E-020 More Grant Technology Trends with Liz Marenakos and Lucy Morgan
Episode Summary:
### Quick Episode Summary Grant Talks Podcast [#020]
*Intro ***.43***
* Fire Away Questions with Liz Marenakos and Lucy Morgan CPA***1:36***
* Survival Tips for the Rapid Pace of Technology***4:08***
* Trends in Performance Reporting-Accountability to Solve Problems***6:43***
* Best Practices: Upgrading Your Grants Management Software***8:31***
* Innovation in Grant Reporting: Set a Vision and Embrace Flexibility***11:46***
* Technology Trends: Setting Expectations for Software Implementation***12:49***
* Technology and Grant Management: Better Tools Build Better Outcomes ***17:11***
* Top Trends for Better Grant Management in the Future***18:32***
* The Last Word with Liz Marenakos and Lucy Morgan CPA***22:21***
*Outro Audio GrantTalks Podcast with Lucy M. Morgan CPA ***23.27***
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Introducing Liz Marenakos from the Blackbaud
Intro: 00:04
Welcome to the Grant Talks podcast with Lucy Morgan. Lucy is the CEO and director of MyFedTrainer.com a leading provider of grant management training and templates for federal grant recipients. This show is for grant professionals looking to gain confidence managing their grants. In an age of increasing complexity, you'll hear from leading professionals on the best practices surrounding grants, what's involved in successfully managing the grants lifecycle and how to make sure your grants are managed correctly. Now here's your host Lucy Morgan.
Lucy Morgan 00:43
Welcome, everyone, to this continued conversation with Liz Marenakos, director of product marketing for both Financial Edge NXT and Blackbaud Grantmaking. If you aren't familiar with Blackbaud, it is the world's leading non-profit software company powering social good.
Liz has served on the boards of several nonprofits in roles ranging from treasurer to vice president. She has also served as a financial manager of a non-profit organization, managing several fundraising events and participating in capital campaigns. Before joining Blackbaud, she worked for a public accounting firm and ran her own business for four years.
Additionally, she's worked on a forensic accounting project with a federal court-appointed receiver. Liz holds a BS in international politics from Georgetown University, a master of accountancy degree from the University of Charleston. And I'm Lucy Morgan, your host for this session. Welcome back, Liz.
Liz Marenakos 01:34
Thank you. Glad to be here.
Fire Away Questions with Liz Marenakos and Lucy Morgan CPA
Lucy Morgan 01:36
I didn't want to let you get away without expanding on this topic of the new grant technology for accounting and grant-making. So, let's look deeper into some of the trends around open data and performance-based reporting. But first of all, let's get to know you better with a couple of fire away questions. I understand that you graduated from Georgetown University with a degree in international politics and a master of accountancy degree from the University of Charleston. What do you think of how college prepared you for working in the grants field?
Liz Marenakos 02:08
I always like to joke that my degrees in diplomacy and accounting prepared me extremely well for negotiating and communicating. And in today's matrix organizations, that's kind of a critical skill. No, it wasn't my life's plan when I started out that way. I ended up with those two degrees, but actually they've served me pretty well.
Lucy Morgan 02:27
Do you think college, in general, prepares you for working in the grants field?
Liz Marenakos 02:31
No, I really don't. I mean, I think college is for learning how to learn. And if you take that attitude with you as you go into the various different fields, you'll pick it up quickly.
Lucy Morgan 02:47
I often kind of catch people off guard with that question because there's nowhere you can just say go get a degree in grants or really anything about that. When I got into grants, you think a CPA, right? We would talk about this thing. No, not so much. Never talked about grants. I took one class called fund accounting in college. And that was the extent of what I knew, which was very little about grants.
And for you, you had international politics or diplomacy, as you described it in accounting, which to me seemed kind of divergent. What are the similarities between those two programs and how do you think that made you a better advocate for grant-funded programs?
Liz Marenakos 03:25
Well, as I think about it, I haven't quite thought about it in this way before, but one of the things about international politics or my degree from Georgetown was understanding all the various factors that are impacting someone making a decision or the goal of that person. So, if you think about where I ended up in my career, which is mixing, understanding of technology, understanding of database structure and data layered in with accounting, it's got all kinds of levels that keep me highly engaged and has for almost 20 years now.
