Pew Charitable Trusts Signs On With eSignLive E-Signature Software
Philanthropy Seeks to Streamline Operations
Montreal, Qc, February 14, 2001 - The Pew Charitable Trusts, a $4.8-billion philanthropy based in Philadelphia, has chosen Silanis Technology Inc.'s electronic signature and approval-management software to streamline administrative and grant approval operations. By providing its employees and grantees with a secure means to sign documents electronically, the Trusts aim to reduce costs and minimize the processing time required to approve and distribute funds to their grantees.
"As a major philanthropy, our goal is to make the wisest use of our assets,” said Paul Ratnaraj, Chief Information Officer at The Trusts. “But administering $235 million annually in grant funds — as we did last year — can be a timely and costly process and can reduce the amount of funds available for our core business of strategically investing in ideas that produce important social results."
The Pew Charitable Trusts receive thousands of grant inquiries each year. Prospective grantees are required to fill out, sign and submit an application form to the Trusts’ Philadelphia headquarters. The grant-approval process requires multiple signatures within the organization, storage of the signed documents and retrieval of the information from a database for audit and tracking purposes. By using Silanis ApproveIt, The Pew Charitable Trusts hope to cut down on data-entry errors, reduce costs and improve overall efficiency by making the entire process electronic from start to finish.
The Trusts will begin using Silanis ApproveIt internally during the first half of the year to cut administrative costs. Later in the year—on Pew’s planned extranet—an experimental set of grantees will be able to sign applications and monitoring forms electronically.
“We chose Silanis ApproveIt because it provides a powerful combination of security, ease-of-use and reliability”, said Kenneth Miller, manager of application development at The Trusts. “We’ll be able to safely capture the legally binding signatures needed to process and track grant applications using our current Web forms, Word documents, Excel spreadsheets and document-management and retrieval system.”
About Silanis
Founded in 1992, Silanis Technology Inc. created ApproveIt, the industry’s first and only multi-signature electronic-approval management software. More than 800 organizations use Silanis products in financial services, government, health and pharmaceutical sectors, including the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, TRW, Williams Group, GMACCM, Nationwide Insurance and National City Bank. Silanis software is recognized for its extensive capabilities, scalable security, ease of use and ease of integration. Silanis’s worldwide sales headquarters are located in Washington, DC. The company also has a regional office in Campbell, CA and an R&D center in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, as well as sales and customer support units in other U.S. cities.
About The Pew Charitable Trusts
The Pew Charitable Trusts support nonprofit activities in the areas of culture, education, the environment, health and human services, public policy and religion. Based in Philadelphia, the Trusts make strategic investments to help organizations and citizens develop practical solutions to difficult problems. In 2000, with approximately $4.8 billion in assets, the Trusts committed over $235 million to 302 nonprofit organizations.
For additional information:
Andrea Simmons Silanis Technology Inc. (514) 337-5255 ext. 1152 e-mail: [email protected] www.silanis.com
David Morse The Pew Charitable Trusts 215-575-4810 e-mail: [email protected] www.pewtrusts.com