Grants managers are adept drawback solvers. We conduct equivalency determinations and arrange expenditure accountability reporting. We evaluate wire switch varieties for the worldwide distribution of monetary sources. We’re customer support consultants working in a number of languages, often with the assistance of Google Translate.
Upgrading and updating know-how methods to maintain up with the digital world are obligatory evils. These migrations gradual us down significantly and distract us from the high-risk compliance and risk-mitigation work major to our grants supervisor job descriptions. Writing RFPs and managing know-how migrations detract from grants managers’ capacity to course of grants.
I believe this drawback, RFPs vs. Affect, is solvable, however we have to discover new approaches to partnering with technologists who’re accountable for contributing to the event, software, and development of social sector applied sciences.
What Is a System Migration?
A system or know-how migration is the method of upgrading and updating know-how methods to enhance effectivity and effectiveness. It will probably contain transferring knowledge or software program from one system to a different, or from one working surroundings to a different.
A know-how migration mission usually includes a number of key steps, together with defining a mission scope, assessing the present tech stack and gathering necessities from throughout the group, evaluating know-how distributors and implementation companions, and in the end planning, constructing, configuring, testing and coaching workers on the brand new system.
The precise steps and their order might differ relying on the mission’s measurement and complexity. Moreover, efficient communication, danger administration, and stakeholder involvement are essential all through your entire migration course of. It’s foolhardy to anticipate one particular person or one division to supervise a mission of this scale, and but that is the pattern I’ve witnessed in our sector.
Defining Scope and Required Performance
The method of defining the mission scope and gathering system necessities are sometimes conflated. The scope is roughly outlined by the directive to “discover an sufficient GMS improve that may lead to parody, plus…” after which the necessities gathering work begins.
The grants supervisor asks supervisors, heads of departments, and senior workers what performance they may want from a GMS improve. Within the olden days, one of many first selections we would have liked to make was cloud or server-based platforms. Now grants managers are anticipated to digest the trivia of API integrations, forex trade protocols, and language translation instruments—for a complete group and for his or her major grants database.
Philanthropy’s major administrative operate is grantmaking. You would possibly assume the migration to a brand new grants database can be a major focus for almost all of the group whereas the work is underway. This isn’t the case. Grants managers outline a mission scope (migrate instruments, protect knowledge, tweak workflows), accumulate system necessities throughout the group, after which they start vetting know-how and implementation companions to information the technical facets of the GMS migration journey forward, which often spans six to 18 months. As soon as necessities are collected, grants managers have historically been instructed to solicit Requests for Proposals (RFPs) from distributors.
And we now have arrived at a chasm of disconnect.
The RFP Disconnect
An RFP ought to be a option to clearly talk to potential distributors what you want on your subsequent tech mission. What are your mission specs? What is crucial and what are nice-to-haves? What are your expectations general? Sitting down to jot down an RFP is overwhelming. How do you convey what you want with out writing a novel? How do you talk what you want so potential distributors will perceive, particularly in the event you’re not a technical particular person?
Grants managers and philanthropy workers don’t usually communicate the identical language as know-how distributors. The RFP is an try to bridge that chasm and elevate transparency. Nevertheless, this method is transactional and limiting within the over-emphasis on necessities and under-appreciation for the relationship-building, values alignment, and shared objectives that accompany profitable know-how tasks. How can we evolve as a sector, once we apply outdated data sharing practices, particularly round difficult matters like know-how and knowledge migrations?
Our sector is a close-knit neighborhood constructed on relationships that drive impression and never merely transactional useful resource exchanges. Within the social sector, our values and organizational cultures matter. Technologists agree, the deliverables are straightforward, the technical necessities are achievable, and navigating the ability and privilege inherent in philanthropy is the place issues get difficult. RFPs exacerbate energy imbalances by prioritizing transactional info exchanges over deeper, and extra impactful relationship-building practices.
RFPs are insufficient options to foster transparency and construct a extra inclusive sector. Ours is a sector constructed on values of belief, accessibility, and generosity. Individuals rework concepts into actuality. A set of shared values is a greater place to begin when aspiring to construct new know-how methods to assist communities, stakeholders, and companions than a protracted listing of technical necessities.
Reinventing Relationships between Grants Managers and Technologists
I like to recommend, within the curiosity of maintaining our give attention to producing impression, that we spend much less time writing RFPs and extra time nurturing relationships with social sector know-how builders and implementers. We have to share our imaginative and prescient for a way know-how helps relationship constructing, cultivates deeper partnership with our grantees, and scales impression.
We have to clearly articulate our north star, why we’re going there, and what assist we have to make it occur. For instance, as a substitute of detailing the kind of forex conversion performance we want as a part of the RFP, we articulate our imaginative and prescient to ship cash to XYZ nations effectively and securely and facilitate multi-currency reporting for numerous inside and exterior audiences. By means of this method, we clarify to the seller our anticipated end result—smoother wire switch workflows from the GMS—and the way the performance is predicted to drive impression—clearer reporting for stakeholders. We want to have the ability to articulate WHY in order that our know-how vendor companions may also help us decide HOW.
Creating Relationship-Based mostly Practices
Answering why is tougher than you may think. The reply is commonly, “As a result of we’ve all the time completed it this manner.” You probably have had roaring success together with your tech implementations, please do maintain writing detailed technical necessities into your RFP.
Or you may attempt a special method and double down on relationships as a substitute of transaction, the place your know-how companions perceive the place your group goes and most successfully and effectively deliver you know-how that can assist you get there. Grants managers are adept drawback solvers. Let’s take again the time we spend writing RFPs and generate impression by investing in relationships with companions and stakeholders.
The social sector is greater than transactional exchanges and technologists selected this area as a result of additionally they need to generate impression. Let’s discover new practices that assist transparency and effectivity. The aged answer of spending days writing an RFP is lifeless.
To discover these concepts additional, try our webinar, Down with RFPs: Bridging a Chasm, the place you’ll study sensible methods to reinvent know-how vendor choice in service of relationship constructing and impression technology.
