Reporting to First Calgary Financial: Governance Prototyping
Framework is very lucky to work with funders who are willing to take risks, explore new sharing approaches with us and help bring the entrepreneurial spirit to the non-profit sector. Board Governance is a topic of growing concern to funders and to non-profits. For most small and medium-sized organizations, improving trust, transparency, and effectiveness is easy to talk about in theory but hard to do in practice. For the past two years, First Calgary Financial has provided Framework with a small capacity grant to explore the intersection of technology, transparency, and funder reporting in the sector.
Key Challenge & Approach
Anticipated Results
First Calgary Financial Contacts
Dani Deboice: http://ca.linkedin.com/in/danideboice
Teri Shortreed: http://ca.linkedin.com/pub/teri-shortreed/1a/8b1/883
Key Challenge & Approach
- Prototype simple & cost-effective software applications to make it easier for staff members to share key data with their board, and in turn, provide board members with more timely and accurate information
- Allow organizations to spend less time creating & maintaining documents to more time discussing important issues
- Determine ways to simplify non-profit governance by posting internal management (e.g. budgets) and external programming (e.g. statistics) online and in real-time
Anticipated Results
- Test new sharing approaches with a small number of organizations, then roll out the findings and tools recommendations more widely as part of the value-add to participating organizations in the Timeraiser program. First Calgary Financial is one of the Calgary Timeraiser's Founding Partners (since 2006).
First Calgary Financial Contacts
Dani Deboice: http://ca.linkedin.com/in/danideboice
Teri Shortreed: http://ca.linkedin.com/pub/teri-shortreed/1a/8b1/883
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2009-2010 Report
"The board governance portal pilot project has undergone a very positive enhancement since its initial conception. The enhancement includes building direct relationships with the software providers that comprise the core offering of the board portal offering (e.g. Google Apps, SmartSheet and Box.net). This enhancement has caused a delay in the roll-out of the project. But the delay will be met with more positive results due to the new relationships that Framework Foundation has forged with specific software companies. Specifically, these companies have/will be providing staff support and/or price discounts for our pilot. Anil has recently spent time in San Francisco to build these relationships" The following video was a board portal deployment for a national poverty alleviation charity Meal Exchange. You can view the technology schema by clicking here. |
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2010-2011 Report
"Building the relationships with software companies has really paid off. Framework has begun creating a series of 'Governance in the Cloud' blog posts and how to guides. The cloud refers to web-based software that can accessed over the internet. A few topics include:
The illustration below is a sample Governance model related to online donations and payment gateways. It illustrates considerations including user-permissions, password policies, storage of files, etc.
Framework will be developing a more comprehensive list of 'Governance in the Cloud' topics, including how charities and nonprofits can use some of these web-based software applications to meet the Imagine Canada Standards Initiative. Framework has already begun prototyping three different approaches that would be simple for organizations to implement (click here to view prototype). We look forward to discussing these findings with the First Calgary Financial team to see where we can take this next."
"Building the relationships with software companies has really paid off. Framework has begun creating a series of 'Governance in the Cloud' blog posts and how to guides. The cloud refers to web-based software that can accessed over the internet. A few topics include:
- Bookkeeping in the Cloud (complete)
- Board Governance in the Cloud
- Fundraising in the Cloud (complete)
- Human Resources in the Cloud (complete)
- Technology Planning in the Cloud
- Volunteer Management in the Cloud
The illustration below is a sample Governance model related to online donations and payment gateways. It illustrates considerations including user-permissions, password policies, storage of files, etc.
Framework will be developing a more comprehensive list of 'Governance in the Cloud' topics, including how charities and nonprofits can use some of these web-based software applications to meet the Imagine Canada Standards Initiative. Framework has already begun prototyping three different approaches that would be simple for organizations to implement (click here to view prototype). We look forward to discussing these findings with the First Calgary Financial team to see where we can take this next."
