Member distributions / High volume / Small teams
PEAK BODIES &MEMBER FUNDS.
Sporting federations, arts peak bodies and industry associations distribute many small amounts to many members, often through volunteers, often with one administrator. The problem is never the size of any one grant. It is the number of them.
The status quo
HOW THIS RUNSTODAY
None of this is anyone’s fault. Each of these is a sensible response to a real constraint, and together they produce a record that cannot answer the question it will eventually be asked.
01
Triage from an inbox
Four hundred applications arrive in a fortnight and are triaged out of an inbox.
02
Eligibility by name search
Member eligibility is verified by opening a second system and searching by name.
03
A format for every assessor
Assessment is done by volunteers who each want a different format, so someone standardises it by hand.
04
The email is the approval
Approvals are collected by reply-all, and the approval is the email.
05
Bank details from a PDF
Payments go out as a manual batch, and the bank detail is copied from an application PDF.
06
A board report rebuilt quarterly
The distribution report to the board is rebuilt from the payment file each quarter.
With Backed
WHAT CHANGESAND WHY
The same six pressure points, answered by the system rather than by somebody remembering. Each of these is a control, not a convention.
01
A queue, already screened
Applications arrive into a queue with eligibility already screened and duplicates already flagged.
02
Eligibility as a rule
Membership status is a field on the organisation record, so eligibility is a rule rather than a lookup.
03
One rubric for every assessor
Volunteer assessors score in one place against one rubric, with conflicts declared per round.
04
Approval as a recorded action
Approval is a routed, recorded action against a configured limit, not a reply-all.
05
Bank details from the record
Payments batch from the record, carry a secondary approval, and export with the reference intact.
06
A board report on demand
The board report is a saved report run against a date range.
How it works
ONE AUDITABLEWORKFLOW
From round configuration through to the final accountability report.
Bring the member list in
Organisations and contacts carry membership status, affiliation and funding history, so eligibility and duplicate detection both have something to work with.
Open a round that screens itself
Eligibility screening runs before an applicant starts writing. At four hundred applications, this is the difference between a fortnight of triage and an afternoon of it.
Assess in bulk without losing rigour
Volunteer assessors work from one rubric in one place, with declared conflicts gating access the same way they would at a much larger funder.
Approve in batches, inside the limits
Bulk approve or decline with a standardised reason on each, routed to the delegate whose limit covers it.
Pay once, reconcile once
One payment batch, one secondary approval, one export. Bank details come from the organisation record, not from a PDF.
Capabilities
What you get
- Membership and affiliation status on the organisation record
- Eligibility screening before an application is started
- Duplicate detection across organisations and contacts
- Bulk approve and decline with standardised reasons
- Volunteer assessor access with declared-conflict gating
- Payment batching with a secondary approval step
- Scheduled payment dates for cashflow forecasting
- Saved reports for the board pack and the annual distribution return
- Applicant portal branded per funding category
- Templates for offer, decline and acquittal correspondence
- Mobile-capable applications with autosave for volunteer-run clubs
Common questions
Before you ask
We run one round a year with four hundred applications. Does that work?
It is the shape the volume features exist for: eligibility screening before writing, duplicate detection, bulk decisions with standardised reasons, and one payment batch instead of four hundred transfers arranged by hand.
Our assessors are volunteers who are not technical.
They get one link, one list of what is assigned to them, and one rubric. There is no administrative surface in the assessor portal, and nothing to configure.
Can we check membership automatically?
Membership status is a field on the organisation record, so eligibility rules can read it directly. Where the authoritative list lives in a membership system, it can be brought in through the API rather than re-keyed.
What about clubs applying from a phone?
Applications autosave and are built to work on a phone, which matters when the person applying is a volunteer doing it after training rather than an officer doing it at a desk.