Software to track financial assistance for conservation?

[Coreen Fallat]

Hi all,
I am wondering if any of you have any good recommendations for possible solutions for management of conservation related grants and programs. We are in need of updating our current grants management database. We are looking for something that can not only manage the financial piece, but that also has the capacity to capture spatial data associated with our financial assistance. We know that it will be infinitely more efficient to find something that is “off the shelf” and able to be customized. Do any of you have any recommendations or are you willing to share how you manage this? If you created your system internally with internal developers, that would be helpful too.
I am appreciative of any information you are willing/able to share! Thanks.
Coreen Fallat
Wisconsin

[Trevor Laureys]

Hey Coreen,

I thought I’d weigh in a little bit here.
currently our grants use Salesforce Grant Management Systems (GMS).

this allows us to provide logins to all grantees to track grant progress and reports. I’m not the expert on this it would be my colleague Leah Harmon (lharmon2@isda.in.gov).

Additionally, we track all spatial data related to the grant using ArcGIS, which has a “connector” for Salesforce. We utilize a lot of automated triggers with these systems.

I.e. if someone submits a grant, we set up automatic reminders, feedback mechanisms, and email responses. Same goes for the tracking of projects under the grant, we utilized Microsoft Flow to automatically send input polygons, XY coordinates, and additional data to several databases for tracking progress and checking against the grant.

So long story short, we don’t have an out of the box solution for all of this, but between a few different software systems we were able to piece together something that works.

I believe Salesforce would have the majority of the “off the shelf” capabilities you look for, but it is expensive. We were able to hop on a license from one of our sister agencies, thankfully.

Best,
Trevor laureys
3174761106

[Gina DeMarco]

Hi Colleen,

At Northern RI Conservation District, we use FreshBooks. It allows us to track all time and expenses for each grant and to create invoices from that stored data.

It also allows multiple users, so each person can manage the grants they are responsible for. In addition we use excel spreadsheets for various tracking.

Gina DeMarco 491-934-0840

[Martin J Joyce]

Hello Coreen,

I work for the Ohio Department of Agriculture, Division of Soil & Water Conservation.

Here in Ohio our Division and our 88 SWCDs, use a tracking/reporting platform named “Beehive”. The platform was developed by Beehive Industries, who are located in Lincoln, NE. Beehive is an “off the shelf” web-based, integrated, digital information management platform/program that we customized to meet the tracking/reporting needs of our SWCDs and our Division.

Beehive is the primary reporting system used by the SWCDs & our Division for managing, tracking & reporting:
1. Best Management Practices/technical services implementation
2. Education & outreach activities.
3. Agricultural Pollution Complaint investigation & resolution
4. Timekeeping

The system is GIS enabled which allows for SWCD activities and progress reporting to be queried by/on several different spatial attributes.

Beehive also does provide for the tracking of Grants. We are currently in the midst of doing a major update to the Grant tracking component which will provide much more granular tracking capabilities when completed.

I am the Beehive Program Manager. Feel free to reach out to me if you have any questions or would like to learn more about the system.

Thanks,
Martin Joyce
614-265-6684

[Mike Baden]

Hi Coreen –

In Washington we use a system called the Conservation Practice Data System (CPDS) to track conservation district projects funded by the Commission. This is not the same as the financial database we use for full tracking of Commission finances but is the system we use for our projects. It tracks landowners, resource concerns, BMP’s, progress, metrics, and has a GIS interface for project location. This database was built by utilizing a contracted database developer and that contractor is still utilized for updates and fixes as needed. It allows us to create and pull various reports. We have a page on our website dedicated to CPDS so you can feel free to take a look. There are tutorials, instructions, and fact sheets that you could look at to get a better feel. The web address is: https://www.scc.wa.gov/cd/cpds.

Hope that helps.

[Melissa King]

Hi Correen,
I work for the Minnesota Board of Water and Soil Resources. We developed our own web-based grant management system, eLINK, with a consultant. We use it to receive and process requests for funding, manage grant agreements & payments, monitor expenses and grant progress & outcomes reported by grantees. There is a mapping component required. A grantee reports conservation practices & info (e.g. type, description, practice size/count, who designed & certified the practice, the practice life) and map those locations, as well as identify the pollution reductions achieved by the practice (e.g. pounds/year of phosphorous reduced), model/tool used to quantity that reduction, and the water resource that is being benefitted by the conservation practice.

We also use this system for other things besides grants too — contacts directory, tracking submittal of other statutory required LGU reports & plans, tracking SWCD staff job approval authority and local government staff training needs, and more. It’s a robust system and we’re current working to develop an updated version. You can find more info here along with our staff contact that would be able to tell you more: https://bwsr.state.mn.us/elink
Hope this helps.
Melissa

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