a checklist of items in order for you to ensure you don’t miss anything along the way.

Process Manager

In order to keep your active Process Manager tab organized you should archive processes once the application deadline date has passed OR when the full grant cycle has ended (all payments logged and all follow-ups submitted), whichever event makes more sense to you. This way only your current grant cycles are visible in your “Available” process list.

Please note that forms attached in the process stages will automatically be archived along with the process when it is archived.  And remember, toggling a process to “Off” will only remove the process from the applicant-facing “Apply” page, it will not archive the process. 

TIP:  Archived processes can always be restored to the “Available” list if you need to.

Organizations

Duplicate accounts

Over time, you are likely to find duplicate records for the same organization in your site.  To search for existing duplication organizations, go to the “Search” option on your top navigation bar and select “Organizations”, then click on the “Duplicate Search” button. Select the duplicate organization(s) that should be merged and then “Merge Selected Organizations” at the bottom of the page. The system will prompt you to merge duplicates into a "primary" organization.

There may be duplicate organizations in your site that are using the same “umbrella” tax id, such as university departments, medical or hospital divisions or organizations with multiples locations which you do not want to merge.  You will need to decide.   Foundant GLM has several ways of helping you prevent duplicate accounts from happening and/or managing it when it does. Please contact your Client Success Manager ( CSM) to discuss what will work best for your organization when it comes to duplicate account management.

Archiving/Deleting organizations

If you have organizations in your site which are no longer active or no longer exist, you may delete or archive them depending on if there is data associated with the organization.  You may select and archive an organization which has requests associated with it or charity check(s) run.  You may completely delete an organization with no grant history or no charity checks present on the organization summary page.

Deactivating Users

When a contact is no longer associated with an organization that has requested funding from you or a user has been created in error, you should deactivate the user to make the user inactive. *Users cannot be deleted, only deactivated.

Please Note:

• You cannot deactivate a user if they are the only contact listed in the organization summary.
  • Another user must be added to the organization before the desired user can be deactivated.
• You can deactivate a user that has an LOI, Application, or Followup assigned to them.
  • However, you should reassign the form to another active user in the organization.

***Do not overwrite a previous user’s account with the new user’s information. It will put the new user’s name on all the requests and follow ups submitted by the previous user. This will affect your historic data’s integrity.***

You must also make sure to deactivate internal user roles: Administrators, evaluators, grants managers, & auditors that no longer work or volunteer at YOUR foundation. Otherwise they will be able to continue accessing your Foundant GLM site.

TIP: When deactivating a user, edit their profile by clicking the pencil icon and enter their departure date and departure reason in the Business Title field. This way you have quick access to, and a record of, their departure information.

Dashboard

Abandoning pending drafts

Should you have requests sitting in the LOI Draft bucket or the Application Draft buckets on your Dahboard you will want to ensure, after the form deadline has ended or grant cycle is over, that you either Abandon or Deny these requests in order to keep your Dashboard clean.  Abandoning requests is for those applicants who did not submit on time for the deadline or for those applicants who would like to withdraw their request, for whatever reason.  Denying a request is a true decision indicating that the applicant did not meet eligibility requirements or are not a good fit for the funding opportunity.

Closing Grants

After all submitted follow ups have been marked complete and all payments have been entered for a request, and no more work needs to be done in the system for the grant by the Foundation or the grantee, it is a best practice to “Close” the request.  

• When you close a request it is removed from your dashboard, but it is still accessible in the Organization’s Summary page in the Grant History tab.
  • You can also utilize the Request & Decision search tool to quickly find and access closed requests.  

You may also report on the data via the Reports and Data Sources tool

Note that you may have grants in your “Approved” bucket on your Dashboard that will never have follow-ups forms assigned to them.  These grants need to be “Closed” once they are totally done, as well.

Shared Documents, Email Templates, Merge Templates, Reports and Data Sets

In all of these sections of your site, you will want to keep these lists clean by deleting the documents, templates, reports or data sets that you are no longer using and will not use in the future.  Be advised that deleting any of these items will erase them permanently and they will not be retrievable.

If you would like to archive an Email Template in order to remove it from your master list of templates you may do so.  Keep in mind that archiving an email template will allow you to keep it for use at a later time.  Shared Documents, Merge Templates and Reports/Data Sets do not have the archive feature, however, these documents may be saved to your computer files outside of GLM in order to keep a record of them.

A video version of this article is available HERE.

