From Catalyze

[edit] Fluxx: An Open Source Grants Management Tool

Participants:

• Jason Ricci (presenter)
• Eugene Eric Kim (notetaker)
• Sharon Vaknin
• Tim Bonnemann
• Kristin Cobble
• Diana Scearce
• Angus Parker
• Ade Mabogunje
• Peggy Duvette
• John Kelly
• Tanja Aitamurto
• Jim Kiles

Jason Ricci demonstrated Fluxx, a tool he developed at the Energy Foundation. It's a grants management tool and a CRM (customer relationship management) tool combined. It tracks people, organizations, and grants.

The Energy Foundation has 100 people in two offices: San Francisco and China. They were using a Filemaker database that only a few people had access to. The purpose of Fluxx was to give everyone real-time access to grants data: applications, current status, etc.

The screen models people's desks. There are several cards arranged horizontally. Each card can represent a person, an organization, a grant, or a search. Each card also has a status representing where it stands in the current workflow. Updates appear in real-time. People are literally able to watch what others are doing.

The tool is share-by-default. Everyone sees everyone else's notes. They've talked about the possibility of implementing private notes, but they're reluctant to. The point is to get people to collaborate around the data. Making the data private won't encourage that.

People don't collaborate because they don't have time. The tool has to support people, not take up more time. People are using the tool because it gives them access to data they want and didn't have access to previously. Furthermore, the people who use it were an active part of the design process.

It cost about $400K to develop.

Right now, the tool is oriented toward grantmakers. The long-term goal is to get grantees to use it too.

Working with Foundation Center to pull in their data. Could also do C3 validation via the Foundation Center API.

Once this tool is widely used and the data is shared, could build a tool for matching grantees and grantors using VolunteerMatch as a model.

Another initiative to track: International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI).