Over the last few days we have been holding TourWest panels.  TourWest is WESTAF's Touring and Presenting grant program.  It is funded through the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) as a way of promoting performing tours.  Each of the Regional Arts Organizations (RAO) have a similar program.

One of the unique things about the TourWest program is how online the process is and the length of time it has been online.

A number of years ago I spearheaded the design of CultureGrants Online Basic (CGO).  It is a shared grant making system that allows agencies to create and manage their own grant activities including building grant applications.  Currently Basic is in its second iteration.  The first version of Basic was very much a wire-frame system.  TourWest makes use of the Basic system in its application, paneling, and final report process.

One of my current roles at WESTAF is managing the TourWest Grant Program. It has been an online process now for about 5 years. In the first year, we had an application form that would save the information in a cookie and the applicant would print out the application and mail it into WESTAF.

Later we moved to CultureGrants Online(tm) Basic version 1. Version 1 of the software worked pretty well, but it was fairly ugly and the tools were rudimentary. Two and half years ago we rebuild the software from the ground up and built version 2. This package is much more robust with pretty significant ways of outputting data that has been entered into the database. It creates readable panel books, and saves some information from year to year for the applicants. Once the applicants have completed the project that they have been funded for, they can complete a final report online.