You’ve finalized your first online LOI or Application form and "Going Live" is imminent for your grants or scholarship site.  It’s normal to be a little nervous and you want to ensure you haven’t forgotten anything before toggling the process to “On”.  Your Client Success Manager is there to make sure you’ve dotted all of your “i’s” and crossed all of your “t’s” before applicants come online to start applying, but why not go through a checklist for your peace of mind to make sure nothing has been missed:

• Confirm with your Client Success Manager (CSM) which of the finalized process(es), form(s), email templates and merge templates can be moved from the Sandbox site into your Live site.
  1. NOTE 1: Once these items are moved over to your Live site you will now make any last-minute edits to them in your Live site before you turn the process(es)  to “On”. 
  2. NOTE 2: If you have forms within a process or email templates in your Sandbox site that are not quite ready to be transferred to the Live site, you can continue to work on them in the Sandbox site.  Your Sandbox site never goes away! Email support@foundant.com when they are ready to be moved to your live site. Be sure to cc: your CSM on that email
• Confirm that you’ve set up a process description within your process(es), if applicable.
• Make sure you have finalized your registration pages. You can email support@foundant.com with any additional changes you need made to these pages.
• Make any edits to your Logon Page message.
• Email support@foundant.com any custom messaging that you’d like Foundant to add to the applicant’s Apply Page (this page is where external-facing processes show to applicants), or to the Submission Confirmation Page (this page comes up directly after an applicant successfully submits an LOI, Application or Follow-up form).
• Confirm with your CSM that you have gone through the applicable Site Attribute settings and that the Sandbox and Live site don’t have any discrepancies.
• Email support@foundant.com any site-skin changes, including logo, that you’d like changed or updated before GoLive. Logo, headers, banners, colors and text colors are changeable on the site skin, but that is it!
• Once everything has been transferred over to your live site, you may start setting up valid internal users (additional staff, reviewers, etc) in your live site. Don’t forget to add reviewers to their applicable process “pool” after adding them as new users.
• The live site link that will be sent to you after everything has been transferred is the actual live production link that you or your IT person will use to embed on your website for applicants to apply (your CSM may have sent you this live link early on in your training).
• Confirm that your website content changes have been made to reflect your new online grant making site and steps. Ask your CSM to review your website changes and provide feedback, “How to apply instructions” or existing Foundant client website examples, if necessary.
• Toggle the process(es) to “On” in your live site via the Process Manager page when you are ready for applicants to start applying.
• Discuss the eReporting option and Candid's Get On the Map campaign with your CSM.
• Ask your CSM to confirm that you’ve touched on all the tools necessary up to that point in the implementation training. Completion up to Goal # 6 in the Learning Lab is recommended for GoLive. If you need refreshers on items please let your CSM know!
• Register for Compass and set up your profile.
• Schedule your next training call if you are going live but continuing with your implementation training after GoLive.
• Schedule your reviewer training call to be held about two weeks before your first reviewers will come online to evaluate requests.
• Schedule your applicant training webinar with your CSM if you purchased this option with your initial license
• Contact support@foundant.com with your quick questions about the software or basic troubleshooting needs. They are always the fastest way to get a response re: those items. 

The application is among your most powerful tools in sorting out your worthy grantees from those you'd rather not fund. It's also a bit of a balancing act--you want it to be robust enough so that it provides the data you need to make the difficult decisions, but without becoming particularly burdensome or unwieldy for your applicants. Forget grant writing--application building is almost an art in and of itself.

But you don't need to reinvent the wheel. Whether you're just transitioning to an online system or simply looking to revamp an existing process, there are a ton of resources out there to help you meet your goals.

Foundant

With over a thousand organizations building and accepting applications in our system, it’s safe to say we can be great resource for you as you construct your application. Whether it’s discussing whether the questions you're asking will result in good, clean data, or for example applications from similar organizations to yours, be sure to lean on our experienced Support and CSM team for inspiration or advice when it comes to building your application.

Foundation Center's Philanthropy Classification System

More than ever, effective grantmaking relies on useful, intentional data collection. We want to know who our grant is serving, the impact made by our grantees, and what areas of our communities need the most focus. While your Foundant system is ultimately designed for accepting applications, making decisions, and following up with your grantees, don’t overlook the power of the data you’re collecting. You should be arming yourself with data that will allow you to understand the community and people you serve--and the place to start is with your application.

