Ensuring efficiency for community and private foundations alike prompts the need for an all-encompassing, intuitive foundation software. akoyaGO emerges as more than just a software provider in this landscape; it positions itself as a dedicated ally in enhancing the operational capabilities and impact of foundations. This narrative unfolds through the experiences of Rita Goldberg, Senior Grants Manager in the Philanthropic Advisory Practice at Hemenway & Barnes LLP, who shares her journey with akoyaGO’s innovative, customizable dashboards. Her story is one of transformation – from confronting initial limitations to leveraging technology for significant gains in grant management efficiency and effectiveness.
Initial Challenges and Needs
When Rita came to Hemenway & Barnes in 2017, the Firm was using the akoyaGO legacy product that lacked dashboards thereby necessitating exporting data to Excel for manipulation. This process was time-consuming for creating customized client reporting, tracking, and data analysis. Recognizing the opportunity to improve their efficiencies, while the practice continued to grow, Rita and her team transitioned to the current akoyaGO solution in late 2020, drawn by its promise of seamless integration and enhanced data visualization, as well as a secure, cloud-based platform.
Integration and Adoption Process
Adopting the new generation of akoyaGO, Rita found the customization of dashboards within her existing workflow remarkably helpful. Starting with the out-of-the-box views, she personalizes these by adding columns or filters, such as client trusts, turning frequently used views into dedicated dashboards. These dashboards have become her daily monitoring tools, providing a comprehensive overview at a glance, and allowing her to serve the bespoke needs of different constituents.
Rita’s team benefits from a customization process that tailors views to each member’s role and needs. The akoyaGO solution supports this collaboration, making it easy to handle requests, access reports, add proposal notes, and use timelines within records. Rita appreciates how simple it is to set up these customized views on various dashboards, enhancing the foundation’s grantmaking tasks. This is especially true with the connectivity of GOapply, akoyaGO’s grantmaking portal, which streamlines their processes even further.
Current Usage of Dashboards
Rita shares that she heavily relies on two different dashboards. One dashboard, coined as “Quality Control,” features activity highlights such as new organizations created within a certain time parameter, active GOapply applications, and organizations that operate outside of the geographic catchment area, with associated Tax IDs. She can easily view changes made in the database, which provides transparency and confidence in delivery accuracy. The second dashboard is dedicated to the frequent changes coming from GOapply, such as tracking new applications as well as new GOapply users, pending third-party responses, drafting applications, and flagging submissions with errors through consistent keywords she has identified. This approach keeps her informed and focused on managing the workflow.
Rita’s use of dashboards for tracking, reporting, and data analysis is pivotal to her daily operations. From ensuring quality control to monitoring GOapply activity, dashboards serve as a resource for her to gauge the health and status of the database for each of the foundations they manage. She credits the dashboards for their role in maintaining data integrity, noting their importance in spotting and rectifying discrepancies.
“The dashboards are landing pages for me to take a pulse of the database. I know our database and can tell when something has changed because of dashboards.”
Impact and Benefits
The introduction of akoyaGO’s dashboards has advanced Hemenway & Barnes’s operational efficiency, transparency, and decision-making capabilities – allowing the team to receive a significantly larger volume of grants and scholarships. Having a unified, transparent view of data is invaluable, and the resulting efficiency gains are remarkable. Rita reports that from 2022 to 2023, her department’s volume of grants and scholarships grew by 35%. The number of clients served and the increase in grant applications processed through GOapply grew by 20% in one year.
“That’s why dashboards are important. Our practice is growing, and this tool allows for compliant, efficient grants management in service to our clients. Increased efficiency allows me to focus on higher-level systems design and improvements and not chasing down data needed to complete the grants process.”
Rita’s story exemplifies the transformative power of akoyaGO’s dashboards, highlighting how they enable her to manage a growing volume of business efficiently. By leveraging these tools, Rita and her team have not only streamlined their operations but have also enhanced their grantmaking and reporting capabilities, ensuring they can focus on their core mission of supporting their client’s philanthropic goals and vision.
Share:
Check Out Other akoyaGO Posts
akoyaGO Launches New Initiative, Turning Every Booth Visit into a Nonprofit Donation
This conference season, akoyaGO is doing something different at our booth. We’re filling hearts not bags. Instead of handing out the usual bag of pens, hand sanitizers, and things you’ll toss in a drawer, we’re making a donation to a local nonprofit for every person who stops by our booth! We’re calling it #akoyaGOGives, because giving back is exactly the point, and it’s what we’ve always meant by Do Good, Better.
One System for Every Scholar’s Story
How a family foundation merged disconnected processes into a single system for its students, mentors, and applications with akoyaGO
Building Trust in the Age of Artificial Intelligence: Verifying Data Sources to Support Responsible Decision Making
AI search results and quick Google answers can shape a software decision before you’ve verified a single claim. Here’s how to check.
Imagining the Future of Philanthropy: A Conversation About Trust, Transparency, and Tracing Impact
What should philanthropy look like in 5 to 10 years? John Long, chairman of akoyaGO and founder of the Emergency Activation Network, sat down with community foundation leaders from across
New Software Is Only Half the Story: The Process Work That Makes Your Investment Pay Off
You are evaluating new technology for your foundation. Maybe you have already made the decision. Either way, you are thinking carefully about what it will take to get this right
Grant Payments at a Crossroads: Risk, Speed, and What’s Changing for Community Foundations
Stop Mailing Checks. Watch How Foundations Are Modernizing Grant Payments. Grant payments are one of the most manual, risky, and underestimated workflows in foundation operations. In this webinar, Mike Scoville
Ameliea Dulaney brings more than seven years of marketing experience rooted entirely in the philanthropic sector. Her career began at a small nonprofit in her hometown, where a lifelong passion for mission-driven work and a natural gift for storytelling found their professional home. Over the years she built her expertise across multiple nonprofit organizations before transitioning into the foundation world, where she led marketing for a community foundation. That experience gave her a deep, firsthand understanding of how foundations operate, what they need, and how to communicate their impact. She joined akoyaGO to bring that perspective to the technology side of philanthropy, helping foundations do good better.