Survival Tips for the Rapid Pace of Technology
Lucy Morgan 04:08
So, Liz, in our last section we talked about some of the ways that technology is changing around grant management. And I'm sure there are some people out there listening today who maybe they know they need to make some changes to how they're managing grants, especially in light of some of the upcoming requirements with open data. What's a piece of advice that you might give someone who maybe feels just kind of paralyzed by the rapid pace of technology?
Liz Marenakos 04:33
Well, my piece of advice is to embrace it one small step at a time mainly. It's easy to get overwhelmed if you try and tackle a project that's too large for your staff or too many projects at once. Taking little steps is what will get you to the place of change and pretty soon you won't be able to imagine life without the technology you implemented.
Lucy Morgan 04:58
What advice would you give someone who maybe they have heard of some of these topics that are really some of the trends we see in things like performance reporting, open data, the DATA Act, they've heard these terms but they're not quite sure what that means to them or their organization on kind of a basic day to day level.
Liz Marenakos 05:17
I'd say engage your peers and ask them about how it has affected them. Basically, it's what I would call market research. Understand how these acts and these new requirements have affected others. What were they not...ask them what they were not prepared for as they work to comply, what do they wish they had done differently? You'll learn a lot of the nuances that don't often jump out at you from the black and white printed page of the grant agreement you got.
Lucy Morgan 05:47
I worked back in federal grants during the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, our grants or stimulus grants back in 2008 and 2009. And at that time, they introduced just a very few numbers of data elements that we had to collect. I think it was the top 10 vendors and their DUNS numbers. And everybody back then was like, "What's the DUNS numbers?" And then we had to report executive compensation for...that was about the first time that it surfaced on my radar screen. And I think of how disruptive it was to our reporting structures just with those very few data elements. And I think people are going to be blown away as some of these federal requirements for open data start pushing their way down into grant recipients.
Liz Marenakos 06:33
Yeah. There's a lot, but luckily technology can really help you as long as you think through where to collect them and at what level.
Trends in Performance Reporting-Accountability to Solve Problems
Lucy Morgan 06:43
All right, so let's get in the weeds a little bit here on let's say we have someone who has been managing a large part of their grant reporting on Excel spreadsheets. What advice would you give to them if they're now being asked to step it up and do more performance reporting? In other words, results on that investment that the grant has made in that organization to solve a problem?
Liz Marenakos 07:06
I don't think I'd recommend another spreadsheet. It's actually funny you should mention this. I talked with someone the other day that was doing exactly this, managing an Excel for approximately 50 different grants. Some were state, some were local, and some were federal.
The biggest thing that worried me about this conversation is that the spreadsheets and formulas were designed and maintained by one person. And those formulas were pretty elaborate. So, what happens when that person leaves the organization? All of the knowledge walks out the door and it's very difficult to pick up on the thought processes that drove those formulas in the first place. So, I don't think for collecting outcomes data, all the inputs and outputs you need to collect, I'd really try and do it in a system instead of another Excel spreadsheet.
Lucy Morgan 08:01
Yeah. And that raises a great point. Not only just things can happen accidentally to formulas. I think probably all of us that had those broken formulas from time to time, but if something were to happen to that key person and what was in their brain to put together all those spreadsheets, that makes a really difficult position for an organization and potentially even impacts their funding because they might not be able to get some of the information they need in a timely manner.
Liz Marenakos 08:29
Exactly, exactly.
Best Practices: Upgrading Your Grants Management Software
Lucy Morgan 08:31
So, let's say that someone is sold, okay, no more Excel spreadsheets or at least minimize the Excel spreadsheets. Let's walk through the process of upgrading our reporting and grant management. So, our audience feels more comfortable with understanding the process. What happens once you decide to move forward with the technology solution? What are the phases of implementation that Blackbaud uses once a client commits to upgrading their system?
Liz Marenakos 08:57
Well, so this is assuming you've already done your research and documented your requirements. The first step is design. This means thinking about what you couldn't do with the old system and what you want to do or expect to be able to do with the new. I do believe it's important to work with the vendor on this. We talked about it before. The vendor understands the quirks of their system. You understand the quirks of your non-profit, so, between the two of you, you should be able to figure out a great design.
The second thing is to be crystal clear about the reporting you want out of the new system because that does affect how the data is organized and entered into the system. The second phase is data mapping. You have data in a system today or on an Excel spreadsheet. You'll have to figure out how to map that data from the old system to the new.
Next is testing. You really need to test. Do your financial statements that you got from the old system match the financial statements in the new? Are the grant reports the same? Are the balances correct? Are the vendor open invoices correct? So, there are lots to test and check. And that often takes many iterations of mapping and testing, mapping and testing before you really have your system ready to go.
