About This Site - How can you use it in your District?

This section of the website has been developed to allow a district to manage the internal application process for District Grants under the Future Vision program. It has been tested successfully by District 5340 during the 3 years of the Pilot program. If you want to use it in your district you would need to make it a requirement for clubs to use the website if they want to get any District Designated Funds (DDF) from your district. You would also need to inform your clubs of the timeline for your application process. There should be a deadline for submitting projects (like August 15), followed by the review of projects by your District Approval Committee, and the announcement of approved projects (projects receiving DDF). If you want some more detailed information about a typical application process that we implemented in District 5340 you can watch this video recording of our Grants Management Seminar (part 1) on 14-Apr-12.

On this website, a club can create a project page, enter the description, contact information, financing (including requested DDF), photos, supporting documents, etc. Once the project is ready, it can be digitally signed by the Primary contact person and club president (or anybody else according to your internal district process). On signing a project, the user specifies they agree to the Terms and Conditions for District Grants. A custom document can be used for your own district.

The district leadership people (DG, DGE, DRFC, DGSC, District Approval Committee, District Grants Audit Committee, etc.) are automatically granted access to the projects in your district so that they can review and approve them. A list of Signed projects ready to be approved is displayed in the "My Account" section of each individual.

At any time you can generate lists of projects at various statuses in your district, and see how much DDF is allocated to these projects, with individual totals per club. A "spending plan" list can be generated and can be used to apply for the Block District Grant for your district at The Rotary Foundation.

After approval, the website keeps track of which project was paid by your treasurer for District Grants. For "Paid" projects, a link to a blank report form is displayed on the administration page so that the users can prepare their Final Report. This document (Word format) can be customized for your own district.

Through completion of the project, the website can be used to upload photos, the final reports, invoices, and any other relevant document (in PDF format). Therefore the website is used as a central repository of documents, as requested by the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU). Uploaded documents can either be made "public" or "restricted" (depending on whether they contain sensitive information). Restricted documents can only be accessed by the project partners (including the district leadership).

If your district wants to use this website to administrer the internal application process you will need to contact me and give me the name and email of a District Administrator who will be in charge of managing the roles for your district. Once this access has been granted, the District Administrator will see a "Role Management" button in his/her My Account page.

Click here to see a document explaining the various roles in the system.

This website is free. There is no cost to use the default functions of this website. The only thing I am charging for is if your district wants to signup for an additional backup plan to have daily backups of the projects in your district (including photos and PDF documents) into an external server you have access to with your own FTP account. The cost for the backup plan service is $300 per year (for a whole district).

Club Qualification Module

You can use this website to keep track of the qualified clubs in your district. A summary list is provided to tell which clubs are qualified or not to do projects with The Rotary Foundation. This tool keeps track of the 2 main requirements for qualification: signing the Memorandom of Understanding (MOU), and attending the Grants Management Seminar (GMS).

The attendance at the GMS is recorded by a Club Qualification Administrator. When this requirement is recorded for a club a green checkmark is displayed for this club in the corresponding column.

For the signature of the MOU, there are 3 ways to pass this requirement. Click here to see a club page prompting the club to fulfill this requirement.

1. There is a digital signature process, similar to the signing of District Grant applications, where special codes are emailed to the Club President and President-Elect. They go to the website to enter this special code and the MOU becomes digitaly signed.
2. You can also upload a scanned copy of the signed MOU in PDF format. The document is stored and archived on the website.
3. Or the Club Qualification Administrator can force-check this requirement.

Once both requirements are fulfilled, the club is listed in green as qualified. Clicking on a club name will bring a summary to explain when and how the requirements were fulfilled.

If you would like to use this tool in your district, contact me with the name and email of the Club Qualification Administrator for your district. I will enter this role in the system, and all your would have to do is to add a link on your district website to your custom list of clubs.