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Business Overview
The Marin Community Foundation (MCF) was established in 1986 with the assets of a trust created by long-time Marin residents Leonard and Beryl H. Buck. From the start, MCF’s mission was to use philanthropic contributions to help improve the human condition and enhance the quality of life in Marin County, CA.
Their mission was successful, and by the end of fiscal 2005, MCF was the largest community foundation in California and one of the largest in the U.S., with assets of $1.1 billion. Last year, MCF made over $55 million in grants and received over $25 million in gifts.
An unintended consequence was that they were swimming in paper.
Document Challenges
There is no common equation that equals the number of pages in a completed grant application. According to Christopher K. Black, CIO, Marin Community Foundation, “It’s not so much the application but the supporting documentation that can cause a grant-application file to swell. Applicants send all kinds of supporting information in many different formats from newspaper or magazine clippings to extensive research reports.”
While MCF was making decisions on how to best distribute millions of dollars each year, they were waging a daily battle to control the paper, complete effective grant analysis, and provide timely responses to grant applicants. For example, if MCF required additional paperwork from an applicant, they would have to snail-mail a notification letter to the applicant who would respond by snail-mailing whatever was required to MCF. Each step produced more paper and consumed more time.
Selecting a solution
MCF’s first attempt at electronic document management was a system they installed in 2003. The system had many positive features, but it also had a number of drawbacks. For example, it could only save files in TIFF format, which in turn, required a TIFF viewer for anyone wanting to view the files. However, using the knowledge gained from the first system, by the end of 2004, MCF executives planned the system’s evolution to the exact requirements necessary to run their foundation with maximum efficiency.
Their initial analysis revealed that evolving the existing system was not feasible, so, they set their sights on finding a system that could meet their needs for customization and affordability.
MCF knew that a streamlined document management process with a Web-enabled component would dramatically reduce their time necessary to organize each file. This would, in turn, allow them the time they needed to analyze applications and process grants much faster. They needed affordable software that could meet all the following requirements, and they found all this and more with ViewWise:
1. Contain all the paper.
2. Establish interoperability between the document management system and their existing internal software. They were already using foundation-specific software called Foundation Power, which is basically transaction-processing software that maintains grant account records and related information. The challenge was to seamlessly link Foundation Power to a comprehensive external document management system.
3. Reduce the amount of time and effort required by Foundation Staff to scan, file and index all their documents into an electronic document management system.
4. Store files in a myriad of formats. Then, make them available for retrieval without requiring all the original programs that created the files to be installed on each PC.
5. Change the way applicants submit documents.
1. Enable applicants to submit documents via fax using a barcoded cover sheet in the following procedure:
1. Import the fax to ViewWise.
2. Based on the barcode values, populate the index data and automatically file the document in the appropriate ViewWise e-folder.
3. Link that document to the related Foundation Power record for single click viewing.
2. Enable applicants to submit documents through the web so files would be generated and submitted electronically.
6. Web-enable the viewing of accounts and file contents. That way, applicants would be able to check their account status and their documentation by themselves.
To guide the process, MCF called upon Lonnie R. Hines, President and CEO of L.R. Hines Consulting, Inc. When Hines analyzed the list of requirements, ViewWise was the document management system he recommended. He also recommended creating a custom workflow application that would fully integrate ViewWise with Foundation Power and provide the automatic filing features MCF required.
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