2019_LSC_RFP_for_GMS.pdf

OPENS: July 8, 2019

CLOSES: August 16, 2019

REQUEST FOR PROPOSALS: GRANTS MANAGEMENT SYSTEM

INTRODUCTION

The Legal Services Corporation (LSC) is soliciting proposals from vendors that are qualified to provide software, implementation services, and ongoing support for a Grants Management System (“GMS”). The new system will replace LSC’s current GMS, EasyGrants; LSC’s current constituent relationship management tool, Salesforce; and other legacy databases that track grant‐related data. LSC requires a Software‐as‐a‐Service solution.

THE REQUEST FOR PROPOSAL

Instructions for completing your response:

A: Review the following sections:

I. Primary Contacts

II. RFP Timeline

III. General Overview of the Legal Services Corporation

IV. Goals & Benefits

V. Project Scope

VI. Organizational Structure & Staffing

VII. Current Systems Information

VIII. Implementation considerations

IX. Workflow Maps (found in Appendix 1)

B: Vendor Response‐ Complete the following sections in your response either directly on the digital copies of the document, or reference each item listed within your own proposal format:

Exhibit A: Functional Requirements

Exhibit B: Technical Requirements

Exhibit C: Vendor Information

Exhibit D: General Software Product Information

Exhibit E: References

Exhibit F: Implementation Process Overview

Exhibit G: Bios of potential project managers and other key personnel

Exhibit H: Support & Maintenance

Exhibit I: Cost Summary

DEADLINES AND MODE OF DELIVERY

All responses must be received by LSC no later than 5:30 P.M., EST, on August 16, 2019. Responses must be in electronic format (PDF or MS Word and Excel). Email responses to:

Helen Guyton, Assistant General Counsel

Legal Services Corporation

Email: guytonh@lsc.gov

Email CC: greenecj@lsc.gov

RFP TIMELINE

Event Description Date

Issue Request for Proposal July 8, 2019

Due date to submit questions for RFP

If you have questions that need to be answered in order to develop a thorough proposal, please submit your questions at one time via email to the primary contact(s) listed above.

July 26, 2019

Respond to vendor questions The collective set of vendor questions and LSC responses will be provided to all vendors via email and will be posted on LSC’s website (https://www.lsc.gov/about‐lsc/doing‐ business‐lsc‐rfps).

August 2, 2019

RFP responses due Proposals will be submitted in electronic format

August 16, 2019

Shortlisted vendors selected Notify finalist vendors and issue instructions for onsite demonstrations.

September 6, 2019

Vendor demonstrations Conduct scripted software demonstrations:*

• Vendor #1 Demo

• Vendor #2 Demo

• Vendor #3 Demo

September 23‐27, 2019

Vendor follow‐ups Check vendor references (upon completion of the software demonstrations) and period to ask follow‐up questions to the vendor.

September 30 – October 4, 2019

Finalist recommendation and begin negotiation / contract award

Identify top solution and begin contract negotiations.

October 11, 2019

*The finalist vendors will participate in scripted demonstrations of the vendor’s proposed software product, not lasting more than 2 hours, allowing up to an additional hour for Q&A at LSC’s discretion. This will preferably occur at the headquarters of LSC in Washington, DC, however, remote demonstrations via web conferencing software can be facilitated. Vendors will be given the demonstration scripts in advance, which will document the critical requirements of LSC using “real world” examples. The demonstrations will allow LSC to observe the proposed software capabilities in action and permit discussions between LSC personnel and vendor personnel about how the proposed software meets LSC’s business requirements.

BACKGROUND

OVERVIEW OF THE LEGAL SERVICES CORPORATION

LSC is a private, non‐profit corporation established by Congress in 1974 to promote equal access to justice and to provide grants for high‐quality civil legal assistance to low‐income Americans. LSC is headed by a bipartisan board of directors whose 11 members are appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate. LSC currently distributes more than 90 percent of its total funding to 132 independent nonprofit legal aid programs with more than 800 offices that provide legal assistance to low‐income individuals and families in every county in the United States, the District of Columbia, the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, American Samoa, Guam, and Micronesia.

One of LSC’s primary responsibilities is grantee oversight. LSC performs its oversight function by issuing grants through a competitive process and by providing programmatic, fiscal, and business management guidance to its grantees. LSC also ensures grantee compliance with the LSC Act, Congressional restrictions on the use of LSC funds, and LSC rules and regulations. In addition, LSC’s independent Office of Inspector General conducts and supervises grantee audits, investigations, and reviews to detect waste, fraud, and abuse and to assist management in identifying ways to promote efficiency and effectiveness in LSC operations and LSC‐funded programs.

LSC STAKEHOLDERS

While all LSC offices have a role in the grants management process, key offices involved include the Office of

Program Performance (OPP) (grants management and programmatic assistance), the Office of Compliance and

Enforcement (OCE) (regulatory and fiscal compliance), the Office of Data Governance and Analysis (grantee information and statistical analysis), and the Executive Office.

