Connecting Art to Life

Managing capital project budgets is complex, detailed work. While organizations that routinely conduct capital construction or improvements, such as hospitals and
universities, use robust project management tools for tracking budgets, nonprofits conducting one to a few such projects tend to make do with Microsoft Excel spreadsheets, feeding only a high level of information back into their financial software.

Just as the earth began moving and sculptures began arising at its largest capital project, SAM ran into a chronic problem for organizations of its size: its "make-do" spreadsheets hit the limits of their functionality and began crashing, yet the organization wasn't quite ready to make the leap to expensive, new construction project software.

SAM's controller's office feared downtime in tracking and reporting the projects' budgets would open up opportunity for financial disaster.

SAM's accounting staff trusted NPower Seattle to help problem-solve the situation, knowing they wouldn't be pushed into a tool beyond their needs. Through careful analysis, knowledgeable assessment, and keen understanding of SAM's needs, NPower Seattle created a simple solution for extending the usefulness of SAM's detailed spreadsheets: A Microsoft Access back-end stabilized the spreadsheet system and allowed it to grow to retain and analyze more information, longer.

This rather unembellished innovation proved exactly the solution SAM needed. With a new twist on familiar tools, SAM's staff was able to run forward without having to learn new software, and SAM's budget was spared a significant, unexpected expense.

With their disaster averted and their work uninterrupted, the controller's office could take time to carefully select construction project software. Today, even as they run specialized construction project software, SAM continues to manage its highly detailed sub-ledger activity in their NPower Seattle created tool.

The Seattle Art Museum's capital projects continue to progress on time and on budget, and expect to meet their deadline for the grand opening and re-openings of all three locations.

And that means more opportunities for the Seattle community to experience and find personal connection with world class art.