Granity

How can Granity help you attain B Corp certification?

The B Corp certification process can seem daunting at first but using the Granity software system to track your important measures and increase transparency can help.

Becoming certified as a B Corp is a way to formalise your commitment to positive social and environmental impact and to show your customers and employees that you’re serious about creating positive change in the world while also building a profitable business.

If you’ve heard of the B Corp certification but aren’t sure what it is, or you’re in an organization that wants to attain B Corp certification then read on to find out how the Granity software system can help you.

What are B Corps?

B Corps are a new type of company that uses the power of business to solve social and environmental problems.

The B Corp certification is for organizations that want to make money while operating in a responsible way and making positive change in the world.

How do you attain B Corp certification?

The B Corp certification is administered by B Lab, a non-profit organization.

From the B Corp website:

“Certified B Corporations have undertaken the B Impact Assessment, scored over 80, and have signed a term sheet that declares that they will consider all stakeholders. It is a rigorous assessment that explores a company’s governance, transparency, environmental and social impact. B Corps voluntarily hold themselves to a higher level of accountability in these areas.”

How can a software system like Granity help you with your B Corp certification?

Gathering the right data, assigning tasks, motivating employees to participate, and accurate reporting are just some of the areas that are easier when applying to become a B Corp if you have a comprehensive management and reporting software system in place.

Transparent starting point

Granity provides a single point of truth for information across your organization. Once you start using Granity and tracking the areas that are important to you, you can gain an accurate understanding of where you currently are and any areas you’ll need to improve on in order to gain B Corp certification.

Tracking B Corp progress

Granity will help you track areas that the B Impact Assessment focusses on. Granity improves the transparency of your organisation and provides you with real-time snapshots of your progress. Once you’ve set goals for improvement, you can use Granity to monitor and track your progress to achieving those goals.

Increasing employee engagement with B Corp goals

Because each employee has a personalised dashboard with the areas they are responsible for, they can see the parts of the plan that they directly contribute to. When employees know how they are contributing to the goals they care deeply about they often become more engaged and more satisfied with their work.

Improving understanding of B Corp related tasks

In addition, if you’re going through changes to gain B Corp certification then using a software system like Granity to define and assign new tasks and processes will help clarify what is required for employees.

If B Corp certification is something you’re wanting to pursue, contact us today to learn about how we can help you.

Using mobile data collection for monitoring and evaluation can save time and money while increasing accuracy.

Currently, many NGOs in developing countries still use manual methods for collecting, recording and reporting data.

In international development projects, a typical data collection process can look like this:

Before the quarterly monitoring report or project evaluation report is due, project staff will prepare paper survey forms and print these. Enumerators will then be sent to remote project locations with a stack of forms that they are expected to fill out. They will need to write all of the information on these forms manually, including any ID numbers or identifying information of the people they are surveying.

Once interviews or questionnaires are complete, staff members will travel back to head office with the paper forms – or in some cases will post these forms. Head office now has a stack of paper questionnaires that they need to enter into a computer in order to use. Often there will be missing data on the forms, or people will have written information on the forms that does not match the data format needed (e.g., people write text responses to a number question).

Data entry is often done into Excel. This is a time consuming process with plenty of room for error (I think we’ve all accidentally deleted cells in Excel without realizing). At this point the data is usually stored on one person’s PC, or it might be stored over several spreadsheets that then have to be combined into one file.

After all this is done, someone still has to figure out how to use the data to create a report. If there are mistakes, or if the data has been recorded in a format that isn’t useful then manual work is required to massage the data into shape.

This doesn’t even include the worst situations where entire boxes of paper surveys or whole spreadsheets of data go missing either because they were accidentally deleted, moved, or remain obscure on someone’s personal computer.

So how can we improve data collection in international development?

One option is to move to mobile data collection and online data storage.

Collecting data with mobile devices allows data to be collected closer to the source. The person that is providing data can enter this directly into the system and there is no need for extra handing of data. Each time data is handled (e.g., data entry, spreadsheet manipulation) there is increased potential for error.

When data is entered into a mobile device, and recorded directly in a central data management system, the potential for error is greatly reduced.

This also reduces the hours spent on manual data entry, and manually combining or manipulating multiple Excel spreadsheets.

In Granity when data is entered and uploaded to the system, it’s immediately available for reporting. This means that head office can see in real time the status of data collection in remote project locations.