Lucy Morgan 10:20
Many years ago, even before ARRA, I worked on the Y2K implementation. So, for those of went through some of that, that fun time when we all thought we needed to move to Montana and live in a cabin with a generator, part of my duties was reconciling our inventory reporting with our general ledger. And I don't know how many millions of dollars were spent on an upgrade to a major software that was...it was a manufacturing company. So, it was designed for manufacturing. So, inventory is pretty important when you're selling things and you're making things.
And we finished the whole Y2K implementation, came into the close the month right after. We didn't have to move to Montana and live in a cabin on Y2K, only to realize we did not have a single report that could identify what the inventory balances were that we were supposed to reconcile to the general ledger. Because one of the things that happen with inventory is as soon as things start coming in and going out, your numbers are changing. So, you need that snapshot in time.
And it really made me appreciate the importance of being crystal clear on what reports you need to have once you go live. And I think grant reporting is the same way. If you have reports and you do not explicitly tell the vendor what things need to be in there, you're not as likely to get them once you do that conversion.
Liz Marenakos 11:45
That's right.
Innovation in Grant Reporting: Set a Vision and Embrace Flexibility
Lucy Morgan 11:46
And I would remind our users too, one of the common things that I see in system conversions is, and I think senior leadership is guilty of this as anybody, is they want the reports to look exactly the same as they did before. And they think that's the first goal of reporting, is to make sure the reports look the same. Not that they're flexible or they have all the data elements so that you can look at things from a fresh perspective. But just, "I want that report to be formatted exactly the same." So, I'm guessing with Blackbaud there's some flexibility in the formatting as well.
Liz Marenakos 12:17
There is actually a lot of flexibility in the formatting. But the other thing I would say when you're taking on an implementation project of a new accounting is this system. It's really important that someone in the organization is prepared to cast the vision and then lead the change towards that vision. And that does mean, it brings in my diplomacy scale, it does mean negotiating that a report might not look exactly the same, but it provides the same information.
Technology Trends: Setting Expectations for Software Implementation
Lucy Morgan 12:49
So, if someone is looking at, okay, we've gone through the due diligence in that we've identified our requirements, we've identified a software vendor that's going to best suit our needs for that implementation, on average, how long does a project like this last from conception to full implementation?
Liz Marenakos 13:10
Am I allowed to say it depends?
Lucy Morgan 13:12
That's the consultant's answer… Absolutely.
Liz Marenakos 13:14
Well, they certainly can range from 2 months to 12, so there are a lot of dependencies that affect the length of implementation. Sometimes a key person gets sick and that delays things. That's an extreme example but there's a lot of back and forth between the vendor partner who's helping you and your organization.
The second thing that can affect the length of implementation is, often do you find, especially if you've been using a system for a really long time and you've had changes in administration throughout that time, that the data isn't always consistent. So, you have to think through how you are going to handle those inconsistencies, whether you should actually clean things up in your old system before taking it into the new or whether you're going to start fresh with maybe just period balances and move forward from there.
Lucy Morgan 14:17
So, it sounds a lot like when you're thinking about selling a house, right? Do you get the clutter out of the house? Do you get it staged so it looks the best possible way to anyone who's coming in for a new look? Or are you more in the "We buy ugly houses" and you're going just to take everything and say, "Here you go, as is."
Liz Marenakos 14:36
That's right.
Lucy Morgan 14:38
What do you think some of the...or maybe one of the main misconceptions that grant managers have about implementing a project? Like a newer expanded software functionality?
Liz Marenakos 14:48
Well, I think one of the biggest conceptions is that it doesn't require a lot of focus and time. Even if you do know that it takes those things, maybe add a multiplier to your expectations because there are always issues that you find when you get into the project.
But as I said before, if you have a vision for where you want to go and you're leading your organizations through that change, you will get there. But it does take a lot of effort because people need to develop new muscle memory with the new system. You may find some of your staff actually has lots of sticky notes when it starts, but eventually, those will fall away and their muscle memory will be there using the new system.
Lucy Morgan 15:31
Do you think sometimes people have some unrealistic expectations about how long this is going to take and how much time it will take from not just the person who says, "Go ahead and do it," but other people learning new software and things like that?
Liz Marenakos 15:44
I do think that changing software is an exciting time and it's an opportunity to do things differently, but I also think it can be a disruptive time. So, that's why I think it's very important that you partner with a vendor or a consultant to actually help drive your organization to make the decisions that need to be made. But in the end, you should be able to get what you're looking for and more.
