Setting up FormLizard - Non-Profits
All organizations, move at the speed by which they can complete transactions. Whether it’s sales, purchases, hiring, or the dozens of other functions that managers and directors must deal with. At the heart of nearly all of these functions are forms, grants, contracts and other documents.
Common problems most organizations run into in getting these documents completed include:
- Using the wrong version of a form or contract
- Modifying an old contract and not finding all of the places that needed changing
- Employees making (non-authorized) changes
- Having to rewrite the same sections because there is no single place to keep track of it all
We created FormLizard to speed up your business’s ability to quickly get forms, proposals, contracts and more produced.
Please, note, we know documents, forms, business processes and software, but WE ARE NOT ATTORNEYS. The forms, text, and other elements on this site are NOT SUITABLE for any use other than this training.
Getting started with FormLizard
The most common way we see our customers get started with FormLizard is by choosing the part of their organization that is most mired in paperwork issues. For example, if member registration forms are hand-written, incomplete, and backlogged in getting entered, this would be a good place to begin. Regardless, pick a place and get started. We recommend starting with one area and expanding your use of FormLizard over time.
Intermittent Forms
Using FormLizard for intermittent forms, such as permission slips and authorization forms greatly improves the timeliness of getting the forms returned. Setting them up is easy, since most are just one page forms that started off as MS Word documents. Add in the field tags, upload and create your interview.
One area where we see schools reducing paperwork (and costs) is in having the forms E-Submitted , so no paper is needed. The issue always comes down to getting the parent/guardian signature on the form. What we have seen some schools do, is to include a page on the interview with a field for the parent/guardian to enter their name and click a checkbox as a proxy for their handwritten signature. There can be other text on this interview page explaining that by entering their name and clicking the checkbox they are electronically signing this document. Before using this approach though, be sure to get permission from your school’s legal counsel.
As you use FormLizard in your school, be sure to let us know any tips or tricks you come up with and we’ll continue to add to this section.
Build the process first.
FormLizard is designed to fit into your organization’s processes, not force you to change your processes, so start by deciding how you want the effected part of your organization to operate. Begin with the list of problems that exist and come up with solutions to the problems taking into account the unique capabilities of FormLizard.
Below are two examples of how FormLizard can fit into various processes. The first describes a new member registration process and the second addresses grant proposals and contracts. We chose these two examples because many other processes are similar. For example, whether a new member or a new employee, there is data to get and forms to sign. The second example covering grant proposals, could also be applied for most processes involving contracts such as purchase contracts, partnering agreements, and the like.
New Member Registration Process
For organizations that require initial information from members, getting the initial information is often problematic: manually entering the information, deciphering handwriting, and dealing with incomplete forms are just some of the issues. Trying to automate the process with MS Word or PDF forms usually makes things worse. Further, no one would argue that handing a new member a stack of forms to fill out is not the best way to begin a relationship.
Consider the following process: With FormLizard, you put a link on your site with a note telling new members to click the link to “Get Started” or some other phrase. When they click the link, they are brought to your branded FormLizard site where they can create their own account, and complete an online interview. With the online interview, they are asked for information only once, even if the same information appears on several forms. When they are done, they can print the documents themselves, or you can have them E-Submit the documents to you, so that you can directly access the documents and the data they entered.
As mentioned above, FormLizard does not force you into any specific process. For example, if you already have the member’s email address, you can send them an email with a link to your FormLizard site rather than putting a link on your site.
We have many users of FormLizard where the member fills out some information, and the rest of the information is completed by their staff in-house. In these cases, the new member would E-Submit the documents, and an administrator forwards them on to whoever in the organization needs to deal with them. The administrator can also share them with multiple people, so the new member documents are available to people in multiple departments. You can also grant users certain administrative privileges, so for example, all of the new member support personnel can access the E-Submit queue.
Grant Proposal Process
Issues that institutions often have with the process of creating proposals and resulting customer contracts include:
- Writers editing “standard” language in proposals creating one-off, non-standard terms
- Use of the wrong version of the “latest” proposal language
- Non-standard language from a prior proposals being inadvertently included in new proposals because the old one was used as a starting point
- Math errors
By making FormLizard the “go to place” for standard grant lanauge, formats and other documents, you ensure that the latest versions will be used.
Use Conditional Fields (a type of field in FormLizard) to handle variations in the grants. For example, you may have alternate “Qualifications” sections pre-defined for different types of proposals. When the writer is completing the online interview in FormLizard they would be asked the type of qualifications section to use and it would be inserted in the proposal.
Using conditional fields often eliminates the need for writers to make changes to standard langauge, since FormLizard can be setup to handle all the flexibility they might need.
The diagram below shows an example of how this process would work.
Although we use proposals in this example, the approach can be used for all of your organization’s legal documents such as:
- Purchasing solicitations and contracts
- Partnering agreements
- Subcontracting agreements
- Non-disclosure agreements
- Employment agreements
Imagine having one place to go to where all of the documents your organization relies upon are setup for easy, error-free completion. That’s the power of FormLizard.
Private and secure for the most rigorous uses
