CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

Has anybody give any thought to a Proposal Development component (or is there such out there?), since so many of us are dependent on grants? I see it as having three or four components:
  > Spreadsheet listing targets, deadlines, people (project leader, proposal leader, funder point of contact, etc.), amounts, service proposed, service clients, reporting requirements, etc. with a tickler system to remind you about submission and reporting deadlines, etc.
 > Library of past grant proposals
 > Library of raw materials/basic documents (IRS Determination Letter, model budgets, model performance measures, etc.
 > Collaboration tools, such controlling who can make changes to the master copy, etc.
I used a similar system (although the Library part was underutilized) at a high-priced defense contractor but now work pro bono at a small (inept) non-profit that needs all the leverage and support that such a system could give so that we don't do everything ad hoc, from scratch, and by the seat of our pants. I'm talking to our web expert about implementing this and then possibly sharing what we've got, but I don't want to reinvent any wheels that may already be turning.
I know CiviGrant can handle giving out money and I have found other software for evaluating and scoring proposals, but none for managing the proposal creation process.

Hi,

Is isn't a module per se, but what we use to manage the workflow for each grant is to use civicase.

Each case is a funding opportunity, with who's involved. We have new activity types, eg one is "proposal" (you can have several versions of a proposal).

These activities can get custom fields (eg the deadline, the amount...). With the new 4.1, you'll get a missing feature added: being able to add custom fields on the case.

The "library" is about searching all the activities of type proposal. That's probably not good enough, and I would suggest to store the documents into your CMS and use hooks to make the link to benefit from proper search tools on the files (solr...).

I would suggest to read the chapter about civicase if you haven't already, with that and creating new activity types, you can cover out of the box most of the stuff.

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