Lucy Morgan 16:12
So, I'm what, probably as guilty as anyone about unrealistic expectations, and though year-end is not the only time to implement a new system, it is definitely a convenient time to implement a new system. And I'm thinking, okay, next week's Thanksgiving. So, we do have four weeks until the year is done. Would that probably be a little bit over-optimistic about a time frame to implement something in a month?
Liz Marenakos 16:39
Well, I'm going to answer a question with a question. Do you already know all of your requirements? Have you already documented all of your reports? Four weeks at the holidays is probably not a good idea for a non-profit, I wouldn't think.
Lucy Morgan 16:53
Yeah. And I think that does point to the importance of having a more long-term view about where you're going with technology as opposed to getting that reactive mode that, "Geez, it's been on my to-do list all year and now we have 11 months left and then I have to finish it up before year-end or something like that."
Liz Marenakos 17:10
Yes.
Technology and Grant Management: Better Tools Build Better Outcomes
Lucy Morgan 17:11
Very much so. All right. What's the first step someone should take when they know the time has come to start meeting some of these expanded expectations of funders, whether it's federal grants, donors, and also foundations with some kind of a technology solution?
Liz Marenakos 17:28
Well, at the risk of sounding a little bit like a broken record, I do think it's important to understand the additional data required by expanded expectations and use that data to understand and evaluate your options. But I would also say understand the offerings in the market. You need to understand what's out there because accountants change their financial system every 10 years, maybe. And maybe that's rapid. Technology's changed, a lot more options exist in the market, so take the time to understand that.
Again, at the risk of sounding like a broken record, it's important to have clear system requirements based on those expanded expectations. And in this latter example, I'm thinking about reporting and automation. We've talked a lot about reporting, but automation is another thing that's possible today. So, think about those tasks where the staff really gets bogged down that could benefit from automation and make that one of your requirements.
Top Trends for Better Grant Management in the Future
Lucy Morgan 18:32
And you talked about a 10-year cycle possibly on accounting types of software. And I think back to what was I using 10 years ago and what was the functionality? Do you have any predictions about what may be the next big thing, a big thing trend was going to be, that grant recipients, maybe they don't even have on their radar screen yet and they should?
Liz Marenakos 18:53
Well, let's see. The next big thing. There are a couple that spring to mind. Artificial intelligence is one, right? What if your system learned your spending patterns and could detect when there's an anomaly? That's a really simple example of maybe AI. What if it could reach...what if it could alert you and your spending had reached a certain threshold? Say, you were approaching the 20% left of the balance on a grant. You need to know that to see if you're 80% along in your project when you have 20% of the money left.
Lucy Morgan 19:31
I'm glad you brought up AI because I had no idea just how much that is already starting to impact in organizations like auditors. And I'm going to put in a little plug here for any of you accounting type folks out there. The "Journal of Accountancy" has had some really good articles in the last few months.
One is talking about how audit firms are using AI to do a risk assessment. Now, for federal grants, a risk assessment is something new in the uniform guidance and is going to become a more critical part of the uniform guidance. But these audit firms are actually dumping all the records and they're using AI to go through that level of detail before they even accept the audit engagement to look for those types of anomalies. You know, if you think about how we spend a credit card or we go to a store that we might not have shopped at in the past and our card may be declined or we get that text alert from our bank saying, "Hey, are you sure that you're really that person in there making that purchase?"
Think of the implication of something like that, whether we're talking about making better decisions because we're now getting alerted when things are out of the norm or we're being alerted that there might be some frauds going on and the federal government can shut those things down faster.
We had talked on our previous session about someone who had committed a fraud on a federal grant, the executive director who had destroyed the records, went into the computer system and destroyed the records, not recognizing that they were doing a cloud backup of all those records. So, the office of inspector general could come in and say, "Hey, wait a minute. You know, we have all these records, we can see what you did." But think about the federal government not having to wait years, it really is years before they can even get the audit report on a grant and start processing what that might mean if we had more of that real-time transaction.
The other thing, and I know this is probably beyond our scope today, but that I'd love to talk to you about in a few years is the concept of blockchain. And I always thought blockchain was one of those things like cryptocurrency, you know, I don't really know what it is, but in understanding blockchain and how that makes transactions more secure and less ability for people to manipulate the data is another area that I think is going to be really exciting for people, especially those of us who are in the accounting profession and looking to make sure those dollars help the communities that they're supposed to help and not be wasted through abuse and fraud of dollars.
