Case Study: NFL Foundation

Sharing the NFL’s success with the communities that support it.

The National Football League (NFL) Foundation represents all 32 NFL teams to support athletes, youth, and the local communities they serve throughout the United States. The Foundation receives a set budget each year that they award through various grant programs, like the Walter Payton NFL Man of the Year Award, the Don Shula NFL Coach of the Year Award, and a variety of youth football grants, high school honor roll grants, and more. Since 1973, $368 million dollars has been contributed by the NFL Foundation, NFL Charities, and the NFL Youth Football Fund, for things like community athletic fields, support for athletic trainers in underserved schools, and many other important causes throughout the country.

Client

The National Football League Foundation

Project Name

Grant Management System

Services

Streamlining processes for a multi-million dollar program.

Before Orases, the entire NFL Foundation grant program was paper-based. That meant that every application the office received from throughout the United States was hand-written and needed to be reviewed and filed by an employee. This process was extremely inefficient, and with a program of this magnitude, efficiency is important. The NFL Foundation needed a more streamlined process to manage the grant applications, from the time the information is sent out, to the time the money is awarded.

Out with the old, in with the new

Orases was able to create a Grant Application Management System (GAMS) for the Foundation. GAMS allows NFL staff to manage the application process from start to finish, communicate with and assist applicants throughout the process, review and approve applications, submit legal documentation, and cooperate with the NFL’s finance program to automatically process checks to send to the grant awardees. The system allows NFL employees to give varying levels of permissions to different users, depending on their need and clearances, to protect the financial information of the NFL and the applicants.

New Features

User-friendly admin experience — Manage applicants simply with GMS tracking software and collaboration tools, automated emails, and visual cues that help streamline actions.
Review grants with ease — Deploy a custom, branded portal and use the GMS powerful assignment tool to allocate applications. Allow for multiple rounds or levels of review.
Report builder — allow users to build their own data reports by choosing their own fields for individual reports

Improved access and efficiency

Since the launch of GAMS, the NFL has streamlined their grant operations and was able to reallocate 75% of their resources that previously went toward the grant program. They now have access to improved grant reporting, which tracks the awarded money down to the ZIP code location, allowing them to better serve all communities across the country. Orases has worked with the NFL for over a decade to continue building on the original platform, and they now have a system that automates the entire process from start to finish. The program has proven successful for the NFL, which was noted when the commissioner of the NFL gave the site the top three most innovative solutions in the NFL award upon launch.

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