Office of Program Performance (OPP)

OPP designs and administers the competitive grants process, encourages competition, and develops and implements strategies to improve program quality. As part of its program oversight, OPP identifies grantee challenges and monitors follow‐up activities for individual recipients. OPP also identifies and shares innovations and "best practices" among recipients and others in the legal services delivery system.

Office of Compliance and Enforcement (OCE)

OCE reviews grantee regulatory and fiscal compliance with the LSC Act, regulations, instructions, guidelines, and grant assurances during the competitive grants process and through grant term. OCE is also charged with responding promptly and effectively to inquiries and complaints pertaining to recipients filed by members of the public.

Office of Data Governance and Analysis (ODGA)

The ODGA gathers, disseminates, and analyzes information about LSC grantees and the delivery of legal services. This responsibility includes identifying and collecting information about the civil legal needs of eligible clients, and sharing that information with LSC leadership and staff, grantee staff, and other interested parties.

Executive Office

The Executive Office implements Board of Directors policy and oversees LSC’s operations. In addition, the

LSC President and the Vice President for Grant Management must review and approve all grant awards.

LSC Grantees

Grantees are eligible nonprofit organizations delivering civil legal aid. There are currently 132 independent legal aid organizations with nearly 812 offices nationwide.

Office of Information Technology

The Office of Information Technology (OIT) is responsible for the technology systems and tools supporting the work of LSC.

PROJECT SCOPE

GRANT PROGRAMS

Basic Field Grants

Overview Description

LSC’s primary grant program, Basic Field Grants, provides funding to support delivery of high‐quality civil legal services and access to justice to low‐income people. These grants are typically awarded for a three‐year period, with successful applicants submitting a less detailed renewal application for the second and third years of the grant cycle. While LSC Basic Field Grants are open competition grants, the grant recipients tend to be stable year‐over‐year, with very little turnover in grantee population.

Volume LSC currently funds 191 service areas annually. Service areas include regionally bound grants (which are funded based on census‐derived poverty data), agricultural worker grants (which are awarded based on agriculture information), and Native American grants (which are awarded based on Native American population centers).

Applicants Applicant organizations can submit applications for more than one service area.

The vast majority of applicants are existing grantees, of which there are currently 132.

Review Process The Basic Field Grant has a two‐stage application process. The first is a Notice of Intent to Compete, which includes a preliminary review to validate eligibility before receiving authorization to submit a full application.

The second is the submission of a full application. Upon submission of the full application, three parallel review processes are initiated: (1) a program‐based review by OPP; (2) a fiscal review by OCE; and (3) a compliance review by OCE.

As part of their process, reviewers will need easy access to the information related to the applicant organization, such as the prior application and review notes, organizational documents, and all the other interactions with the grantee (e.g. Grantee Activity Report, site visits, compliance activities). When LSC receives competing applications for the same Basic Field Grant service area, external review panelists evaluate the competing applications.

The assignment of the primary reviewer within each review process should be done automatically (through a lookup table), but with the ability for LSC management to manually update the assignment to a new resource if needed.

Each review process should have its own evaluation form, which is also dependent on whether the application is for the open competition or renewal, and when the last Program Quality Visit (PQV, a specific type of site visit) occurred. Special Grant Conditions and other requirement milestones may be identified that will require follow up submissions from the grantee and review by LSC staff.

The final LSC Executive review process is coordinated around scheduled

Executive review meetings. OPP and OCE will need a mechanism to organize the applications into cohorts for the Executive review.

Expected Documents Generated out of System

Recommendation overview report

Approved Award Letter

Acceptance of Grant Award Letter (includes summary of Special Grant Conditions and milestones)

Appropriations payment update report to grantee

An additional 3 documents and 3 reports to be finalized later

Additional Notes Two items make the fund allocation and payment setup for Basic Field Grants unique to LSC: First, the amount awarded to each service area is a calculation done by the ODGA group that takes a multitude of factors and data points into consideration. The ODGA then also calculates the monthly payment schedule for each of the service area awards. This detailed breakdown of the payments and their fund allocation will need a method to be calculated within, or imported into, the system.

Second, the timing of when the funds committed to the LSC Basic Field Grants program are finalized and approved by the US Congress have not often aligned with the start of the calendar year when the monthly payments to grantees need to start. LSC manages this by using an estimated budget to make decisions and administer the initial payments. When the appropriations (confirmed budget) is received from Congress, the final amounts for each grantee are recalculated by the ODGA, along with the adjustments needed to each of the subsequent payments to make the final amount. These adjustment payments (debits or credits) will then need to be loaded into the GMS along with the updates to the funding allocations.

External reviewers will also need a portal view that is configured specifically for external reviewers to simplify their user experience as well as enable the access permissions to data and functionality suitable for, and limited to, their role and scope of responsibility.