If there is no internet connection data can still be collected in the mobile app offline and uploaded when a connection is established.

When it’s time to produce monthly, quarterly or annual Monitoring and Evaluation reports – the data is already there and easy to access. With Granity, reports can be generated directly off the system using centrally located data.

Have you used mobile methods of data collection for a development project? Do you use monitoring and evaluation software? Let us know about your experiences below!

If you’d like to learn more about Granity, or request a free demo then get in contact.

 

When purchasing nonprofit management software, it can be hard to decide whether to develop custom software solutions or to choose an off-the-self software product.

Charities and NGOs will sometimes opt to build a custom software solution in-house that is designed for the specific problems that they face, and the specific tasks they need to accomplish – rather than purchase out-of-the-box software that will be naturally limited.

It is easy for Not-for-profit organizations (NFPs), like many other small organizations, to fall into traps when they first acquire software systems for managing their operations.

NFPs are usually strapped for cash and software costs are not easy to justify for funding. In general, the effectiveness of the organization is measured by service level not profitability. So NFPs are often slower than their for-profit counterparts to implement comprehensive nonprofit management software that tracks every aspect of their organization.

The move to computerize processes is sometimes driven by one person in the organization who has technical skills, and offers to develop a custom system very cheaply. It will only cost the salary of the developer.

The benefits of developing software in-house this way are that it is completely configurable (designed with the individual organization in mind) and can be very cheap (it only costs the salary of the developer). However, this approach has many hidden pitfalls that are not always obvious at the outset. In my experience of auditing computer systems it can occur in large organizations too but in a slightly different guise.

The problem that arises is that the system gets “captured” by the dominant user. The profile of captured software is:

• The user/staff-member offers to develop an appropriate system, provided they can do it in work hours. This distracts them from delivering the organization’s outputs.
• The nonprofit software that is developed is not properly tested and frequently throws up errors. It is not always trusted by other staff members.
• The software is usually quite inflexible. It is difficult to expand and upgrade to meet the changing role of the organization.
• The software is not quite finished, it has rough edges, input is tricky and the reports are hard to understand.
• When a bug is found in the software or it needs upgrading you find that the developer has moved on or does not have time to modify it.
• If it is a staff member that developed and uses the software, frequently he/she is the only one who knows how the system works. They have “captured” it.

There are easy ways to avoid ending up with a captured software system in your nonprofit organization. You can ensure that the staff member developing your system frequently consults with and trains other staff members. You could engage external custom software development services, with clear deliverables in terms of software specifications and ongoing support. Or you could purchase externally developed software that is ready to use off-the-shelf. You can either choose an option that your nonprofit organization hosts, or software as a service (SaaS) that is hosted elsewhere for you.

In future posts we’ll be discussing the positives and negatives of these various options. In the meantime, if you’ve had experience with a “captured” software system or you’d like to learn more about how to avoid ending up with one in your organization we’d like to hear from you – comment below!

If you’re new here, welcome!

This blog is for non-profit, social enterprise and other third sector professionals interested in management, monitoring, evaluation, governance, reporting and technology. We discuss commonly faced problems in the sector, best practice, and advancements in technology that impact on development work.

Here are a few answers to common questions about the blog.

Why this blog?

Not-for-profit organizations have more expectations placed on them now than ever before. Governments and large donors have higher reporting requirements and expect rigorous governance and management practices to be in place.

Meeting these expectations on a non-profit budget can be challenging. This blog aims to facilitate a discussion on the specific issues that non-profit professionals face, and best practice solutions to those issues.

What is covered?

The Granity blog is about the specific challenges that modern non-profits face in management and reporting.

We cover case studies in international aid and development and community organizations and charities. We also cover problems that are commonly faced, and start discussions about potential solutions.

How can I get in touch?

If you have a question or comment relating to a particular blog post or topic, feel free to use the comments section at the bottom of each post. If you would like more information about the Granity software system, or want to discuss something privately, you can contact us here.

How can I learn more about Granity?

If you’d like to learn more about Granity and our management and reporting software solution for non-profits, then take a look at the “how it works” page. And feel free to contact us if you have any specific questions or would like to schedule a free online demonstration.

Are there any problems you face in your non-profit you would like us to discuss? Let us know in the comments section below!