Football Foundation
Largest UK Sports Charity choose AchieveForms to streamline and modernise grant applications
The Football Foundation is a unique partnership funded by the Premier League, The Football Association and the Government and is the UK's largest sports charity.
The Foundation, with a £45m budget, plays a key role in revitalising and investing in grass roots sport offering grants for parks, schools and community projects ranging from constructing modern football facilities or just adding floodlights, new changing rooms, pitch drainage or even football kit and equipment.
Following a decision to replace their paper-based grant application process, the Football Foundation chose AchieveForms to transform the way grant applications are submitted and processed.
Business Need
The previous grant application process required applicants to download a PDF application form, templates and guidance notes, complete them by hand and submit by post to the Football Foundation. On receipt of the application, the Football Foundation liaised with the relevant member of staff at the Football Association for comments on the application. Once these comments were received, all information would be entered into one or more databases by hand and a decision would be made on whether or not to issue the grant.
The Football Foundation wanted to provide an easier application process both for grant applicants and back-office staff. By streamlining this process, the Foundation would be able to achieve faster, more accurate turnaround of grant approvals, more efficient use of staff time and significant cost savings.
The Foundation set out to find a best-of-breed forms package that was easy to use and yet provided all the necessary functionality to build complex application forms and would fit with the associated business process. The Foundation wanted to work with a reputable company with extensive expertise and an excellent track record in providing forms solutions.
The Solution
Following a rigorous tender selection process, the Foundation chose to work with Business Web Software and AchieveForms.
This selection was based on Business Web Software's specialist knowledge of online forms and associated business processes.
Business Web Software is working closely with the Football Foundation to initially build and implement nine forms using the expertise of Business Web Software consultants. Once completed, users wanting to apply for a grant from the Football Foundation will be able to log on from their PCs and complete their application via an online step-by-step application process. Applicants will be able to save their partially completed forms as many times as necessary and return to them at a later date for completion. Prior to submission, information entered into the forms will be validated for errors to avoid revisiting the form at a later stage in the application process and delaying decision-making on the grant.
Internally, forms will use database lookups to assist in the completion of office information fields and will be configured with a SQL database back-end so submitted information goes directly into back-office systems without the need for re-keying data. Linear workflow will allow the form to pass through various approval stages as part of the decision-making process.
The charity plans to build a number of internal and external forms for themselves. Business Web Software will provide them with a number of subform components that can be reused for any future forms the Foundation wish to build.
"AchieveForms will provide us with greater flexibility when constructing and amending forms then we had with paper-based forms. The software will initially be used to create a number of external-facing forms but will eventually be used by our own business users to create a variety of different forms. AchieveForms has also provided the catalyst to improving our internal back-office systems and processes."
-- Pete Boyden, Head of Performance & Standards