Technology Initiative Grants (TIG)

Overview Description

The Technology Initiative Grants (TIG) allow grantees to explore innovative ways of serving clients, to build their technological capacity and to support the efforts of pro bono attorneys.

Volume 75 to 80 Letters of Intent annually, approximately 45 that proceed to full application.

Applicants Only current Basic Field Grantees can apply for TIG grants in a competitive process. One grantee may apply for more than one TIG grant each year (for different initiatives).

Review Process TIG also uses a two‐stage review process with a Letter of Intent and then full application. LSC may selectively send applications back to the applicant to submit revisions or provide more information.

Within each of these stages, a team of reviewers is involved, each fills out their own review form. One primary reviewer summarizes the individual reviews to one consolidated review. A team review meeting will occur with OPP management to generate the final recommendations. A meeting with LSC Executives occurs for final review and approval.

Expected Documents Generated

Acceptance of Grant Award Letter (includes payment schedule and required milestones)

Recommendation overview report

Additional Notes The annual budget for TIG is established before program decision making. As the payments for the program may cross over calendar years, there is a need to track each year’s budget allocation against committed and finalized payments. Some payments are also dependent on specific deliverables or milestones being completed and accepted by LSC before the payment can be released.

Pro Bono Innovation Fund (PBIF)

Description

The Pro Bono Innovation Fund (PBIF) grant program supports innovative pro bono projects executed by grantees roughly over an 18‐ to 24‐month duration.

After an initial PBIF grant award is concluded, grantees may reapply for sustainability funding of the project to continue for another 2 years.

Volume There have been approximately 11 to 15 projects awarded annually since the program was initiated, with 40 to 50 active grants at any given moment.

Applicants Only current Basic Field Grant organizations are eligible to apply for PBIF grants in a competitive process.

Review Process PBIF also uses a two‐stage review process with a Letter of Intent and then full application. LSC may selectively send applications back to the applicant to submit revisions or to provide more information.

Within each of these stages, a team of reviewers are involved, each fills out their own review form. One primary reviewer summarizes the individual reviews to one consolidated review. A team review meeting will occur with OPP management to generate the final recommendations. A meeting with LSC Executives occurs for final review and approval.

Expected Documents Generated

Recommendation overview report

Acceptance of Grant Award Letter (includes payment schedule and required milestones)

Additional Notes The annual budget for PBIF is established before program decision making. As the payments for the program may cross over calendar years, there is a need to track each year’s budget allocation against committed and finalized payments.

Some payments are also dependent on specific deliverables or milestones being completed and accepted by LSC before the payment can be released.

Loan Repayment Assistance Plan (LRAP)

Description

The Loan Repayment Assistance Plan (LRAP) is a grant program directed to individuals to foster recruitment and retention of grantee staff attorneys.

Applicants are reviewed for eligibility, and where the number of eligible applicants exceeds available funding, awards are selected from the list of eligible applicants by a lottery process (which will be handled outside the GMS system).

Once accepted into the program, awardees may reapply annually for up to 3‐ year award, contingent on annual renewal requirements (including submitting a renewal application form). Each year’s award is paid in 2 installments.

Volume There are approximately 80 grants awarded to new applicants each year. At any given time – the system needs to track approximately 240 individual grants.

Applicants Applicants and successful awardees are attorneys who are employed with an active grantee. These applicants and the awardees will require an LRAP portal view that is segregated from the grantee portal view. The individuals will need to be able to self‐register onto the GMS portal. The application form will include a field to identify the applicant’s employer.

Review Process A program administrator executes a due diligence process to verify eligibility and exports a list of eligible applicants to a lottery process that is external to the GMS. The administrator must then be able to update the results of the lottery back into the system efficiently. Selected applicants will have to submit some final information and documentation, and there will need to be a process to request a confirmation of the applicant’s employment status at the organization from the organization’s Executive Director. The system should be able to validate the requirements for the payment are fulfilled before the payment is requisitioned.

Expected Documents Generated

Award Letter (includes payment schedule)

Recommendation overview report

Additional Notes It is ideal for grantees to view that an application/award activity is occurring with one of their staff, but not be able to view the details of the application form.

The budget for each year’s LRAP cohort is established before the application window opens, with the expectation that awardees will renew for all years.

Renewal awards payments should be allocated to the correct LRAP cohort’s budget, so that LSC is able to monitor the actual payout across years to the correct budget.

It is relatively common that awardees drop out of the program either mid‐year or decide not to apply for renewal. The GMS system will need to handle the process to amend the grant award in this scenario and support the compliance process required for the awardee to submit a waiver request (see compliance processes below).

Disaster Grants

Description

LSC's Emergency Relief Grants provide funds, as needed, to LSC grantees in areas with state or federal government‐declared emergencies. Those funds are for responses to damage sustained or a surge in demand for legal aid as a result of the emergency. Funds are either part of existing fund carryover from prior years or committed to the grant program as a special funding response by Congress to the emergency and is confirmed before the application window is launched.

