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Pelf: pipleline management for funding prospects and contracts

A CiviCRM extension to help you manage different funding pipelines, e.g. grant applications, partnerships, consultancy, that builds on CiviCase.

Features:

  • Builds on CiviCase

  • Case Types for different pipelines (e.g. grants, partnerships...)

  • Case Statuses for stages of a pipeline (e.g. research, application, negotiation, contracted...); each pipeline has its own set, and some helpful pre-sets/templates are provided.

  • Allocate funds between "projects", ventures, financial years.

  • Assign a likelihood percentage to each venture to give a forecast.

  • See financial summaries for each pipeline and the organisation as a whole.

  • View last and next activity.

  • Download data as CSV.

The video below is a quick skim through some gibberish data to show off the main features. Also read through the tutorial which will give you a good overview event if you don’t follow along.

How CiviCase+Pelf can be used for funding pipelines

CiviCase is a case management system built into core CiviCRM. It allows for the creation of cases of different types. Each case has some data of its own and also groups together relationships and activities that relate to it.

A case has a stage that categorises the case, e.g. ongoing is a case stage that is created by default. Admins are free to change any of the stages, create new ones, etc. and can choose which stages apply to which case types. Stages are configured to belong to either open or closed cases.

Activities can be added to cases very easily, and as with non-case activities, they have all the usual features: they record who added them, who it's with, who it's assigned to etc. CiviCase also automatically creates various case activities when data changes, so you have a nice log of what has happened/needs to happen. Examples:

  • record details of relevant meetings, phone calls or emails, internal or external

  • record deadlines for applications, reports etc. and assign them to responsible staff.

  • schedule follow-up activities, etc.

Note

On a default CiviCRM installation you won't be able to see activities that belong to cases on a contact's record along with their non-case activities; by default they're hidden away 'inside' the case. You can change this in the Administer » CiviCase » CiviCase Settings form: see "Include case activities in general activity views".

Pelf adds some features to CiviCase to make it more useful for tracking income generating "ventures", such as applying for grant funding; negotiating partnerships or consultancy projects. Specifically:

  • You need to choose to enable a case type for use with Pelf. (So you can still use CiviCase for other, non-Pelf related case management jobs). Pelf refers to these generically as ventures.

  • Categorise stages of Pelf case types between:

    • Prospect: Applies to open case stages, means funds are being sought but are not yet secured.
    • Live: Applies to open case stages, means funds have been secured, e.g. a contract has been signed.
    • Completed: Applies to closed case stages, means funds were secured, the work has now been delivered, so this is completed
    • Dropped: Applies to closed cases stages, means that you chose not to proceed with a Prospect, e.g. you found out that it was risky or unsuitable for some reason.
    • Unsuccessful: Applies to closed case stages, means that the third party decided that the Prospect would not proceed, e.g. a grant application was rejected.

  • Record a likelihood percentage against a prospect. e.g. if you are re-applying to a funder who is pleased with your previous work, you may choose 50%; if you're making a cold application to a new funder you may choose 10%. This percentage is used to generate forecasts and summaries.

  • Declare a set of projects for use with Pelf. e.g. maybe you have a particular campaign that you hope to attract joint funding for. These are cross-organisation projects, and are used in Pelf's reporting screens.

  • Record amounts of money broken down by financial year and project against a Pelf case. Pelf's reporting screens will use this data. It means you can track multi-year funding/partnerships and joint funding ventures.

What’s with the name?

Pelf? Take your pick:

  • Project Enrichment by Leveraging Funding
  • Pipeline Extension for Long-term Funds
  • Pugnacious Extraction of Legitimate Funding
  • Or, just pelf.