Record types

Records are used to manage the information needed to track grantmaking actions and processes. There are several types of records available:

Activities are records of events and information from day-to-day work, such as:

  • Notes from phone conversations.

  • Write-ups from site visits.

  • Where a letter was sent.

  • When material was received from a grantee.

Some Activities, such as when you send a merged letter, are logged automatically. Other Activities are logged manually when needed. Each class of activity serves either to audit your actions or to remind you of appointments and deadlines.

Requirements are conditions of the grant that are due from grantees. There are two types of Requirements:

  • Proposal/Grant Requirements are attached to a specific grant due as part of the proposal-tracking or grant-tracking process, and usually entered as a schedule, such as a series of progress reports followed by a final report. Some grant makers require site visits or review meetings during the life of a grant. Any required activity that you place on your grantees is a Grant Requirement.

  • Payment Requirements are attached to a specific Payment and—if you make the Payment Contingent upon the Requirement—prevent it from being paid until the Requirement is met. For instance, if you fund challenge grants, a Payment on a challenge grant should not be paid until the Organization meets the challenge.

To edit an existing Activity or Requirement, access the record by either running a search or selecting a related link to the record.

An Affiliation record details the relationship between a Contact and an Organization or Request. The record stores information describing the affiliation such as the Start Date and End Date of the relationship and a Role that describes the nature of the relationship.

There are two types of Affiliations: Primary and Secondary. Both types of Affiliations have the same fields, and are accessed and displayed in the same manner. However, they represent different types of relationships.

Records are linked to other records in a number of ways. For example, a Payment is linked to the approved Request from which the paid amount comes. However, a Payment can play only a single “role” for its Request—you don’t need another record detailing this relationship.

On the other hand, a single Contact (one person) may play any number of different roles within one or more Organizations, or have a part in any number of different Requests. Each Affiliation record links the Contact to an Organization or Request, while at the same time noting the specific relationship between the two. This enables you to maintain one Contact record per person, while allowing you to link that person to any number of different Organizations or Requests.

Contactsare where the name, address, telephone numbers, and biographical data of all of your contacts are recorded. Affiliations can be used to link Contacts to as many Requests and Organizations as you wish.

Documents are associated with Organization, Request, Contact, and Affiliation records. Documents found in Grantmaking can originate from three different sources:

  • Online grant seekers and grantees can attach files to grant applications and online report forms.

  • Users at your organization can generate emails, letters, and write-ups which they save to the system.

  • Users can attach external documents to Requests or Organizations already in the system.

All document types are viewed, edited, replaced, and deleted the same way.

Each document has two elements:

  • The document file itself. For example, a Word file of a letter you generated or a PDF submitted by an online applicant.

  • The Document Activity, such as a Grantmaking record which captures information about the document file. For example, the date it was created, or the name of the document's author.

Working with documents in Grantmaking means working with both documents (the files) and Document Activities.

An Organization record is similar to a file folder for an organization that you are considering for funding. Organization records include all your information about an Organization, including its background, tax status, mailing and web addresses, and telephone numbers. The Organization record is linked to the other records that apply to it, such as Request records for its proposals and Contact records for the people affiliated with the Organization.

A subsidiary can be linked to a parent organization. Or if you are on an organization you can add the subsidiary on a parent for it. Both Organizations need to already exist in order to link them. If a parent organization has multiple subsidiaries, they would all show in the Related subsidiaries section. Users can also add subsidiaries from the Related subsidiaries area. Once you have linked any Parent Child subsidiaries together, you will have additional searching functions. When you are searching by Organizations and by Name, users are now given the option to include parents and subsidiaries.

After you approve a Request for funding, it is important to plan how and when the grant payments are made. Do you want to pay the grant with a single payment, or schedule a series of payments with periodic reviews to ensure that the project is meeting its goals?

In either case, you want a record of the payment that includes the payee organization, the amount paid, the date it was paid, and other information about the payment. The Request’s Payment Schedule can help you to manage individual payments and track their progress through your work flow. You can generate the Payment Schedule automatically when you approve the grant, and you can manually create a Payment record for each scheduled payment, either before or after you approve the Request.

Requests are all requests for funding, regardless of their status or disposition. Grants, proposals, and declinations are all considered Requests. Whenever you need to edit an existing Request record, access the Request by either running a search or selecting on a link to the Request in any part of Grantmaking.

Reviews track the Request in review, the person performing the review, dates associated with the Review (such as the due date), and the reviewer’s feedback.