Unlike most grant programs at LSC, the cadence of when the application window opens is not predictable.

Each disaster grant program (there can be several concurrently managed disaster grant programs running in tandem) will each have its own application form and review form but will generally follow the same workflow from the Full Application onward of the Basic Field Grant program.

Volume The availability and volume of these grants vary each year, but the volume would not exceed the volume of the Basic Field Grants.

Applicants Only existing Basic Field Grant grantees are eligible to apply, and the program includes additional eligibility requirements.

Review Process The review process will need to be able to follow a similar parallel review workflow process as for Basic Field Grant but with its own set of review forms.

Expected Documents Generated

Program‐specific award Letter (includes payment schedule)

Additional Notes The budget for Disaster Grants is established before the program decision making occurs. As the payments for the program may cross over calendar years, there is a need to track each year’s budget allocation against committed and paid payments. Some payments are also dependent on specific deliverables or milestones being completed and accepted by LSC before the payment can be released.

Other Grant Programs (Miscellaneous Grants, Vieth Grant)

Description

LSC has several other grant programs (Miscellaneous Grants, Vieth Grant) that LSC wants to administer out of the GMS as well. These programs will each have their own application form and review form(s) but will generally follow the same workflow from the Full Application onward of the Basic Field Grant program.

Volume The availability and volume of these grants vary each year, but the volume would not exceed the volume of the Basic Field Grants.

Applicants Only existing Basic Field Grant grantees are eligible to apply, and each program includes additional grant‐centric eligibility requirements.

Review Process The review process will need to be able to follow a similar parallel review workflow process as for Basic Field Grant but with its own set of review forms. At the program planning stage, LSC will finalize which, if not all, the parallel review branches will occur.

Expected Documents Generated

Program‐specific award Letter (includes payment schedule)

Additional Notes The annual budget for each of these programs is established in advance of the application window opening. As the payments for the program may cross over calendar years, there is a need to track each year’s budget allocation against committed and paid payments.

Rural Summer Legal Corps

Description

The Rural Summer Legal Corps is a program where LSC matches law student fellows with summer intern opportunities at grantees. LSC wishes to leverage the GMS system to administer the application intake and review process. It will have its own application and review forms.

Volume There were approximately 40 applications in 2019.

Applicants Existing Basic Field Grant grantees are eligible to apply to participate in the program. The law student fellows will not be interacting with the GMS system.

Review Process This is a one‐stage application process with a panel of reviewers each populating a review form. The panel convenes to make recommendations as a group to forward to LSC Executive office to make the final decision.

At the close of activities, external consultants are used to evaluate the outcomes of the program. As a result, they will need view‐only access to a specific set of application records and fields, and organization data, for them to do their work.

Expected Documents Generated

Recommendation overview report

Additional Notes The process to solicit law students and facilitate the matchmaking will occur outside of the GMS system.

SITE VISITS

LSC conducts several different types of site visits, each requiring the coordination of team members across OPP and OCE and with the grantee itself. Site visits can be part of a grant program review process, a part of a compliance process, or a program capacity‐building process. The site visits can occur at any time throughout the year. LSC is keen to leverage the GMS system to support three objectives for site visits:

Enable the coordination, consistency in planning, and monitoring of site visit activities;

Enable a centralized overview of all the site visits in progress;

Enable all LSC staff to be able to easily see and manage the site visit outcomes for each grantee (and across grantees).

These site visit activities are not merely sub‐activities of a particular grant process. Rather, each type of site visit requires the grantee to provide LSC different information and documents and has a subset of parallel review processes for various LSC team members to complete. Due dates for specific statuses at the site visit and review workflows should be able to trigger reminders to assigned team members. Staff looking up the Constituent

Relationship Management (CRM) entry for a grantee should be able to see the grantee’s site visit activities listed similarly to their grant program and oversight activities.

A team report document is expected to be generated out of the GMS system that pulls from the fields updated by the site review team. It is also expected that a Final Letter will be generated outside the system, stored in

Box, and linked in the GMS system to provide visibility to others in LSC.

Should there be any Recommended Corrective Actions (see Oversight Processes) that are created from a site visit, there should be a link/relationship between the site visit record and the Recommended Correction Actions record.

OVERSIGHT PROCESSES

In addition to the granting programs above, LSC would like to leverage the GMS to facilitate the administration of the various compliance and enforcement oversight processes at LSC. These oversight processes are all related to grantees and can be triggered through a request by the grantee, an internal referral from another process at

LSC, or as part of the regular annual compliance process for all grantees.

With all the various oversight activities that could be in flight at any given time, it is critical that the OCE and OPP staff have an effective portal dashboard view of the active oversight activities consolidated in a way (list view) that users can easily take action on certain records.

