#Vera0 discussing

We are trying to implement a better way to track the impact of our funding.

We have recently change our funding strategies and goals, and we have established specific metrics and indicators that we want to ensure we are able to capture, track and measure along throughout our grantmaking efforts.

Whenever I have attempted to research and/or find out on how this could be done through foundation connect I keep getting referred back to Benchmarks.

Currently we do use Benchmarks (custom object) to establish and track specifics goals and objectives that need to be achieved by projects individually, meaning that all projects have different benchmarks associate to them because these are very project specific activities and goas.

Before I provide detail on what we are trying to do, I wanted to ask if anyone could share if they currently do any sort of impact measurement through foundation connect, and if so how is it done?

In this case we want to implement a more standardized-systematic way of tracking the same metrics or indicators for the different grants we approved/manage so I am trying to explore different ways of doing this.

First we thought about just creating new fields to the opportunity object that would capture the different data/metrics/indicators, but the downside of that would be that it would be too many fields and we feel like it would make the page layout be way to busy.

The idea is that this new process behaves similar to the benchmark object therefore we want to see if we are able to implement this idea by creating a new custom object called “Impact Measure”

We have 3 primary funding Goals, and each of those we have specific impact metrics. In order to keep it simple I am going to refer to the Goals as 1, 2, 3, so the Outline is more or less like:

Goal 1:

Metric 1.1

Metric 1.2

Metric 1.3

Goal 2:

Metric 2.1

Metric 2.2.

Metric 2.3

Goal 2

Metric 3.1

Metric 3.2

Metric 3.3

The idea is that we are able to first classified/code each Opportunity under a specific Goal (s). And then based on that we get to build the appropriate set-pup to capture that/those Goals specific metric.

We also want to be able to capture this through our grants portal applications, again just like we do for benchmarks, the applicant submits a work plan with benchmarks in it that we then get to review, approve and track through grantee reports (also a custom object).

So one example scenario is that Opportunity A gets awarded and this opportunity falls within Goal 1 therefore under the Impact Measurement tool we classified it as such, and then ensure that we capture data for Metric 1.1, Metric 1.2, Metric 1.3. There would be two sets of data per metric, and estimated one (the initial data point set/base line, that’s established at the application stage), then an actual of final that’s revised/updated at the end of the grant period.

I wanted to see if you could share some advice / recommendation on how to better address this need we are having.

If you have any specific recommendation on how to best implement this.

Or if you think that doing by the new custom object creation is feasible then share useful information as well as to point out relevant things to consider. I took over managing FoundationConnect for our organization when it was already implemented and everything or learn from zero.

I have never explore the New Custom Object creation, it seems to be fairly easy, but I know there are certain things such an Objects relationships that are important to make sure the functionally of this is as expected. In this case it is super important that each opportunity is associated with an Impact Measure record or vice versa, every Impact Measure record that gets created is associated to a specific Opportunity. Just like Grantee Reports/Benchmarks are linked to Opportunities records. So I am sening Opportunity would be a parent object to Impact Measurement?

Are there any other important considerations I should have while attempting to create the custom object?

Then how to best design this object? Could each Goal be created as a record type, then have the different metrics as fields?

Or just ONE record type then design a page layout containing all fields just to populate the ones that apply for that case?

Thank you in advance for your sharing and replies. Any information/feedback shared is of great value!