Opportunity Creation and Maintenance

Note: The following steps are only for the Salesforce requirements of the grant/award proposal process. For Society proposals, please also refer to the processes included in the Award Management chapter and articles.

  1. Search for the funder's account in Salesforce by entering the name in the search field
  2. If there is no account record for the funder, create one following these instructions 
  3. Once on the funder’s account record, click on the Related tab, scroll down to the Opportunities section, and click New Account Donation

Record Types

  1. Choose the record type from the drop-down menu. See article on Opportunity types for a definition of each record type.
    • If you are unsure which record type to select, confirm with the Project Specialist
    • The main record types created by the Shared Platform Coordinator are: Awards (most common), Fee-For-Service, Sponsorship, Gift-In-Kind, and Services-In-Kind.  Donations and Fund Activity record types are set up by the Donations and Revenue Coordinator.  

Mandatory Fields

  1. Fill in the following mandatory Salesforce fields:
    1. Opportunity Name: this will auto-populate, but you must enter something in the field first for it to auto-populate with the correct opportunity name
    2. Account Name: click on the magnifying glass and the correct account name will be first on the list
    3. Amount: Salesforce does not accept an empty amount field.
      • Do your best to determine the amount that will be requested, either by asking the project specialist, checking funder guidelines to see if there's a set amount, etc. Only in the absence of a confirmed or estimated amount, use $1.
    4. Close Date: The earliest date that the revenue is expected to be received. In the absence of better information, set the close date 4 months from the proposal submission date
    5. Primary Fund: If you know the child fund, select it from the lookup.
      • If you don’t know the child fund, choose the general operations child fund (usually PXX-01). Coding will be confirmed by the Project Specialist or the Project Director when the funds are confirmed.
    6. Stage: Ask Planned, LOI Submitted, Proposal Submitted, or Confirmed. Never change it to Closed Won. Finance will do this once the payment is received.

Other Important Opportunity Fields

  1. Complete the following fields if the information is available at the time of creating the opportunity. Otherwise, fill in the following fields as the information becomes available:
    1. Primary Contact: The contact person for the grant, e.g., a grant manager. Note the contact record must have an address. See Primary Contact and Receipt Contact article.
    2. Foreign Currency Amount and Code, if applicable: Fill in these fields if the proposal budget is in a foreign currency
    3. Custom Overhead Notes, if applicable
    4. Funder Program or Stream, if applicable
    5. Project Funding Description:  This is the title of the program for which the funds are being requested.
    6. Funder Reference Number: If a number is provided upon submission of the application
    7. Originating Funder, if applicable: Complete this field if the funding is being filtered through another organization
    8. Awards Requirement Website: A link to the application guidelines or instructions
    9. Proposal Lead Time: Number of days in advance of the deadline that we receive a proposal from a project
    10. Proposal Type: If it is a Letter of Intent (LOI)
    11. Proposal Not Required: Check this box if the funder did not require a proposal, or if a grant was given based on a verbal discussion, etc.
    12. Proposal Submission Date: The date the proposal is expected to be submitted, adjusted upon submission to reflect official date
    13. Award Period Start Date: Date on which the funded activity will begin, adjusted upon grant confirmation to reflect official start date from grant agreement letter
    14. Award Period End Date:  Date on which the funded activity will end, adjusted upon grant confirmation to reflect official end date from grant agreement letter
    15. Receipt Contact: Enter the name of the person to whom the acknowledgment letter should be addressed. This can be the same as the Primary Contact. Note, if the Primary Contact field was filled in when the opportunity was first created, the Receipt Contact field will be auto-populated. Otherwise, it must be filled in manually. See Primary Contact and Receipt Contact article.

Payments

  1. Edit/create new payments, if necessary. Salesforce automatically creates one payment equal to the total amount of the opportunity with the Close Date as the Scheduled Date. If the proposal is for multi-year funding with multiple installments, edit/create the new payments once you know the proposed amounts and dates. Refer to the article on Payments and Payment Allocations for instructions.

Task

  1. Create a Task for the Proposal Deadline, including the following information:
    • Subject: REMINDER: [Project Name] Proposal due to [Funder Name]
    • Due Date
    • Name: Project Specialist, Finance Advisor, Project Director (and any other relevant project staff)
    • Type: Proposal
    • Comments: Input all relevant information, including:
      • Link to templates
      • Login information, if online submission
      • Submission instructions
      • List of required supporting documents (with links if applicable)
      • A note about whether approval or signature is required
    • If you're ready to send the email invite to the people in the Name field, select Society from the Send Email Invite dropdown menu

File and Document Management

  1. Create a Folder in the Box section of the opportunity and add folders and sub-folders, as applicable. 
  • Create a sub-folder for supporting documents if needed named Supporting Documentation
  • Make sure that the amount in the Box folder name is correct. If the opportunity was originally set up with $1 in the Amount field, the Box folder will default to $1 and will need to be updated once the actual requested amount is entered in the Amount field
  • For Society opportunities, add the project number to the beginning of the Box folder name by clicking on the drop-down menu and selecting Rename
  1. Save any proposal-related documents, e.g. draft budget, draft narrative, supporting documents, funder guidelines. Follow the established convention when naming filed documents.

After Proposal Submission

  1. Once the proposal has been submitted (see Award Proposals - Submission), update the Stage to LOI Submitted or Proposal Submitted (see Updating Opportunity Stages)
  2. Save a copy of the submission and any associated files in the appropriate folder in the Box section of the opportunity
  3. Save a copy of the email submission and any submission confirmation in the Box section of the opportunity