When building out your application, be sure to add questions that will allow you to categorize your efforts. Economics, gender, ethnicity, program areas--these are all indicators that can help you better understand your grantees and those they serve. For a better idea of how to capture that information in the cleanest, most uniform way, look no further than Foundation Center’s taxonomy resources. Whether you’re trying to measure the who, what, how, or where of a given grant or organization, Foundation Center has done the work for you.

Check out their Philanthropy Classification System to get some great ideas on how to categorize and capture the important information you need. Remember, you don’t need to measure everything. Decide what factors are important to you and add those questions to your application. You’ll be surprised how illuminating a few cycles of capturing this sort of data can be--and you can continue to tweak and improve as you go.

Here’s the link: Taxonomy.

PEAK Grantmaking's Project Streamline

As mentioned earlier, a good application is a balance between ensuring you get the information you need to make good decisions and that your grantees aren’t burdened to the point that their mission--the entire point of what we all do--suffers. PEAK Grantmaking (formerly Grants Managers Network) understands that, and launched Project Streamline a few years ago to address that very balance.

Take a look at their toolkits and methods here and I’m sure you’ll at least find a few nuggets of wisdom you can apply to your own grantmaking and application.

Your Own Grantees

Lastly, when trying to get a feel for whether your application is as grantee-friendly as possible, look no further than the very people filling it out. Face to face conversations, trainings, and meet-ups can all be useful times to solicit feedback on the process and any road bumps they’re running into as they fill it out. Another trend that I've seen more and more of is to include a short survey at the end of your grant application where the grantee can help you identify areas of the application that they particularly struggled with.

Hopefully these suggestions give you some inspiration as you revamp or create your online application! Feel free to reach out to your CSM or our support team if you need any assistance.

The LOI stage in a process should be utilized to screen applicants so you can more easily make a decision early on regarding those who aren’t likely to make the cut, or to funnel applicants to a different funding opportunity where they may be a better fit for their project/program.  Using systems of discernment helps to ensure that only grantseekers with the best chance of receiving funding submit the full set of requirements.  In the end, you're saving the applicant and your organizations time, money and frustration.  If you have a high volume of applicants, think of all the organizations who never see a dime after all their hard work going through the full proposal steps.  Wouldn’t it be great to cut some of them loose before they invest so much effort?

 Letters of inquiry/interest/intent are only effective if they:

• Are built to be shorter than your full proposal/application. A streamlined and fairly brief application form should indicate that an LOI may not be necessary.
• Do a good job of asking essential questions of the applicant in a way that can help you screen out the good from the not-so-good applicants.
• Don’t add additional time and administrative work to your staff’s workload. Is the LOI going to be easy to manage?

Before building an LOI, take a close look at all of the questions you ask on your full application and consider splitting them into a few categories:

• Deal Breaker Questions: If certain things make an organization decisively qualified or unqualified to be considered, you’ll want to know them right away. For example, if you only fund in a specific county, then applicants from other places need not apply at all. These basic parameters should be described clearly in your guidelines upfront, or in an eligibility quiz, but you may include them on your LOI as well.
• Essential Questions: Chances are, proposal reviewers hone in on a few pieces of influential information to inform decisions.  For example, you’d probably reject a proposal that wasn’t a good fit with your organization’s mission, or that didn’t demonstrate a strong understanding of the problem it addresses. If a question generates essential Go/No-Go information, it should be part of your LOI.
• Nice to Know Questions:  There may be other information that you look at to discern between the good and the great prospect, to validate your decision, to help you think through risk, or to raise red-flags to discuss with an otherwise promising applicant. These questions don’t need to be part of an LOI – they should be part of the full application. This might include questions about staff capacity, timeline, evidence of prior impact, partnerships, or sustainability.  Note:  Yes, one funder’s “essential” may be another funder’s “nice to know.” What’s important is that you discern between the information that always tips the balance for you and the information that helps you make finer distinctions between potentially strong applicants.
• Need for the File Questions: Some information you may never use to make decisions, but need to have on file anyway. This information can be collected during the full application process or even later – once you’ve decided to make a grant.

Some funders have voiced that introducing an LOI will invite a deluge of random and ill-fitting proposals. Most nonprofits don’t apply willy-nilly for grants that they are entirely unqualified to receive, however, to discourage an unreasonably high increase in volume be sure that you have very clear guidelines or establish an eligibility quiz to filter out some of the least promising requests before they even submit an LOI.

And keep in mind that once you start using an LOI you’ll want to collect some data to track how the LOI is working for you and your applicants!  Consider collecting data to answer these questions:

• How long does the LOI take an applicant to complete?
• How long does it take us to review an LOI?
• How many LOIs did we receive in each round of grantmaking?
• How many applicants advanced to the “full application” stage?
• How many full applicants were funded?
• What was the experience (internally and externally) of the new process?

