Funder & Trust Compliance Requirements Database, OCHFT
Project Title & Client:
Funder- & Trust-Sourced Compliance Requirements Database, Orange County Housing Finance Trust
The Challenge:
The Trust has received nine different tranches of funding from state and county sources, each with its own requirements for the Trust and for the eventual borrowers of the loans provided by the Trust. These terms are spread across 13 documents and then incorporated into 15 additional template documents originated by the Trust, where they are joined by numerous other compliance requirements established by the Trust. Pulling information from within this stack of paperwork to answer even simple questions was unwieldy, contradictory, and prevented the creation of a compliance process for the Trust. Neither the Trust staff nor the borrowers were clear on the requirements that were attached to their award offers.
Solution:
Homefrontally created a custom-built Airtable database for the Trust to consolidate scattered information into a single, searchable tool, which also provided the first comprehensive overview of all 145 different requirements. The requirements were categorized by funding source, topic, period, and responsible party; they were summarized, the document and location notated, and the exact verbiage included. Pass-through requirements were further linked from the funder source to the location of the related borrower term. Each requirement was also evaluated for inspectability, and if standards for passing or failing the inspection were set or needed to be developed.
Impact & Results:
The client's biggest improvement was vastly improved searchability for relevant terms, eliminating the need to open dozens of PDFs and conduct multiple-keyword searches. In a single search, all terms related to "homelessness" can be quickly surfaced with brief summaries and the exact language for more detailed inquiries, and further filtered by funding source to find only those that apply in a particular situation. Or 100-plus pages of loan documents can be condensed into a simple list of terms, further sorted by topic or time period, without losing access to any of the specifics included in the exact language of the document. This unique Airtable solution serves as both a card catalogue of terms and a digital repository of their source documents.
Role:
Homefrontally led the full database design and implementation, including business analysis and data migration.