The Skinners’ Company is one of the great 12 livery companies and was granted Royal Charter in 1327. Whilst originally associated in the medieval trade of skins and furs, the Company is now an exclusively philanthropic organisation running schools, almshouses and charities, building on a long tradition of charitable giving.
We initially started working with The Skinners’ Company in March 2019 helping with their initial Salesforce implementation. We then had the pleasure of working with the team again recently to help manage their charitable grant funding programmes.
The Goal: Streamline and improve the grant application process; improved management and distribution of grants; effective evaluation process
The NimbusPoint Solution
The Skinners’ Company wanted to use Salesforce to consolidate its grant making processes into a single, common platform, utilising the one database structure, but to continue to provide both a global and local view across each foundation and respective committee.
Our expert consultants at NimbusPoint configured Salesforce Sales Cloud, allowing the Company to manage multiple funding programmes across several Charities, Committees and Foundations, and respective applications for funding. Salesforce allowed the team at The Skinners’ Company to maintain full grant records, along with Grantees and associated Contacts in one place, providing a complete real time view of all funding data and communications across the Company.
To increase efficiency and brand consistency for the Company, NimbusPoint also integrated Opero – a document generation software, and Form Assembly – and application form software package. This gave the team the ability to integrate a full end-to-end application and assessment process, plus the ability to brand all communications throughout the grant process, providing a more user-friendly and professional approach from both an internal and external perspective.
“Nimbuspoint were excellent from start to finish on this project. They found a solution to every problem we faced and, through Salesforce, we have significantly improved our philanthropic work as a result”
Andy Mathews, Grant Manager, The Skinners’ Company.
The Outcome
The 8-month long project was a great success, NimbusPoint collated all existing data into a single, 360-degree view of grant applications, fund distribution, and enabled the Company to evaluate more effectively and on a regular basis. Not only did this project improve efficiencies within The Skinners’ Company, it also improved brand consistency and enhanced the overall experience for the Foundations, Committees and Charities involved.
The Company now process applications from a single platform, providing real time and historical information associated to each contact. Their grant application process is efficient, the enhanced communications are consistent and professional, and all teams within the Company are working from standardised processes.
1 single platform and 1 standard process across all charities.
Improved application and enquiry processes.
Digitising processes improved communications.
Improved management information systems and budget control.
The Result: Efficient grant management scheme and streamlined process
“The grants team at The Skinners’ Company were working in silo with different processes and data bases. Salesforce allowed them to unify their different charitable streams into one process bringing valuable reporting insights and a consistent professional client experience. By utilising the Salesforce appexchange we were able to extend Salesforces capacity with products such as Form Assembly and Opero.”
– Sam Mera, Senior Salesforce Consultant, NimbusPoint.
Quick Facts: The Challenge, Solution and Results
- The grant making process was siloed across 5 different charities with multiple processes with several databases for applications, assessments, awards and payments.
- No single common process existed for managing and storing grant enquiries, applications and respective activity.
- Lack of streamlined process for management reporting and budget management.
- Management of all programs, funding applications and payment requests through a single digital process.
- Improved communications through digitising application forms, standardised processes and improved activity management.
- Brand consistency across all charities and 3rd parties.
- Improved MIS and budget control.
- 1 single platform hosting all Grantees, Applicants, Applications and Payment Requests.
- Consolidation of all processes into 1 standard process across all charities.
- Improved communication through digitising processes.
- Improved application & enquiry process.
- Increased adoption and user-end experience through more efficient processes.
- Complete visibility into applications and respective communications across all processes.