€2.4M in EU Grants — What Changed When the SDG Dashboards Started Working

The Challenge

Two Dutch and German environmental NGOs were consistently losing EU grant applications to competitors who could produce quantified SDG contribution matrices. The programme work was strong — field projects with measurable environmental outcomes, long track records, and credible local partnerships. The problem was not what they were doing. It was that they could not prove it in the format the funders required.

When EU grant officers asked for CO2 removal data mapped to SDG 13 targets with specific output indicators, both organisations had to say they needed time to compile the data. In practice, that meant exporting spreadsheets from multiple tracking systems, manually mapping programme outputs to SDG targets, and formatting the result into a matrix the funder could parse. The process took 6–8 person-weeks a year across both organisations. It also produced data that was already out of date by the time it was formatted.

The grants they were applying for required this data at the application stage, not just in reporting. They were withdrawing from applications they were otherwise qualified for because the preparation burden was too high.

Results at a Glance

AlmaMate's Approach

AlmaMate started with a three-day mapping workshop: taking each organisation's programmes, identifying which specific SDG targets they contributed to, and agreeing on the output indicators for each link. This is the analytical work that cannot be automated — the judgment about which SDG 13 target a coastal restoration programme genuinely contributes to, and what a credible indicator would be. Both organisations' programme teams were in the room.

The Salesforce configuration added a custom SDG Contribution object linked to each Programme Activity. When field staff record activity outputs — species counts, hectares restored, community workshops delivered — they are automatically tagged to the SDG indicator mapping set up in the programme design. The data entry burden on field staff is zero: the SDG mapping is configuration, not data entry.

Tableau CRM pulls from Programme Activity and SDG Contribution objects, aggregating output data by SDG target and rendering it in the matrix format required by the European Commission, EEA Grants, and European Climate Foundation. The dashboard exports directly to the PDF and Excel formats each funder's portal accepts. The quarterly report generates automatically — no human intervention required.

The Grant Applications That Changed

In the year following implementation, both organisations applied for grants they had previously declined to pursue because the SDG documentation burden was too high. Both were funded. The combined value was €2.4M.

Both organisations also received written commendations from EU grant officers on the quality of their SDG reporting — specific, quantitative, with clear methodology. One grant officer noted it was "the most rigorous SDG contribution matrix we have received from a grantee of this size."

The staff time that had been spent on manual SDG compilation — the equivalent of one full-time headcount across the two organisations — was redeployed to programme delivery. The reporting infrastructure did not just unlock funding. It gave programme staff more time to do the work the funding was for.