Grants to Government Entities
Hi all,
Due to the nature of our grantmaking, we often end up granting to military installations, national parks, public schools, etc. I've been struggling with how to manage these entries in Foundant when every organization is essentially filtered by their EIN. We have a ton of applicants who, rightfully, end up entering 00-0000000 to make their profile. It works, but as you can imagine, is incredibly unwieldly - we have over 900 entities using that as their EIN. There must be a better way.
Do you all have any suggestions or workarounds for this? Any ideas on how to manage them in a GLM built around the nonprofit structure?
Thanks!
MV
Maria-Veronica Banks
Director, Grants Administration
National Environmental Education Foundation
Comments
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Hi there!
We hosted an application on behalf of our local arts council which was awarding grants to arts nonprofits and individual artists. We ran into a similar issue with the individual applicants not having an EIN. We had a conversation with the Success Team and decided to change the EIN field in the account setup from required to optional. This may not be ideal for your organization, but it is something to think about and discuss with your team. We always check Guidestar before assigning an application to a committee, so that adds another layer of verification.
Good luck!
Erin
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MV,
Our foundation has the same issue. I use 99-9999999 for the EIN when grants are made to government entities and churches.
I think I would rather maintain the fictitious number and keep it as a required field than risk not having something entered when it's available. I always double check these to ensure that they truly don't have an EIN they can use. For example, some schools and/or universities have a foundation that was established to help raise funds. It's the same with community and city libraries; many times the community has established a foundation in the library's name.
I hope this helps!
Best,
Joyce
The Daniel Foundation of Alabama
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