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Great Outdoors Colorado Finds GIFTS a Solid Solution for Taming Mountains of Data and Frustration
GOCO was created to help the people of Colorado preserve, protect, enhance, appreciate and enjoy the parks, wildlife, trails, rivers, and open space
of Colorado. It's a big job, not just from the budgeting complications created by the unpredictability of receiving funding from state lottery proceeds, but also from keeping track of thousands of grants and sub-grants over hundreds of municipalities and districts. Organizing all this can be as frustrating as a lost hiker finding his way through the Rockies.
When Great Outdoors Colorado (GOCO) decided to replace their existing systems with GIFTS grants management software, they were using an Access database with approximately 100 different tables between three data management systems – one to track grantmaking activities, one to track real estate transaction data for land acquisition grants, and one to make mailing lists. Toggling between all three systems to collect and report the right data sometimes took days of manual work that triggered frustration among staff, grantees, the media, and other people seeking information. Now GIFTS provides one data umbrella. Tracking this mountain of data is easier and faster, and manual reports are primarily a thing of the past.
"Now GIFTS provides one data umbrella. Tracking this mountain of data is easier and faster, and manual reports are primarily a thing of the past."
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GOCO uses the Customizer Module (an add-on module to GIFTS) to design "More" screens to track data for individual project types. With land acquisition grants, for example, GOCO tracks 35 user-defined data fields. This data includes closing dates, purchase prices and values, transaction costs, etc. GOCO also finds the Customizer Module useful for GOCO's other grant types, which each have approximately 10 user-defined data fields – miles of trails built, the status of signage, etc. GIFTS handles GOCO's data needs well, so the need to manually gather information has been reduced to infrequent times when someone needs relatively obscure information.
"We rely heavily on the Customizer Module of GIFTS to track Great Outdoors Colorado's unusual grant data."
–Janis Whisman, Sr. Program Manager
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Coding was one of GOCO's biggest issues. For example, they needed to code by geographic area to keep track of senate, congressional, and house districts. To maintain good working relationships with congressmen and senators, they need to have their grants accessible at the touch of a button. "GOCO really needs to have a good relationship with them, which requires GOCO to provide prompt responses to requests for information in their districts," says Janis Whisman, senior program manager. When a legislator requests information, you don't want to tell them that you have to spend a day sifting through dozens of disorganized tables for the right information. GOCO also needs to code grants by multiple sub-types, so that GOCO can specifically track how costs grant funds are used. For example, GOCO's open space projects encompass six sub-types: buffers/inholdings, urban open space, greenways/stream corridors, community separators, agricultural land, and natural areas/wildlife habitats. GOCO's parks and recreation projects cover costs for building restrooms, trails, playground equipment, environmental education kiosks, etc., and GOCO commonly receives requests from the public for this type of grant information. The coding function in GIFTS allows GOCO to pull information easily to meet each reporting request.
Many of GOCO's grants are long-term or legacy grants that last from three to five years, and receive bulk grants of $10-15 million for application to individual project elements selected by project partners. That means GOCO needs a system that can track years of payments and communications.
GOCO creates a Request record for each legacy master grant and then links corresponding Request records for individual sub grants to the master grant. In the case of the I-25 Conservation Corridor project, where 30,000 acres of some of the most significant open space in Colorado were protected, metropolitan Denver and Colorado Springs might have someday merged without this project. In the master Request record, $13 million is listed as having gone to the I-25 master grant, and each sub-grant record is linked by coding to the master grant. GOCO staff must remember to remove either the master or sub-grant records from reports, so as not to double count grant amounts, but this is a vast improvement over GOCO's previous system that did not allow tracking of sub-grants in any fashion. Using GIFTS in this way also helps GOCO to identify payments made on individual sub-grants, which has improved program staff's ability to track and report on the overall master grant.
"The program staff have GIFTS open all day every day. We use it to track activities, including every verbal or written contact with applicants and grantees."
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GOCO uses GIFTS to "track grant payments, and we use GIFTS (correspondence templates) for letters. The program staff have GIFTS open all day every day. We use it to track activities and every verbal or written contact with applicants and grantees." GOCO staff use over 1,400 contacts in GIFTS, and admittedly, is still working on the vast job of cleaning up another 6,000 contact records before importing them into GIFTS.
"Many people keep the data up-to-date. Accounting staff enters payment records into GIFTS. It saves program staff a lot of time," says Whisman about their system. This procedure also improves communication between accounting and program staff, who work together regularly to reconcile data in GIFTS and GOCO's accounting system. "Everybody is empowered to search out answers to data questions. Data has been cleaned up, and GOCO has created a user manual for program staff to understand their responsibilities for keeping the data updated. As a result, the staff is more confident that the data is correct and more willing to share it with callers without relying on a few super users. GIFTS has allowed us to have better quality data and a quicker turnaround. Before, it was hard to get data into and out of the data system; GIFTS makes this easy."
"GIFTS has allowed us to have better quality data and a quicker turnaround. Before, it was hard to get data into and out of the data system; GIFTS makes this easy."
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GIFTS helps people figure out who is responsible for which problems while also empowering any staff member to fix the problem. This approach to using GIFTS has improved staff's ability to work as a team, which has in turn enhanced overall morale. Because working with the information is just plain easier than it was, "People enjoy the work more," says Whisman. There's less frustration in the office now, and they can look forward to some of their long-term goals, such as tracking the matching contributions of partners and creating a scoring system for competitive grant requests.
For more information on Great Outdoors Colorado: www.goco.org
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