The Best Tribal Government Software

What is Tribal Software?

Tribal software is designed to support tribal governments with financial management, enrollment of tribal members, land development, and more operations. Like ERP applications, tribal solutions offer an integrated suite of general business applications specific to streamline the workflow of tribal governance. Instead of finding separate software solutions to automate each element of your tribal government, consider a single tribal software to combine everything into one solution for a fraction of the cost.

Tribal communities may be classified as:

• Native Americans and American Indians
• Alaska Natives
• Native Canadians
• First Nations and First Peoples
• Indigenous peoples

In some cases, a general government software may be more appropriate for your needs. Designed for every level of government and non-profit organizations (NPO), these solutions cover fund accounting, grant management, budgeting, and more. However, they do not always have tribal-specific functionality, such as enrollment management. Additionally, tribal governments within the United States must be compliant with several regulatory agencies, including:

• Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA)
• Bureau of Indian Education
• Indian Health Services
• US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD)
• Indian Child Welfare/Child Protective Services (ICW/CPS)

Ensure your government services are operating within federal guidelines and maintaining accurate finances by using tribal government software.

Key Features of Tribal Software

• Member tracking: Keep a database of fully enrolled and eligible tribal members for easy reference and retrieval
• Enrollment management: Manage all tribal membership data, such as enrollment applications, to streamline services
• Financial services: Organize a general ledger to track finances; Collect and distribute financial aid packages to fund tribal members and community projects
• Grant management: Streamline grant discovery, application, acquisition, compliance, reporting, and budgeting
• Project management: Coordinate the execution of project tasks for the tribe, including initial planning, scheduling, resource allocation, quality management, and time tracking
• Reporting: Use advanced analytics and business intelligence (BI) tools to find areas of improvement for managing tribal enrollment and services offered

Best Tribal Software Benefits

Utilizing a tribal software to improve your community services can have many long-term benefits for your tribal government:

Offer Tribal-Specific Social Services

First, tribal software is designed to help tribal governments to streamline their operations so they can offer more comprehensive services to their members. Some services your tribe may want to offer include:

• Family and social services: Organize a wide range of social services for members of your tribe, such as foster family training and placement services, temporary housing needs, and human resources for employees
• Education services: Assist students of all ages with K-12 school performance, college applications and acceptance, and professional or vocational training programs
• Health services: Provide healthcare for tribal members, ranging from general checkups to dental care to therapy
• Employment and training services: Find job opportunities for enrolled members and provide any necessary training to ensure employment success
• Land management: Manage all tribal land assets, such as reservation or trust land boundaries, natural resources, farming, and development

The exact tribal member services provided by your tribal government may vary significantly. Through software with project management tools, you can optimize the resources available to your members.

Establish and Maintain a Budget

Governments of tribal nations need to stick to strict budgets as their funding may be limited to grants or federal aid programs like Aid to Tribal Government (ATG). In order to accurately prepare an annual budget, you’ll need a thorough understanding of typical expenses: employee salaries, benefits, supplies, housing and facility costs, public services, and maintenance of utilities. With tribal government software, you can get estimates on these costs from past years in order to prevent going over budget.

Further, tribal software can reduce day-to-day expenses by digitizing paperwork. Going paperless can significantly lower your operational costs and make you more organized through digitized archives. Electronic enrollment documents can also minimize how many forms potential members have to fill out by hand, streamlining the entire process for everyone involved.

Remain Compliant with Federal Regulations

Tribal governments are required to meet a lot of federal standards. For instance, childcare and foster programs must meet the standards set by both the Indian Child Welfare (ICW) and Child Protective Services (CPS). Since each organization has slightly different requirements to follow, it’s important to collect the data in one place. Tribal software can help your organization remain compliant with various regulatory agencies while also establishing your own internal standards.

Additionally, organizations which rely on grant funding need financial reporting tools to build fully detailed audit trails. This added level of transparency also strengthens the grant management process from the start, by indicating how and where potential funds will be spent. And past audit trails made from historical data can be used to better estimate future budgets.

Tribal Government Software Pricing

Tribal governments looking for software should carefully consider their budgetary requirements, especially those which technically operate as NPOs. The main factors include the size of your organization, as well as what functionality you expect out of the system. The more features you need, whether in the base software or through add-ons, the more your organization will have to pay. On average, SaaS tribal software can range between $75 and $5,170 per month. One-time perpetual licensing fees range from $2,995 up to $16,000.

As described above, selecting a single solution can be far more cost effective than purchasing individual software. For instance, general accounting software can cost anywhere from $5 to $150 per month per user, and that would only cover financial management processes. A separate software would need to be purchased to cover things like project and grant management, and each would likely require separate training. By selecting a specific tribal government software, you can get all the functionality you need at a fraction of the cost.