American Kidney Fund

Automating a Paperless Grant Management System

How Orases modernized a GMS to streamline patient and grant requests for 94,000 patients a year.

The American Kidney Fund (AKF) helps people fighting kidney disease live healthier lives. They achieve their mission by providing financial support to patients in need and by delivering programs that educate, build awareness, and drive advocacy; resulting in greater public understanding and ultimately the prevention of kidney disease.

As a 16-time recipient of the top “Four Star” rating from Charity Navigator, the American Kidney Fund is ranked among the top 1 percent of charities nationwide for fiscal accountability. In addition, the American Kidney Fund holds an A+ rating from the American Institute of Philanthropy; adheres to the National Health Council Standards of Excellence; and is a member of the Better Business Bureau Wise Giving Alliance.

Client

American Kidney Fund

Project Name

Grant Management System

Services

The Challenge

Gaining higher efficiency and effectiveness through the cloud

AFK has an internal Grant Management System (GMS) system that became outdated, unreliable, and extremely slow for the support staff to use on a daily basis. The organization was also looking for a way to take advantage of cloud technology and move all compliance, security, and hosting offsite. The goal was to build GMS 2.0 in a modular architecture to allow for seamless integration with other core business processes and reduce the amount of time it takes to apply and process an individual grant request. The new system will service 94,000 patients a year and process 350 million dollars in grants.

Solution

Automating complex processes

Orases worked with AKF to simplify the application process and allow applicants to reuse common information in all grant submissions, decreasing user complaints and errors, and the amount of time it takes to submit and process grant requests.

AKF has been successfully supporting those with kidney disease for nearly 50 years – GMS 2.0 takes the current successful processes and refines them to amplify AKF’s ability to provide assistance to those in critical need.

A fundamental tool within GMS 2.0 is the reporting module used by the AKF administrative staff. AKF’s prior software was extremely limited in its reporting capabilities, and the data that was extracted was often invalid. The GMS 2.0 implemented a solution which will allow AKF to create customized reports based on any of the data fields collected within the system.

The reports are configurable based on cross-referencing groups of data and provide on-screen calculations, removing the need for AKF to export data and use additional tools for analysis. By creating a sophisticated database schema, GMS 2.0 provides reliable data that allows executives to make additional efficiency improvements and continue to expand upon their mission to help those in need.

Results

Efficiency Through Automation

The new GMS 2.0 Grants Management System powered by Orases’ Rapid Application Framework has enabled AKF to streamline their grant processing, increased efficiency of their staff, and opened up their grant process to provide more exposure to patients who receive funding. The open and configurable suite consists of solutions that allow AKF to manage a grant request throughout its entire lifecycle.

GMS 2.0 allows AKF to:

build customizable and unique grants
offer a secure applicant submission portal
efficiently process submissions, batch and process payments using a third party integration for check, debit and ACH payments
communicate and share updates with applicants throughout the process.

The resulting system is easier to use, faster, compatible with third-party systems, and provides streamlined data.