Initiated by grantee request

At any point in the year, grantees can initiate a request triggered by a specific compliance rule. All of the waiver requests are related to an existing grant, and so there needs to be the ability to store the relationship with those records. Several of these grantee‐initiated requests have a regulatory‐mandated timeframe for LSC to provide a response, and so the need to monitor and manage the workflow is key.

Waiver requests (Private Attorney Involvement and/or fund balance)

Property, Services, and Capital Transactions

Subgrant request

The documentation from the OCE review (due diligence check boxes, assessment notes, etc.) can be stored within the request itself provided there is sufficient control to prevent the grantees from viewing specific fields.

Initiated through internal LSC referral

These are requests that are initiated by LSC at any time of the year:

Office of Inspector General (OIG) referral of Investigative Actions, Audit issues, or Questioned Costs

Recommended Corrective Actions

Complaints received from public or Congress via email, phone, or website

Regular Annual Compliance

OCE has an annual compliance review process tied to each grantee’s reporting of their audited financial statements. When the grantee submits their audited financial statements for the year, this will trigger the creation of an Audited Financial Review (aka Desk Review) activity against the grantee. The Audited Financial

Review follows the same assignment lookup for identifying the OCE Fiscal Compliance Analyst as for the Basic

Field Grant. However, there will only be a review form for the FCA to document the analysis.

GRANTEE ACTIVITY REPORT

On an annual basis, grantees must submit a set of comprehensive data about the organization’s activities through the year, known as the Grantee Activity Report (GAR). The data includes over 2000 variables providing details around:

Cases closed and categorization details

Demographics of clients

Non‐case activities

Grantee staffing and office information

Financials

ODGA then consolidates the data outside of the GMS, performs analysis, and generates several outputs that are either used within LSC for institutional knowledge about the grantees, and/or for the public. This will require the

GMS to have options for exporting or integrating this data to an external location for ODGA to process.

The main output is the “By the Numbers” annual summary report (previously called the “Fact Book” prior to

2015). It is a strategic mandate of the ODGA to continue to refine and iterate on the inputs and outputs of the

Grantee Activity Report so that it becomes more useful to the Grantee participants. Some of these outputs are in webpage format, so the GMS should be able to either store the link to the output or be able to render the page(s) within the GMS.

CONSTITUENT RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT (CRM)

One of LSC’s objectives is to migrate its CRM processes from Salesforce to be administered in the selected GMS.

A consolidated portal view of all the different activities related to the grantee is required to provide effective context and background for any LSC staff member’s work on a process related to that. The user should then be able to click in to view the more detailed records from this dashboard. This would include:

Current active and historical grants

Grantee organization details (e.g. staff contacts, staff demographics, office addresses, office hours). The

CRM data model should be able to handle the scenario where some grantees have more than one office.

Service area(s) served

Documents provided by the grantee that are related to the organization and not specific to a grant process (e.g. audited financial statements). A robust integration is required with Box, LSC’s document management system and where the documents should be stored.

Current and historical oversight processes

GAR inputs and outputs

Stored email exchanges with contacts at the grantee

Having different options to access the CRM data (e.g. integration with Outlook 365, responsive design for access on mobile devices and tablets) is desired.

FLEXIBLE REPORTING

The GMS should have intuitive and flexible reporting functionality to enable LSC staff to perform ad hoc queries based on established parameters. Filter conditions used should be visible. The results should be exportable.

TASK MANAGEMENT

With the various grant program oversight activities occurring at any given time, and multiple LSC staff and grantee contacts involved within each activity, it is highly important that the GMS provide effective ways for both individuals and activity administrators to monitor and manage their tasks and timelines. Notifications and reminders for tasks should be presented to users on their portal dashboard to remove the reliance on using emails. Summary list views of grant programs or overview activities should include the display of key milestone target dates and current status.

PAYMENT REQUEST ADMINISTRATION

The GMS system should support LSC’s payment request and approval workflow, including the sending of approved payment requests to LSC’s Accounts Payable / Financial Management system to process. The sending of payment requests should be automated, either via API or file integration. The completion of the payment in the Accounts Payable system should then update the status of the payment request in the GMS system via another interface.

The GMS will also need to be able to handle amendments to the grant, such as refund/rescind amounts or changes to the payment amount and communicate these transactions effectively to the Financial Management system.

PORTAL DASHBOARDS AND VIEWS

We understand that the ease of use of the system is highly dependent on the successful presentation of data and actions to the users in the initial portal of the GMS. The following table groups the various user roles into common needs, with the assumption that the control of the visibility of certain functions and/or data can be further controlled through user permissions.

