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 | Use this page to discuss and develop ideas for improving and extending the intial (v2.0) implementation of CiviGrant. |
1)Create new option groups 'financial_record_type'
name Description In_out
grants_in Grants In In
grants_out Grants Out out
2) Allow custom data fields to be assigned by the new types defined above
3) -rename a few fields
Application Date (renamed field) - change descriptive text to 'When was the grant application submitted / received?
Report Completed (renamed field)
4) A new tab should show for each if they choose tabbed or a single tab if they choose inline.
5) The display on the tabs can be uniform using the renamed fields
6) Edit this text
q=civicrm/grant&reset=1
CiviGrant
allows you to input and track grants to or from Organizations,
Individuals or Households. The grantee/ grantor must first be entered
as a contact in CiviCRM. Use Find Contacts to see if there's already a
record for them. Once you've located or created the contact record,
click View to go to their summary page, select the Grants tab and click
New Grant
7) Add Record_type and 'In/ Out' to this search
?q=civicrm/grant/search&reset=1
Add a second summary box for outgoing grants on this page q=civicrm/grant&reset=1. Preferable add an aggregate field
9)All
searches / code should assume that additional 'financial_record_types'
might be able to be configured in some later civi release (e.g.
'contracts', expenses, erm anything)
Nice to haves
Easier
9) Preferably also create a second option list field like grant_type but call it 'Project'
10) Expose grant statuses
11) Add a 'person responsible field' linked to a contact record
12) Add a field to link the grant to an event - I think this is a pretty common use
Future Thoughts
11) allow contributions to be created linked to the grants record. There could be more than one per record per grant
12)
allow activity creation linked to some or all dates fields (ideally
this would be a feature of the custom data type so that any date field
created could have an activity linked to it
13) transform the data
from being grant specific into being custom fields & the display
& searchin to being derived from profiles which leads to
14)
ability to create other financial record types. People could search by
(for example) by project across a few types going in & out (debit
and credits some would say) - hey presto - civi-budget.
5 Comments
Hide/Show CommentsFeb 22, 2008
Eileen McNaughton
I write this from the point of a very small organisation which applies to funding bodies for grants and then has to manage the spending and reporting on the grants. CiviGrant can potentially be really useful for us - even in it's current basic form.
I've tried to divide my thoughts into items that would be relevant to givers AND receivers of grants and those that just relate to receivers but there is cross-over.
useful to both givers & receivers
1) The additional feature which would be a most useful addition to it is the ability to upload related documents and attach it to our grant records
Other features in an ideal world are:
2) - configurable grant types - ideally we would categorise each grant by project and by the purpose the funds were requested for e.g. project = "Perilous Circus Festival" and purpose = "Rigging Costs"
3) configurable requirements field for submitting grant & whether met -e.g
- board resolution required (in this instance a date would be good for those applying for grants. In fact if we could print out all the items with board resolutions required we would then present that at the board meeting )
- copy of audited reports required
- no of quotes required
There are also things we might record our intention to include which are not a requirement of the grant agency - e.g.
- supporting letter to be included from ? special person?
- DVD of last year's festival
4) Additional Status - Reported on/ Completed (this functionality is there through the report received button but I think it would be better as a status.
5) Ideally the rationale & notes fields would be bigger (and we would rename them to reflect our notes on the application and notes / information from the funding body. We would probably record the following information:
-purpose of the grant e.g. Venue hireage for rehearsal for performance at Perilous Circus Festival.
- any of our own thoughts on the application - i.e. why we chose that funding body for the app
- rationale from the grants funding agency for granting / declining.
6) Configurable fields for conditions associated with issuing the grant and whether met - e.g. have to use exact suppliers quoted, have to provide free xyz to participants. (this differs from no. 3 as the conditions are set when it is granted.
7) not so useful for the grants we apply for but some grants have a series of deadlines - e.g. expressions of interest / preliminary application / full application.
8) printable reports of grants in various statuses
Useful to receivers of grants
1) person managing application
2) Ability to tweak field descriptions Application Received date to Application Submitted date. Likewise grant report submitted
3) ability to record information on grants available - maybe this would be another status - not sure but the sorts of things we would record is:
- funding agency (contact)
- name of grant
- purpose
- notes about it (e.g. what sorts of things they tend to favour)
- closing dates (they often have many e.g. 6 a year)
- decision dates
- special requirements
- projects we might seek funding for from them
The multiple closing & decision dates is the only thing on this list that seems much different from the requirements for recording active grants
Unclear on
not quite sure the meaning of the three fields:
-amount requested
-amount granted
-amount total (I would have thought this would be the same as one of the first two)
Mar 07, 2008
Emily Frazier
Just taking a VERY brief look at this (AWESOME feature BTW), I think the initial and most useful add-on would be to be able to add/remove Grant Types and Grant Status Rules (exactly like the CiviMember administer section).
Aug 26, 2008
Berklee Lowrey-Evans
I'm very excited about Civi Grants! I'm hoping to get my organization to move into using this instead of tracking all our subgrants on an excel spreadsheet.
Here's the features I'm most in need of:
-Modifying "Grant Type"
-Somehow linking the "Grant Type" to CiviContribute, so we could keep track of money our organization receives as a grant that we then re-grant to our partner organizations.
-not sure if this is currently a feature, but the ability to run a report by organization (to see all the sub-grants given to a particular organization), and by Grant Type and Year
-the ability to attach Grant Documents
Thanks!
Aug 28, 2008
David Greenberg
As of 2.1, you can manage the list of available Grant Types from Administer CiviCRM >> Option Lists >> Grant Types. In 2.0 you can also get to this function using the following URL:
http://<your_site>/civicrm/admin/options/grant_type?group=grant_type&reset=1
RE: linking grant type to contibutions... It would be helpful if you would spec out the workflow / linkage in some detail on the forum and solicit feedback from others who might be interested in this functionality.
RE: report by organization.. this probably needs to be handled by a new Custom Search (info on creating one here: http://wiki.civicrm.org/confluence/display/CRMDOC/Custom+Search+Components ). If you need help getting started - post to the forum.
RE: attachments .. I've added a 'candidate feature' for 2.2 on this since we have a generalized approach to attachments now and it seems like an obvious requirement for grants
Sep 30, 2008
dave hansen-lange
It seems to me that most of the above requirements can be done with a combination of custom fields, and a little bit of theming.
The main problem I see however, is that CiviCRM assumes that I am the funder giving out grants to my CiviCRM contacts. I just received an RFP today that requires a different point of view. This client needs to track various funders that give grants to various recipients (Which one or two of the above comments describes as well). CiviGrant cannot handle this concept at this time.