The challenge
Graeme Dingle Foundation is a leader in positive child and youth development and currently work with over 28,000 five to eighteen-year-olds throughout New Zealand. They inspire all school-age New Zealand children to reach their full potential through programmes that help build self-esteem, promote good values and which teach valuable life, education and health skills.
After a member of their grants team attended a Strategic Grants Grant-Seeker Workshop in Auckland in 2019, the team was excited to learn more about establishing an effective grant-seeking strategy in order to secure vital grant funding to support their youth programmes.
And, since their grants team manages the funding applications for nine regional entities across New Zealand, they really needed a streamlined grant tracking system to improve efficiencies across the entire organisation.
Our solution
With annual grant application requests exceeding 200, it was critical that the grants team has a system that not only identified the right grant opportunities for them but could also keep track of their submitted applications in an accessible and easy to navigate way.
We proposed:
A customised grants calendar (Grants Expertise Management System - GEMS) to easily identify grant opportunities relevant to Graeme Dingle Foundation’s wish list of projects needing funding.
The grants team also make amazing use out of the built in “Applications” tab in their GEM Portal. Anytime any member of their grants team needs to quickly look up what applications were previously submitted, applications still in progress or those still awaiting a decision from a funder, they simply need to visit this tab to see their comprehensive lists. It’s also a central place to keep track of funder reporting deadlines!
“The system has been incredibly useful when looking to source funds in a particular community when we have limited knowledge of the funding landscape.”
Kate, Grants Manager, Graeme Dingle Foundation
Their impact
The Graeme Dingle Foundation grants team are continuing to enjoy using GEMS to identify important grant opportunities to further their mission and track all their applications through their grants life cycle.
“Strategic Grants has provided us with a streamlined, dynamic grant tracking system that has definitely improved our efficiency,” said Kate Sanderson, Grants Manager, Graeme Dingle Foundation.
“With annual grant application requests exceeding 200, we have found the Applications tab especially useful, from identifying potential prospects through to the application stage and then, if successful, tracking reporting deadlines.
“We have enjoyed using GEMS to search for new prospects. Having all the information we need ready to hand – where they fund, what they fund and who they have funded previously – has reduced the time spent seeking new opportunities in a more traditional time-consuming way!
“GEMS has also been advantageous when on-boarding a new staff member, with all previous information tracked and easy to access.
“The system has been incredibly useful when looking to source funds in a particular community where we have limited knowledge of the funding landscape.”