Dashboard User Profile

User Roles included Main dashboard components desired in default initial view

Grantee Grantee contacts

Task notifications

Current list of applications and active grants

Current list of upcoming milestones, requirements, reports

Link to own organization documents

Individual Grantee LRAP applicants Task notifications

Current list of applications and active grants

External Reviewers External reviewers List of review actions

Link to search for/view grantees

LSC Management LSC Executive Office

LSC Management

Grant Administrators

Workflow actions currently assigned to them

High level summaries of each grant program and oversight process, with ability to click in to view the detail screen

Oversight OPP Program Counsel

OCE Program Counsel

OCE Fiscal Compliance Analyst

Task notifications

Workflow actions currently assigned to them

Curated list view of the grantees assigned to them

LSC expects that changes and refinements to the dashboard will be required after deployment as the organization learns what information and format is better suited for use. It is a requirement for the LSC system administrators to be able to make these changes to the dashboards, or create additional ones, after deployment. The training outline for system administrators should include this dashboard update for initial deployment.

EXPECTED SYSTEM USERS

Below is the anticipated number of users when the entire organization is using the new GMS system.

Role Type Named Users Concurrent Users

Low Estimate High Estimate Low Estimate High Estimate

System Administrators 3 8 3 5

LSC Staff 75 100 40 70

External Reviewers 0 10 0 10

Third‐Party Contractors 20 40 15 20

Grantee Contact Users 275 300 90 130

Individual LRAP grantees 80 240 80 160

Within the LSC Staff group of users, there will be varying roles expected that will control the access to functionality, data, and dashboard portal user interfaces.

The number of concurrent grantee and individual LRAP grantee users will see natural spikes at certain points the year and very little activity otherwise due to the cyclic nature of the programs.

GOALS & BENEFITS

LSC expects this implementation to realize key benefits from the following opportunities available. LSC is open to making process changes that facilitate our goal of simplifying our processes and leveraging the new system.

Key Challenges Description Key Opportunities

Accountability

● Approvals

● Administrative

Oversight

As a taxpayer‐funded entity, the process at LSC has a heavy focus on grantee compliance and oversight.

The current overlapping and redundant compliance activities across programs complicates oversight processes for both LSC and its grantees.

To lessen the administrative burden placed on the grantee by identifying ways to consolidate their touchpoints with LSC.

To provide a comprehensive approach to grantee oversight across departments and programs.

Administration

● Documentation

● Templates

● Manual Work

Because the current processes were developed based on the limits of available tools, many steps along the decision‐making processes are burdened with manual workarounds and administration – i.e. manually updating tracking sheets, the need to document assessment reviews in narrative format and manually generating memos and letters.

Memos, review summaries, ad hoc cover letters, hand and email delivery can all be replaced by system‐ enhanced processes and templates that eliminate the need for these items.

Enable system‐facilitated reviews and store feedback/decision or activity completion.

Manual Tasks for staff & management

● Review

● Approvals

There are scenarios where tasks are very manual, e.g. typing in the grant amount, copying & pasting assessment narrative into LSC Grants.

Pre‐populate the grant amount for approval from the amount recommended by the prior round of reviews.

Remove need for manually copying/pasting/merging of approval documents and have the system generate these documents from the text stored in the system fields.

Workflow

● Task Management

● Efficiency & Consistency

● Assignments

There is no systematic task management and notification system that can support staff to ensure an effective workflow, and process management, especially between departments.

New GMS should include a robust task management tool that tracks upcoming and pending activities and provides visibility into progress of those activities across departments.

The system should provide information relevant to each user, where supervisors have access to

Key Challenges Description Key Opportunities staff assignments, delivery cycle times, reassignment of duties, SLA, and other information.

Systems Integration

● Data Management

● Weak Links

● Manual Tasks

Too many disconnected systems are utilized with information/data often being manually transferred.

LSC is currently using more than six systems to administer, track and manage the grantmaking process, resulting in siloed information and burdensome manual tasks.

New GMS must integrate easily across the other systems LSC wishes to maintain to support its grantmaking.

The new GMS offers LSC a unique opportunity to phase out under‐ performing systems as part of the implementation process.

Reports

● Quantitative & Qualitative Information

● Data Capture

● Impact

Narrative driven reports/applications that grantees submit are difficult to measure and track across the system.

Develop system‐driven approach to data capture, assessment, oversight and review.

Inconsistent processes

● Systems

● Processes

The systems and processes vary within and between each grant stream. In one instance, grantees are using four systems for the same grant; additionally, reports are submitted via LSC Grants, Salesforce and email, depending on the grant stream.

A centralized GMS will reduce the administrative burden on grantees to navigate between various systems and empower them to have access to their information in one consistent place

Utilize role permissions to appropriate functions and data to ensure that grantees have access to their information and receive notifications through the system to ensure immediate, one‐stop, communication and information sharing.

Duplication of effort for Grantees

● Information Gathering

● Document Storage

Grantees are often asked for the same documents from different staff members or departments. These documents are then often stored multiple times in various systems.

The grantee expends additional effort do this sort of search and retrieval.

Consistent processes between grants and departments will reduce confusion/frustration and create an opportunity to develop/share best practices.