This content is brought to you courtesy of Dr. Streamline.  Click HERE for a library of other great grantmaking tips and tricks from the Peak Grantmaking category titled "Project Streamline."

LOI Draft - The LOI is being completed by the applicant, but has not been submitted yet.

LOI Submitted - The applicant has submitted the LOI and it needs to be reviewed by administrators.

LOI Complete - The LOI has been approved by the administrator, allowing the applicant to move on to the next form. The applicant has not yet started the next form.

Application Draft - The application is being completed by the applicant, but has not yet been submitted.

Application Submitted - The applicant has submitted the application and it needs to be reviewed by administrators.

Application Complete - The application has been reviewed and marked complete by the administrator and is sitting in Complete.

Evaluations Assigned - The application has been assigned to evaluators and the application is in Open.

Evaluations Closed - The evaluations have been closed by the administrator and the request has moved to Closed. 

Denial Draft - The denial process has been started, but is not finalized.

Denied - The request has been denied. The request will no longer appear on your dashboard. 

Approval Draft - The approval process has been started, but is not finalized.

Approved - The request has been approved, and no follow up forms have been assigned. 

All Open Approvals: All Open Approvals contains all requests that have been approved, regardless of if follow ups were assigned to the requests or not. 

Follow Up(s) Assigned: The approved request has at least one follow up form assigned. 

Abandoned - The request has been marked abandoned which stops the applicant from moving on with the process of applying. This request will no longer appear on your dashboard. 

Closed - The request has been approved and closed. Nothing else needs to be done to this request. This request will no longer appear on your dashboard.

The Dashboard is the is the landing page for any user logging into the site. What is reflected on the dashboard depends on the user’s role, whether or not the user completes evaluations, and if the Follow Ups for Non-Applicants feature has been turned on. 

• The Open Requests tab reflects the Administrator’s normal view of the dashboard which contains all the possible process stages and workload pages.
• The Your Evaluations tab reflects the list of evaluations that have been assigned to the user to complete. (This only appears if the user has evaluation responsibility.)
• The Your Follow Ups tab reflects any follow ups that have been assigned to the user to complete. (This only appears if the Follow Up for Non Applicants feature is turned on.)

Dashboard - When a user logs into the system, the page that appears is called their Dashboard. Depending on their role, the Dashboard shows different information.

• Administrator Dashboard - when an administrator logs in, their Dashboard will show all of the active requests in the system.  Active requests include any request that has not been denied, abandoned or closed.
• Grants Manager Dashboard - a user with the Grants Manager role’s Dashboard looks very similar to an administrator.  The biggest difference is their Navigation List has far fewer items.
• Auditor Dashboard -  read-only version of the Grants Manager Dashboard.
  • Note: For the Administrator, Grants Manager and Auditor if no processes have been configured to use LOI's, the LOI stage will not show up on the dashboard.
• Board Member Dashboard - shows all requests that have been assigned to them for evaluation.  Board Members can also access requests in the Evaluations Closed status from their Dashboard.
• Staff Evaluator Dashboard - shows all requests that have been assigned to them for evaluation.
• Applicant Dashboard - shows all requests that applicant “owns”. Because administrators can reassign requests to different users in an organization, applicants may be the owner of a request they did not submit.  Requests where the applicant has been assigned to complete a follow up form will also appear on the applicant’s Dashboard, even if they are not the request owner.

Process - the set of steps a request will go through during its lifecycle. These steps are set up and defined by an administrator.  Every request entered into a process will follow the same steps so there may be a need to have multiple processes in a site.  Each process contains an LOI (optional), LOI Evaluation (optional), Application (required), 2 application evaluations (optional), Approval & Denial forms (required), and Follow Up Forms (optional).

Request - the combination of all 

Evaluation Form - Forms assigned to users that will review LOIs and Applications and complete the assigned form to help determine if the LOI should be approved and if the request should be approved or denied.

Follow-Up Form - Forms assigned to awardees after their request has been approved in the system.  These forms are used to capture information that you would like to get back from an awardee.  Follow up forms can be assigned to any contact belonging to the awarded organization as long as that contact has the applicant role and a password is set.  

• Examples: Grant Agreements, Progress Reports, Interim Reports, Evaluation Reports, Use of Funds Reports, Proof of College Registration, Final Reports