Donor/Grantee Emphasis Scope
A hybrid landscape has emerged that divides the work of a community foundation between features delivered directly to donors and grantees through a portal and features supporting advanced CRM capabilities for internal client service staff. These are supported by services from financial operations and by a series of tools leveraged throughout to effectively deliver solutions.
The scope of this landscape is breathtaking, as it effectively encompasses all aspects of a foundation's activities. It extends...
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the entire spectrum of foundation business process (as in donor prospect to grant accountability)
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along the full spectrum of user interface (as in client accessible Web interfaces to power applications used by staff)
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(by implication) to the accounting systems supporting financial operations and the infrastructure glue that holds it all together
A Unique Donor/Grantee Perspective
The unique perspective of the Donor/Grantee Emphasis is portrayed graphically in the figure below. What counts within the emphasis is the set of services delivered directly to the principal clients of a foundation – its donors and grantees. All systems to be considered within its scope are to be driven out of this concept of direct client delivery. Also included are derivative systems necessary to insure the effectiveness of the layer presented to the client.
This perspective is a radical departure from a traditional organization-centric view of systems. As technology plans have been developed, the people around the table have been people inside the organization, and so the systems growing out if these plans supported the direct needs of these stakeholders. At best, the clients were objects the systems treated as external: a source of input or a destination for output. In the figure above...
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The direct inclusion of donors and grantees is suggested graphically through a Web-portal “front end.” Derived services from Client Services and Financial Operations are shown flowing through this portal. Obviously, direct contact with a client services staff, or the receipt of an actual check from the finance staff, constitutes direct provision of services within the spirit of the Donor/Grantee Emphasis. In particular, activities within Client Services are highly complimentary to the Emphasis. Financial Operations are excluded from scope.
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A set of Tools and Infrastructure are shown as supporting the processing needs of Client Services and Financial Operations, and so are included in the scope of the Donor/Grantee Emphasis. These tools include workflow engines and services that allow a single sign-on to be used to access multiple systems. Such tools by themselves don’t provide a “service” to the client but make it possible for other applications to do so.
The “Donor/Grantee” perspective serves as a proxy for all “external” relationships to the organization. The same platform will be configurable to meet the needs of professional advisors, volunteers and board members. For instance, interactions with board members would include meeting preparation, grant review and effectiveness measurement. |