Key Challenges Description Key Opportunities

Touchpoints

● Staff Interactions

● System

Interactions

Grantees interact with a multitude of different staff members and departments. Between phone calls, emails, system uploads, revisions, signatures, site visits and mail, a new grantee could interact with LSC upwards of 50‐60 times per year.

A central GMS and document repository with permissions appropriate access will ensure documents are accessible to those that need them without grantees having to do extra work.

TECHNOLOGY ENVIRONMENT

CURRENT SYSTEMS

There are a myriad of tools used currently to support LSC’s mission:

System Description Remain or Decommission?

Type of Data Source of data migration?

LSC Grants Internally branded instance of EasyGrants, the current GMS solution

Decommission Grant Applications, Grantees (Organizations), Grantees (Individuals), Contacts

Unclear

Box Document management system heavily used as both a repository of documents and to enable LSC staff to collaborate on documents

Remain Document storage location

Unclear

Salesforce The current CRM tool was implemented at LSC with the goal to track all Grantee data and interactions. The Grantee Activity Report is currently submitted by grantees through a Salesforce portal with a Squid front‐end. Challenges during deployment stalled the scope of interactions and data being managed in this tool.

Decommission Grantees Yes

Access databases Tracks site visit data; administer some types of grant programs and other grant‐related data; grant award payment calculations

Decommission Grant applications, review assessments, Milestones, Payment schedules, site visit data

Yes

Excel spreadsheets Track risk assessments (associated with OCE) and other grant‐related data

Remain Unclear

SmartSheet To monitor and administer the workflow activities in certain grant programs and oversight activities

Remain (for uses outside of grants management)

Grant workflow, milestones, payment schedules

Yes

Finance LSC is currently in the process of selecting and implementing a new accounting system and Accounts Payable system to replace Sun Systems.

It is expected that these financial systems will be in place at the time of the GMS implementation start.

Remain Payments, Program budgets

No

RINDB A grantee reporting database that supports the LRAP process and Basic Field Grant approval letters process.

Decommission Grantee profile, grantee reports, LRAP applications

Unclear

Microsoft Office

Office productivity suite and email communications

Tableau This data visualization tool is used by ODGA to generate insights for LSC and grantees from various sources of data provided in the grants process and from external sources.

Remain Grantee activity, grant applications, organizations

No

Adobe eSign E‐signature solution used in the Awards process for several grant programs.

Remain unless the provided GMS solution has a replacement

Documents No

FUTURE SYSTEMS VISION

Going forward, the vision is to shift to a set of systems and tools that are better integrated to further LSC’s mission.

GMS – represents the future‐state GMS solution, which be the center of Grantee data and interactions.

It will ideally also replace much of the CRM functionality currently managed in Salesforce.

Box – this document management system will continue to be heavily used as both a repository of documents and to enable LSC staff to collaborate on documents that are generated outside of the GMS solution. Robust integration capability between Box and the GMS tool are required.

Microsoft Office 365 – will continue to be the office productivity suite.

AP System and Accounting System – New financial management systems are being selected and implemented at LSC and should be in place during the implementation of the GMS system.

eSignature – LSC plans to utilize eSignature more broadly after the implementation of the GMS. The eSignatures solutions that partner well with the selected GMS solution will shape which eSignature solution is implemented.

Data Warehouse –The Data Warehouse should be able to seamlessly connect to the GMS system to retrieve the data it requires to support the consolidation of data used to generate the insights and data visualizations in Tableau.

Tableau – this remains the data visualization system, with the vision that it will connect to the Data Warehouse.

DATA MIGRATION

LSC is currently doing the assessment to more accurately define the scope of what data, and how much, will be migrated to the new GMS system. The different expected sources of data for migration and the type of data, are summarized in the Current Systems section above.

In terms of resourcing for data migration, LSC’s Office of Information Technology has the resources with the skills and capacity to perform the data extraction and transformation steps in the data migration process.

OIT can also partially support the functional validation of the data migration through some automated scripts.

GMS IMPLEMENTATION DEPLOYMENT PLANNING

It is expected that the GMS implementation will be deployed in phases, with the first phase consisting of the following functionality/programs:

Basic Field Grants

Payment approval

Grantee Portal

LSC staff portal dashboards

Integration to FMS system

Related data migration of implemented programs

The remaining deployment phases would then need to complete the following scope:

Grant Applications

TIG

PBIF

RSLC

LRAP

Disaster

Subgrants

Veith

Miscellaneous

Oversight Activities

Waiver Requests

Investigative Actions

Audited Financial Statements

Site Visits

Desk Reviews

Other Major Activities

Grants Activity Reporting

Prior Approval Requests for Purchase & Sale of Real and personal Property and Contracts for

Services

Communication & Stakeholder Management

This list is grouped by functional areas, not priority, and so it is expected that LSC and the vendor will need to have a sequencing and prioritization planning session. LSC would like to finish implementing the full scope in a year but is looking for the input from the vendors on the parameters it uses to gauge the length of deployments both by phase and overall. LSC acknowledges that key functional subject matter experts will have constraints in their bandwidth to participate and contribute in the GMS implementation means that the implementation schedule cannot be overly aggressive.

