Let's Talk Solutions

Let’s Talk Solutions is NPact's customer-driven and focused educational series. Whether your organization has a new employee joining the team or you are looking to further your donor advised fund and grant management skills, Let’s Talk Solutions will provide you and your team with tangible guidance and thought leadership from NPact's product, training, and implementation staff. 

Let’s Talk Solutions takes place on the third Wednesday of each month at 11AM CT. 

September 2024: Solving Your Most Common Foundation Cloud Questions 

Topics Covered: 

• Troubleshooting Web App data mapping
• Review of fund statements and how the fund statement builder works
• Overview of Candid Charity Check
• Common questions and recap of the correspondence changes

May 2024: How to be a Superstar Foundation Cloud Community Portal Admin

Topics Covered: 

• Managing your community portal and portal users
• Overview of the menu items, admin features, and roles
• How to edit and personalize help content
• Publishing your reports
• Managing the newsfeeds 
• Review of the underutilized features we love 

March 2024: Ask a Grant Writer 

Topics Covered: 

• Best practices for building an application
• Trends in grant applications
• Leveraging advanced application features
• Live Q&A with Catherine Hagenbush

January 2024: Scholarships

Topics Covered: 

• Overview of key features within the scholarship module
• Tips for asking effective questions in the application
• Using a common application for multiple funds
• Deep dive into planning, scoring, and calculations

November 2023: Preparing for the Busy Season

Topics Covered: 

• Overview of the various ways to utilize batch functions
  
• How to do check runs in bulk
• End-of-year best practices and efficiencies to save you time

October 2023: Building Effective Web Apps

Topics Covered: 

• Planning a new application
• Building web apps in Foundation Cloud Grants 
• Using the HTML Editor 
• Tips & best practices 
  

September 2023: Dataflows from A to Z

Topics Covered: 

• Data health best practices
• Dataflows from start to finish for online grant requests, web applications, designated grants, and more 
• Q&A with Jeff Armstrong
  
  

August 2023: Deep Dive Into Queries

Topics Covered: 

• When to use a report vs. a query
• Overview of queries and best practices
• How to use a query for correspondence
• Exporting a query to Excel
• How to lock a query

July 2023: Knowing Your Data Tools

Topics covered: 

June 2023: Become a Rockstar Foundation Cloud Grants Admin

Topics covered: 

May 2023: Managing Community Portal

Topics covered: 

April 2023: Power BI

Topics covered: 

• How the Power BI visuals work & where you can find them within Foundation Cloud
• The various types of paginated reports
• Everything you can accomplish using Power BI

March 2023: Embracing Foundation Cloud

Topics covered: 

• Tips on change management and empowering your team
• Foundation Cloud menu structure and navigation overview
• Landing pages and how to filter them to see your important data
• Process overview of grant data entry, online grant recommendations, and portal processing queue. 
• How to utilize NPact's training resources

View the entire presentation here. 

February 2023: Driving Efficiencies

Topics covered: 

• The functions and features of the Batch Menu
• Using correspondences during batch processing
• New product enhancements that will improve your efficiency 

January 2023: Scholarships 

Topics covered: 

• Overview of key features within the scholarship module 
• Using a common application for multiple funds
• Scholarship fund basics and keys for success 
• Leveraging non-standard form pages like addendums and references 

December: Closing Out the Year

Topics covered:

• Designated grants - planning for the new year
• Reviewing best practices for bulk processing and correspondence
• Troubleshooting fund statements

November: Grant Applications from Start to Finish

Topics covered:

• Best practices for application form planning - when to duplicate an application or start from the beginning
• Review form and page types
• Form building exercise in the HTML builder 
• Application readiness - opening applications on the Foundation Cloud Community Portal to applicants

October: Foundation Cloud Grants 2.0 Product Release Webinar

Topics covered:

• How Endowment Manager integrates with your Foundation Cloud Grants and financial account system
• New look and feel! Grant Edge NXT will now be called Foundation Cloud Grants
• Correspondence – replaced DOTX files with HTML templates
• Added Power BI paginated reports and integrated reports into record screens
• Replaced "control panel" menu with a reorganized "settings" menu
• Added business rules screen for easy system configuration
• Added utility functions (Global Delete, Constituent Admin, Fund Statement Builder, Grant Adjustments, Grant Import)
• Grant adjustments - grant screen now allows for administrators to override amounts and statuses

September: Endowment Manager 101

Topics covered:

• How Endowment Manager integrates with your Foundation Cloud Grants and financial account system
• Leveraging financial batch processing
• Configuring your finance system project/fund records for Endowment Manager
• Account "sweeping" per fund using the rebalancing module

August: Applications

Topics covered:

• Creating applications and reviewing form configurations
• Developing a library of standard form fields, which can be reused within multiple applications
• Leveraging Workflow to manage applications
• The Applicant's experience on the web portal, including accessing applications, completing forms, and submission

July: Workflow Module

Topics covered:

• Creating grants through workflow
• Configuring workflow templates
• Status and amount changes via workflow
• Managing diligence steps in workflow
• Alerts and email notifications

May: Lifecycle of a Grant

Topics covered:

• End to end lifecycle of a grant - everything from creating the application, applicants applying, reviewing the proposal, to awarding the grant and processing tghe check run
• Overview of the applicant and reviewer experience
• Batch correspondence for award and denial letters

April: Correspondence and Mail Merges May:

Topics covered:

• How correspondence works in Foundation Cloud Grants for letters and emails
• How to setup templates
• How to generate correspondence in Foundation Cloud Grants for specific records or in batch

March: Spectrum NXT 101

Topics covered:

• Previewing Spectrum NXT from multiple constituent type perspectives
• Creating and managing users 
• Setting up logins and determining access based on user type
• Utilizing email templates and autogenerated emails to enhance communications with your constituents

February: GE NXT 101

Topics covered:

• Navigating Foundation Cloud Grants - how to search records, reviewing the menu bar, and personalizing your home page
• Overview of record types and verifying syncs with your integrated financial system and CRM
• Creating grants and processing a check run

January: Scholarship Module

Topics covered:

• Using a common application for multiple funds
• Setting up criteria for scholarships and mapping those to an application
• Using addendums