The Composer: a Document Configurator

I said in my last post that one of the challenges a nonprofit faces is that every foundation has their own unique grant application. That's not exactly true.

There's at least one group, the Washington Regional Association of Grantmakers (WRAG), that has attempted to create a common application for their members. It is not unlike universities, who have a 'common app' that many colleges use for vetting students. But if you've applied to colleges you know that 1) many schools don't accept the common app and 2) those who do often have a supplement that asks the additional questions each university still wants answered.

This is because different institutions have different wants and needs. I don't blame them for wanting answers to all their questions; they have the right to know what they want to know before admitting a student to their school. Foundations definitely have the right to know what they want to know before giving another organization their money! In the case of WRAG, out of 100+ members only 18 accept the common grant application.

If you look more closely at the grant application process, you will see that while each application is unique, the questions asked are not. After all, there are only so many items of information you can request from a nonprofit organization. Maybe you can ask a prospective student a wild and innovative essay question to surface his or her true character, but most of the answers a foundation is seeking could be pulled from the nonprofit's business plan, if only they had one.

I felt instinctively that if I could develop a comprehensive set of questions, what would distinguish any particular application would be the subset of information being requested and the order in which the questions were asked. In other words, what I was trying to solve was a classic configuration problem.

Apprentice Systems has solved many configuration problems for our clients. Configuration is a design process where solutions are created by selecting from a set of predefined parts and assembling the parts to meet the needs of a particular situation. We've built systems to automate product configuration (part assembly), process configuration (task assembly) and decision configuration (criteria assembly). What was needed here was a special case of product configuration: document generation. We know how to solve that problem by writing custom code. Could I simplify it into a knowledge pattern that would put automated grant writing within reach of nonprofits everywhere?

After six weeks of research, I feel we are well on our way to making this goal a reality. The knowledge pattern that makes it possible I've dubbed "The Composer". The knowtifacts necessary to generate a Composer are two squares: a Content Table and a Sequencing Table. My next posts will describe my design and creation of these knowtifacts, and the challenges and opportunities for the philanthropic community that have surfaced along the way.