The SmartSimple Blog

You’re a grants manager with a small team. You only handle a few grant programs a year and your application and processing requirements are pretty basic and straightforward. You’ve been using a mix of emails, spreadsheets and paper files to keep track of everything. It’s not an ideal solution, and since you’ve been thinking about expanding your program, you’re concerned that this current set-up won’t be able to handle a more complex granting process. Fortunately, SmartSimple has introduced a new grants management product – GMS Essentials – that’s designed specifically for organizations that want to expand their granting activities. Whether that means adding more programs or introducing more complex application processes, GMS Essentials will provide the added features and functionality to manage your applications, tracking, reporting and awards processes in one centralized location. Why is GMS Essentials the best choice for a growing organization? Here are six key reason...

Creating forms, whether they be grants applications or funding status reports, within any database system is easy. Just as long as everyone is meant to see and fill in the same fields on the same form. However, in the world of grants and research management, this is not the reality. Grant seekers need to see one version of the application form when they apply for funding. Staff need to see additional fields in their version (in the old paper-based world this would be labelled “for office use only”). Then, of course, additional fields are needed for the reviewer that may not contain all the visible fields that staff need to see and use. Add post-award reporting forms, site visit forms and payment request forms to the mix and you’ve got a lot of work ahead of you. It’s all about resource efficiency This becomes a full-time job for someone just to develop, design and update all these applications if you’re using what’s known as a form-based system. A form-based system uses st...