Due to the phased deployment of functionality, and the planned integration to other systems in LSC’s ecosystem, we believe this will require the selected solution to have a multiple environment infrastructure. This enables development and testing of new functionality to be separate from the production environment. Ideally the solution will also have the functionality to easily migrate the configuration and/or custom code from the development or test environment to production environment when is validated to work as expected. There should also be a mechanism where data from production can be refreshed into the lower development or test environments.

VENDOR RESPONSE

All proposals must be concise—30 pages or less, not including the functional and technical requirements spreadsheet attachments, resumes and references. Responses should be well‐organized, and demonstrate how your product, approach and methodology, experience in the sector, on‐going support model and terms meet or exceed LSC’s requirements.

EXHIBIT A: FUNCTIONAL REQUIREMENTS

LSC’s key business process workflows that are to be managed within the grants management system appear in

Appendix I – Business Workflows. The detailed business requirements associated with those workflows appear in Appendix II – Detailed Requirements (a separate Excel spreadsheet). Within that Excel spreadsheet, please respond to each of the functional and technical requirements in the column labeled “Response” using the following legend:

M Base software meets the business requirement as stated

P Base software partially meets the business requirements, or meets it differently than stated

C Base software does not meet the business requirement, but product is customizable/configurable with no additional cost

C$ Base software does not meet the business requirement, but product is customizable/configurable for an additional cost

N Base software cannot meet the business requirement

If a requirement is met by utilizing additional software (e.g., via a vendor partner or another product) beyond the base product, please note that in the ‘Modules/Software’ column. In addition, please feel free to add clarifying details in the column labeled ‘Vendor Comments’.

Responses should reflect the capabilities of the CURRENT VERSION of your base software as indicated below in question 11 in Appendix D: General Software Product Information. However, feel free to note in the ‘Vendor

Response’ column where future capability may address the requirement more effectively (include release # and expected date, if information is available). Please keep such explanations as brief as possible.

EXHIBIT B: TECHNICAL CONSIDERATIONS

Considering LSC’s technology environment as described within this RFP, please provide a response to the technical questions in the appropriate section(s) below:

Given strategic goals, LSC is exclusively interested in an externally‐hosted GMS solution. Please describe the options available to LSC for the hosting of the system and what you recommend. (i.e. hosted by vendor in single‐tenant/multi‐tenant model, hosted as a software‐as‐a‐service in multi‐tenant or customer‐specific instance). Please describe how you provide the hosting model and the partners used.

1. Discuss the following elements:

data redundancy data security (how you secure our data at rest, how it’s secured in transit) back up of information availability and ownership of data technology stack how you protect other LSC systems that become part of the integrated solutions (e.g. financial systems).

2. Please describe the options available to integrate your solution with other 3rd party solutions and customer legacy solutions:

A. Flat file imports/exports. Please elaborate on tools provided to the customer to set up exports/imports, define business rules for the imports/exports, the ability of the tools to automate these imports/exports, and the ability to restart imports/exports if a problem occurs. Please discuss size/volume limits for imports and exports in a single job. Please also define import/export file formats supported (e.g., xml, csv, xls).

B. APIs. Please provide a high level description of available APIs (including programming languages supported), the customer’s ability to access these APIs, any limits on the usage of the APIs, please include any potential API charges in the cost section of this RFP, and the ability of third parties (a data warehouse/reporting solution for example) to access your APIs.

3. Please describe the tools available to customers to customize the application. Please include in your description an explanation of how these customizations are or are not impacted by product upgrades.

4. What is the client software? If it is a web browser, please indicate what your recommended browser is, and which others are supported. Does the solution use responsive design to enable users to effectively use the system from mobile devices and tablets? Other than a web browser, are there requirements for any other client‐based software? Are any web add‐ons (e.g., Java, Active X) required?

A. Can your software be accessed via Windows PCs and Apple Mac computers?

B. For the above‐mentioned browsers and operating systems supported, please list the version compatibility (e.g., all, v7 and above).

5. Will the customer have access to a development environment? Will the customer have access to a test environment? Will the client have access to a production staging/support environment? If there are costs associated with these environments, please include them in the cost section.

6. Please describe your software release schedule including patches, point releases, and major releases.

Please describe how you prepare the client for the introduction of these changes into the environment.

7. Please describe your disaster recovery strategy for the application (assuming they implement the delivery model you recommend), as well as the disaster recovery strategy for all partnering vendors.

A. What is the recovery time objective for the application?

B. What is the recovery point objective?

C. What is your organization’s history of meeting recovery time objectives?

D. Can the customer work with you to conduct separate disaster recovery tests in order to test/validate readiness?

E. Has your organization ever had to invoke its disaster recovery plan for the product you are proposing

LSC uses, and if so, was the recovery time…