Track, Deliver, and Manage Your Grantmaking with Outbound Funds Module

By: Bill Corkill, Salesforce MVP & SVP Information Technology and Membership Systems, Council of Michigan Foundations

The world is being called upon to support each other and answer a variety of needs like never before. With an enormous demand for resources to keep people safe, kids educated, and businesses open, organizations all over the world are increasing their work in disaster philanthropy.

Ramping up disaster relief efforts across the world presents a host of new challenges for organizations. These organizations need to be able to disburse grants in a timely manner to meet community needs. That’s why Outbound Funds Module (OFM) is so urgent at this time–it is a free, and open source product that helps organizations disburse funds quickly and easily. Ideal during the COVID pandemic, OFM helps organizations to better manage and track their philanthropic disaster support by spinning up emergency response grants for organizations or individuals in immediate need.

The tool was built by the community and for the community as part of Salesforce.org’s Open Source Commons. As a co-developer for the past three years, my colleagues and I are proud that this tool, which will remain an open source product, was adopted by Salesforce.org as an official part of the Salesforce.org Nonprofit Cloud umbrella of offerings.

How Does Outbound Funds Module Work?

Outbound Funds Module gives foundations and nonprofits who disburse awards and grants a simple way to track, manage, and deliver funding. The right technology allows you to spend less time on tedious processes that bog you down and more time driving your philanthropic mission.

Outbound Funds Module was designed around best practices and a vetted architecture that can be deployed in minutes. This tool effectively helps organizations manage their philanthropic response, allowing them to focus on what matters most–the people and communities they help.

As an official Salesforce.org Nonprofit Cloud product, organizations using this tool will get official support and documentation as well as future enhancements or feature offerings–an exciting prospect for this tool and for those of us who use it.

Using Outbound Funds Module in Your Organization

Outbound Funds Module was designed to be a flexible, lightweight, and user-friendly tool to manage funds going out of an organization. The OFM team designed the product with grant management needs in mind, resulting in a reliable go-to for the disbursement of philanthropic funding.

With Outbound Funds Module, anyone can quickly start and manage their philanthropic journey and strategically manage their response to this pandemic or any other social issues that you might be interested in supporting financially. Upon installing the OFM, you can create multiple funds for COVID response, or other efforts, to set up your philanthropic funding plans and budget.

After creating your OFM Funding Programs for your pandemic response funds, you can start creating or accepting requests for those funds from potential recipients and manage the lifecycle of those requests. Using native tools like Salesforce Communities, third party forms, or survey apps, you can extend OFM to your grantees to quickly and easily submit or monitor their applications for funds and automatically create the funding requests.

How Do I Get Outbound Funds Module?

If you’re ready to start using the Outbound Funds Module at your organization to give your funding programs some added structure, install Outbound Funds Module with the Salesforce.org Installer. Don’t forget to try it in a sandbox first!

If you want to go a step further and collaborate on integrations, automations, or your own enhancements, join me and the rest of the amazing Outbound Funds Module Community in the Power Of Us Hub.

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About the Author

Bill Corkill is the SVP of Information Technology and Membership Systems at the Council of Michigan Foundations. Bill has over 20 years of IT experience and supports his organization and grantmakers across the state of Michigan. Bill is also a Salesforce MVP and shares his talents to support national projects as leader in the United Philanthropy Forum’s Knowledge Management system, an integrated Website (Drupal) and Salesforce solution for philanthropy serving organizations. He’s also a leader of the nonprofit Salesforce community that built the Outbound Funds Module.