SmartSimple Blog

In any given year, the auditing requirements of government agencies are challenging to navigate. For state and local governments in the US, compliance with the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act (FFATA) means closely tracking funds received from federal awarding agencies and disbursed to a wide array of subrecipients – non-profits, public agencies, health facilities, businesses, higher education institutions, tribal governments, individuals, and other organizations—and reporting all pertinent data back to the federal government.

Going into our second year of the global COVID-19 pandemic, most of us have adjusted to working remotely. Admittedly, there are some things that are more difficult to manage virtually, but executing agreements shouldn’t be one of them.

Tools like DocuSign’s eSignature solution have been pivotal in helping organizations manage activities that are traditionally managed offline like agreements and contracts. It’s just one of the dozens of apps on the SmartSimple Marketplace that can be added to any SmartSimple Cloud system to extend functionality, so that you can manage even more of your operation from place. There’s PayPal and Stripe for online payments, Salesforce for CRM, or Microsoft Dynamics GP for Accounting to name just a few.

Read on to see how one financial institution automated their e-signature workflow with SmartSimple Marketplace’s DocuSign eSignature app to not only meet urgent funding needs in their community, but also accelerate their operational efficiency.

When reflecting on the events of 2020, the word that leaps to many of our minds is “unprecedented.” From the crippling COVID-19 pandemic to the calls for justice and equity heard across the United States, companies have had to absorb a number of unprecedented shocks to the way they do business, and the way they carry out their mandate of corporate citizenship. Many organizations have shifted their missions to respond to the ongoing crises – for example, by directing funds toward addressing employee hardship, improving digital education, or advancing advocacy work.

Since the advent of COVID-19, the research grant community has begun to depend more on collaborative, cloud-based technology than ever before. Reviewers from around the world were already assessing work virtually, but now research grantmaking organizations need better remote collaboration even among their staff in the same city. They increasingly find that the old way of tracking everything in various spreadsheets is not working, and there is an emerging dire need for simple yet configurable software to manage the research grant review process from end to end. 

Staff collaboration within MS Teams or Slack. Video calls for board meetings. Grant distribution via ACH and Bill.com. This is the “new normal” for philanthropy, and it’s happened in the span of weeks instead of years. Yet, with such a rapid change, how are grantmakers adjusting to a reality where technology is at the center?