Liz Marenakos 22:01
Well, it's interesting you bring that up because we have something here at Blackbaud called Blackbaud Labs where some of the developers go and play with these new technologies, and blockchain is one that they're thinking about in terms of grant-making. So, you could actually follow those grant dollars. That's very good to use.
The Last Word with Liz Marenakos and Lucy Morgan CPA
Lucy Morgan 22:21
Well, thanks, Liz. I'd like to give you the last word. Is there something I should have asked about that I didn't? I know we kind of expanded.
Liz Marenakos 22:28
We did. No, I don't think so. The only other thing that kind of has come to mind for me, for trends, is this idea of continuous close within an automated accounting system. The idea that you can be sharing financial data across your organization, but also be assured that that data is correct for them to base decisions on. If you think about a system that actually is always doing the work to close, it makes it really exciting.
Lucy Morgan 23:02
Well, thank you for that insight, too. I'm looking forward to hearing more about that. If someone would like to get in touch with Blackbaud or find out more about Blackbaud for grantmakers and grant recipients, how should they get in touch?
Liz Marenakos 23:13
I think the best place is our website, which is www.blackbaud.com.
Lucy Morgan 23:19
Thank you so much for participating in the "Grant Talks" podcast. Listeners, you can hear all the episodes at granttalks.com and thanks for tuning in.
Outro Audio GrantTalks Podcast with Lucy M. Morgan CPA
Outro: 23:27
To learn more about how MyFedTrainer.com makes grant management more manageable, visit MyFedTrainer.com. That's MyFedTrainere.com. You'll find all the Grant Talks episodes at GrantTalks.com. That's GrantTalks.com.
More About Liz Marenakos:
Liz has 20 plus years of experience in product management and product marketing for financial accounting software. Most of her career has been at Blackbaud, headquartered in Charleston, South Carolina. Liz has worked with hundreds of nonprofit clients to configure BLKB’s financial management software to support and understand their business requirements. Liz has a BSFS from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service and a Masters in Accountancy from the University of Charleston. She passed the CPA exam in 1998.
More About Lucy Morgan CPA:
Lucy M. Morgan is a CPA, MBA, GPA approved trainer, speaker, and author of 3 books including “Decoding Grant Management-The Ultimate Success Guide to the Federal Grant Regulations in 2 CFR Part 200.” As a leading authority on federal grant management for nonprofits, institutions of higher education and state, local and tribal governments she has written over 250 articles on grant management topics featured in LinkedIn, various publications and on the MyFedTrainer.com blog.
She is a sought-after presenter at national conferences sponsored by organizations such as the Grant Professional Association (GPA), National Grant Management Association (NGMA) and American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA).
Lucy is also a highly regarded trainer whose techniques and teaching style come from real-world experience. Having faced many of the same challenges her audiences have endured, Lucy understands that what looks good on paper may not always work in the real world. Because she has been there, she provides people of all professional backgrounds with practical tools to advance their careers and make a bigger difference in the world. She can be reached at [email protected].
>>Hear more about Lucy's story in Episode #004
More Resources for Grant Professionals
Thanks for checking out the Grant Talks podcast!
In this episode of Grant Talks, we talked about a subject that you may want to know more about:
- Ways to Reduce the Risk of Fraud
So...as promised I want to share some resources that may help you on YOUR grant journey.
You’ve probably heard or seen examples of good grants going bad.
Maybe you’ve watched the news stories, or perhaps you’ve even experienced some things that just didn’t feel quite right to you.
(Let’s be real here.)
Waste, fraud, and abuse cost the Federal government billions of dollars each year.
(That’s billions with a “B”!)
And yet, I’ve found that very few people feel really confident about what to look for when it comes to bad things happening with their grants.
That’s why I put together this Grant Management Mini-Guide to share.
This easy-to-follow mini-guide gives you a simple three-step process to follow that helps you assess risk, recognize warning signs and act before little things turn into big expensive problems with your federal grants.
Here's what’s included:
- The two most common areas at greatest risk for misuse of federal funds
- How to spot potential risks including examples of each of these dangerous areas and more…
These resources are designed for grant managers, just like you, and I hope that you will find them valuable on your grant journey.
P.S. If you want to read more about the warning signs for grant fraud motivators, check out my #grantready article at https://blog.myfedtrainer.com/grant-fraud-motivators-14-warning-signs-which-are-often-ignored/
