Baton Rouge Area Foundation Provides Donors with Real Time Fund
Information and Fund Management Tools
“If we are to maximize the impact of our work on behalf of our donors,
we must identify and then fully leverage systems and resources that will
meet our needs both today and tomorrow. Information is a critical asset
that must be accessible, adaptive and secure at all times. We selected
Stellar Financial iPhi because we felt it was the best overall solution,
from both an operational and a strategic perspective.”
- John Davies, President & CEO
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Baton Rouge Area Foundation
The Baton Rouge Area Foundation (BRAF) is one of more than 700 community
foundations throughout the United States. Managing over $530 million in
charitable assets, the Foundation has distributed $210 million in
grants to support charitable endeavors since 1964. BRAF is one of the
top 30 largest community foundations and the largest in the Gulf South.
The Foundation serves two essential functions. First, BRAF connects
philanthropists with capable and deserving nonprofits to assist donors
with their grant making goals. Second, the Foundation invests in and
facilitates important projects aimed at enhancing the quality of life in
Southern Louisiana.
ChallengesFully Integrated Real-Time Environment
The relationship with its donors is at the core of the Foundation’s
mission. The relationship is much more than the administrative effort of
processing gifts and grant recommendations. Exemplary customer service
and strong, personal relationships are critical for BRAF to provide
value-added services to its constituents. Providing excellent donor
services is more difficult in a downturn economy. In order to accomplish
its mission most effectively, “we required the complete and seamless
web-based, real-time integration of all of our systems” according to
Kevin Lyle, a former Board Chair of the Foundation, who has been a
consultant with BRAF for the last several years. “By seamless
integration, I mean that the staff and donors can see information
changes in a single database immediately. Other systems we looked at
have modules bolted on to legacy systems which are either not web-based
and/or do not update immediately for the user to see”.
Along with balancing the donors’ philanthropic intent, the Foundation
has the fiduciary responsibility associated with the management of its
assets. “We had to have daily valuations of our assets for any type of
instrument or pool held by BRAF. To serve our donors as efficient
stewards of charitable assets, we needed the ability to make updated and
accurate investment information available to our donors on a daily
basis,” added Lyle. “Donors are sophisticated and expect real-time
information from their banks and brokerages. The charitable world should
be no different.”
Online Donor Account Access and Tools
The Foundation’s strategic plan calls for the evolution of the
organization along the donor-centric model. Empowering the donor with
secure access to their charitable funds with real-time information was a
critical challenge for the Foundation. BRAF wanted to provide its
donors with the ability to make contributions online, to research
charities, to recommend grants, to check real-time available balances
and to view fund information changes as quickly as transactions are
made.
Solution
After several months of evaluation and analysis, BRAF made the decision
to move to Stellar Financial’s iPhi Core EnterpriseTM and iPhi
DonorViewTM software applications in the spring of 2007. The iPhi Core
EnterpriseTM platform provides a centralized, web-based operations
system that facilitates gift, grant and transaction processing along
with investment management, donor relations information, finance and
fund management. Previously, BRAF used a client/server based system,
FIMS, along with a stand-alone CRM system, Kintera. FIMS annual charge
was based on the number of concurrent system users, and it was cost
prohibitive for the Foundation to provide access to all staff, which in
turn made it difficult to respond to and serve donors efficiently. The
web-based iPhi Core EnterpriseTM system enables Internet access for all
Foundation staff wherever they are located. Stellar’s iPhi DonorViewTM
provides donors with direct access to their charitable funds with
real-time updates and tools for initiating online gifts and grant
recommendations. The Foundation successfully deployed Stellar’s iPhi
Core EnterpriseTM system in November, 2007, followed by the iPhi
DonorViewTM in September, 2008.
Conversion Project
The conversion project took six months to complete. As Kevin Lyle
explains, “Of the five system conversions in my 28 year career, this was
absolutely the smoothest conversion I’ve ever managed with the most
complete transfer of legacy data into viable, accessible data in the new
system. From the back office to the donor, Stellar’s system connects
all aspects of our operations in one real-time web-based platform”. The
BRAF data conversion included many years of historical data for a
complete donor view of their charitable funds, including all past gift
and grant information contained in its previous system.
Results
There have been multiple organizational and constituent benefits. With
all staff able to access a single system with timely, updated
information, BRAF is better able to respond quickly to donor inquiries.
The ability to provide daily updated valuations of investments will
provide greater fiscal control for the Foundation and real-time fund
balance information to donors. During the 1 years that the system has
been in use, BRAF has experienced a decrease of 7 full-time employees
due to natural attrition, and due to the current economy these positions
have not been filled. Even with fewer staff, the Foundation has not
experienced a decrease in transactional processing or efficiency. This
achievement is attributed to the benefits of the new system. With
limited staff in non-profits, it is difficult to achieve a strong
separation of duties necessary for internal control. BRAF’s new platform
was designed for multi-stage transaction approvals, thus optimizing
internal controls and accuracy. Since the platform is offered from a
co-located secure data center with daily backups, the Foundation does
not need to worry about on-site data security or the need to dedicate
internal servers or staff to the operation and maintenance of these
critical systems. BRAF can concentrate on its core philanthropic service
mission.
The Future
In order to achieve its strategic donor-centric model, greater access to
timely information was required. Perhaps the greatest benefit of all,
according to Mr. Lyle, has been that “the system provides the structure
which allows the Foundation to institutionalize the collective knowledge
of our staff. The staff’s collective knowledge of both our donors and
the community represents our Foundation’s intellectual capital. It is
the intellectual capital that provides value-added services to our
donors which cannot be provided by the charitable arms of the large
financial institutions. This is our path to the future.”
For More Information:STELLAR FINANCIAL. INC.
600 Main Street, Suite 100
Stroudsburg, PA 18360
Phone: 570-517-3500
Fax: 570-426-1859
Email:
info@stellarfinancial.comBATON ROUGE AREA FOUNDATION
402 N. Fourth Street
Baton Rouge, LA 70802
Phone: 225.387.6126
Fax: 225.387.6153
Web:
www.braf.org
Email:
klyle@braf.org