CiviGrant - Making it Happen!

We all know CiviCRM provides a lot of power and usability "out-of-the-box". But it's only got where it is because of hours of hard work from the core team, other developers and end users pitching in the funds to make it happen.

Here at GMCVO Databases, we work with a number of organisations who run grants programmes. Although CiviGrant is great for the internal management, one organisation in particular wanted their grant applicants to be able to submit their application online - saving administrators the time spent doing the data input required to get the applications into CiviCRM for management.

Although there is a Grant Application extension, our user case wanted more! Particularly, a lot of the features the the Drupal Webform with CiviCRM Integration module provides, like submitting applications for multiple contacts of multiple type with multiple relationships. (Note: The grant application extension is CMS independent)

Having met Coleman at CiviCon London, we knew he know the webform module inside and out and would be best placed to expose CiviGrant to the module and enable it to integrate like other CiviCRM components. We created a simple specification on the Wiki to define the work and things are getting underway shortly!

For us, approaching the core team to complete this work was the best way forward for a number of reasons. They know the code so well, you know their work will integrate with CiviCRM seamlessly. You're getting the most experienced CiviCRM developers in the world to complete the work! But it also means that it will be immediately available to anyone else interested so the community will immediately benefit from this work, growing CiviCRM's functionality for everyone.

We really hope the work being done to expose CiviGrant to Drupal webforms will benefit other CiviCRM users and can't wait to use it in the coming weeks!