The RSM Grants Management System (GMS) is a comprehensive software solution built on Microsoft’s D365 platform. RSM is proud to be part of the Microsoft #BuildFor2030 Initiative by providing a solution that enables nonprofits to reduce manual staff activities and empowers them to spend more time focusing on their mission and value-added outreach.
GMS is an integral part of Microsoft Cloud for Nonprofit, a tool for grant-making organizations. It leverages the Power Platform to provide automated, flexible solutions for any organization that needs to approve and track outgoing funds, and it integrates with enterprise resource planning solutions for financial processing and reconciliation.
Grantee portal
The grantee portal built on Microsoft Power Apps provides a central location for all constituent activity. It supports grantees through the entire grant life cycle, from planning in the pre-award phases to ongoing reporting on granted funds.
Portal features:
- Grant applications tailored for different grant categories
- Personalized grantee profiles and self-management
- Demographic surveys
- Submission of required information and documents
- Customized milestone generation and reporting
- Reporting of program metrics and usage of granted funds
- E-signature capabilities and integration with e-sign vendors
- Tracking of disbursed funds
The Power Platform advantage
Every organization strives to reduce staff time spent on repetitive tasks. GMS utilizes powerful native tools, including Power Automate and Power Apps, to reduce staff workloads and provide great constituent experiences.
- Power portals provide easy access and information to grantees and partners, reducing manual requests to staff.
- Automated scheduling and communications reduce staff time spent on basic funding-partner interactions, freeing up critical time for higher-value activities.
- A fully automated approval engine keeps track of approval processes and pushes projects forward through the grant life cycle.
All elements of the system are customizable, allowing organizations to support and maintain their own system.
Due diligence
Vetting potential grantee organizations and verifying ongoing grantee status is simple with GMS. Automated integrations pull data from GuideStar and IRS Publication 78 directly into the system. With this seamless integration, your organization can save time and scale staff by quickly identifying the right partners and grantees.
Fund management, funding flow and reimbursement activity
GMS supports the management of complex, co-funded programs in which different departments and teams collaborate to fund and deliver program objectives. GMS allows your organization to make critical, data-driven decisions, better understand funding activity, and perform a variety of functions.
- Create budgets for any period with flexible, hierarchical funding structures
- Renew agreements and carry forward funds to future periods
- Manage contractor and consultant payments based on actual project performance
- Automate invoicing and time-based drawdowns
- Generate detailed transaction summaries and fund balance reports
- Offer a choice of fund distribution through ACH, Zelle or check
360-degree insights into grantee data
Many organizations use different systems at various stages of the grant life cycle, leading to disparate and inconsistent data. GMS uses a single system to track all data and relationships in a consistent way throughout the grant-making process. This results in a unified set of data for easy and powerful reporting. Overlaying the system is a suite of customizable Power BI reports, which provide executive dashboarding and enterprise-level reporting. GMS reporting features include:
- Breakdown of grant activity by grant type and funding source
- Tracking of grant activity over time, and year-over-year reporting
- Heat maps showing grant activity by geographic location
- Dashboards of portfolio investment cycles across projects and years
With data sets already in place, creating additional dashboards is simple.
What types of organizations use GMS?
- Private foundations
- Impact investors
- Manage investee and investment pipelines
- Track providers of services
- Community foundations
- Perform donor-advised fund management and applications
- Track community funds and initiatives
- Charities
- Give out scholarships, grants and loans
- Integrate with Microsoft Fundraising and Engagement to track donor activity
- Public foundations
- Enforce fund-matching guidelines
- Establish service rates that carry through into financial reporting
- State and local governments
