Features

Our system is very customizable by the user, with a range of built-in features and capabilities, that can be turned on and off as needed. Everything we can do, you can do, so there is no waiting for somebody to do something or additional charges for set up.

The customization starts with adding users, organization information, and then one or more grant or scholarship programs. For each program forms are used to setup applications, grant reports and/or recommendations.

Some available features are described below.

Supports multiple grant and scholarship programs.

Programs

We can support any number and any combination of grant and scholarship programs. This provides you the flexibility to separate, organize and manage your applications separately from each other.

The programs operate independently of each other and can have different or the same descriptions, application processes (full application or LOI and full application), application questions, evaluation scales, reviewers and evaluators, visibility rules, and open and close dates. There is no limit to the number of programs we can support.

Forms-based system to setup applications and reports to collect the information you need.

Forms

You can use our forms system to set up applications, reports and letters of recommendation. Our forms provide a great deal of flexibility to collect the required and optional information you need (text, documents, audio, photos, video) from your applicant.

Forms are built up as pages, with each page containing the fields you specify in the order you want them. We support a wide range of field types for text, enumerated lists, radio buttons, tables, checklists, documents and media uploads and others.

We've added another layer to this which allows you to specify allowable answers and the format of the information you expect in some fields (e.g. phone number, email address, number, currency, etc.). While the applicant is providing a answers to your questions, the system checks the response, and if it doesn't meet your specified criteria, the applicant will not be allowed to submit the application. This provides an effective mechanism to minimize errors in applications and to ensure applicants meet some minimal acceptable criteria.

A helpful feature of our forms is that a single form can be used for multiple applications or different forms can be used for different applications. This also holds true for grant reports and letters of recommendation. Forms can be started from scratch, copied in whole or copied with individual fields edited. This provides complete flexibility and reuse of the forms.

Our system also stores every applicant answer to every grantmaker question. If the exact same question is used on another application or at some point in the future, when the applicant gets to that question, it will already be prepopulated with their previous answer, which they can then leave as-is, or edit and change. This can save time and work for both the grantmaker and the applicant.

Nonprofits use a simple step-by-step process to fill out and submit applications and reports.

Applications

You can use our forms system to set up applications and grant reports. Your applications and grant reports can have any number of pages and fields.

One application is associated with each program, and you may have up to 2 grant agreements and 8 grant reports associated per application. The grant reports may be optional or required, and due dates may also be specified. Applications may be navigated by applicants in a step-by-step manner, or in any order between the different pages.

If you ask for an EIN in your application our system will automatically populate the application with all information from the Nonprofit IRS Business Master File (BMF).

If the applicant has previously submitted applications to your organization our system will automatically populate the application with a previous application history.

Letters of recommendation are easily supported to simplify the collection of recommendations.

Recommendations

We provide a way for you to collect letters of recommendation from recommenders suggested by the applicants for scholarship programs. This removes the need for your applicants to collect and separately submit recommendations.

While constructing an application, you can include special fields that ask the applicant to provide an email address and name for any recommenders they'd like to use. When the applicant submits their application, our system will send emails with a unique Web link to each recommender. Upon receipt they can follow the link to provide their recommendation.

The letter of recommendation they will fill out is also forms based, and like an application or grant report can have any number of pages and fields. After they complete the letter of recommendation and submit it to our system, it will be attached to the application and viewable by the grantmaker, but all the applicants can see is whether or not the letter of recommendation has been submitted. This is a convenient way to collect and keep confidential recommender's opinions about applicants.

We provide a very robust and complete review and evaluation system for internal and external evaluators.

Evaluations

We provide a wide range of review and evaluation options for both internal and/or external reviewers and evaluators. Grantmakers may want some of their users to simply read applications. Others may want some of their users to read, score and provide notes about the applications. We can support no evaluation process to a very complicated evaluation processes.

We've seen grantmakers with no formal evaluation process. Others may have a one step process in which a staff member decides whether or not to fund an application. More complicated processes have a staff member perform a sanity check of the application, which is then forwarded on to technical evaluators for the next step. This is then followed by board members of the grantmaker evaluating the application and in some cases then forwarded on for one additional step in which the board of the overarching organization makes the final decision whether or not to fund an application.

Setting up the evaluations for a program requires a number of steps. The first step is to set up the number of evaluation steps for a program, then some visibility rules (who can see what), the evaluation scale or rubric (either built-in or customized by you) and the evaluator groups (who will be evaluating which applications).

There are a number of built-in evaluation scales or rubrics available or you can build your own, using a variety of formats and questions with different required responses. It is possible to specify a question that will allow an evaluator to indicate if they have a conflict of interest for a particular application, and if they answer yes, they will then be taken out of the evaluation for that application. Administrators can also do this outside of the evaluation scale as necessary.

Evaluator groups can consist of any number of users, and users can be members of any number of evaluator groups. This provides complete flexibility of who can be assigned to evaluate an application. Evaluators evaluate an application by logging into their account, selecting and reviewing an application and its supporting documentation and then rating or ranking the application. Evaluators can also add notes and comments about the application.

Under normal conditions applicants will never see the evaluations, although there is an option that allows you to share the evaluation scores and notes with applicants, with the evaluators names anonymized. Any information provided by your evaluators is kept with the application, which will provide a perpetual and historical record of why you decided to either approve or reject an application.

Applications become grants or scholarships once they have been approved.

Grants

Once an application has been approved, in our terminology it then becomes a grant or scholarship, although we frequently use the word grant for both.

An application becoming a grant unlocks an additional set of actions that can be performed, including managing any online grant agreements, grant reports and grant payments.

Grant agreements can be created, accepted and managed from our system.

Grant Agreements

Many grantmakers require a signed contract or agreement with an applicant before disbursing funds. If needed, you can provide and manage multiple grant agreements.

If needed, you can provide and manage up to 2 grant agreements per application. A grant agreement is created by providing the text of the grant agreement and specifying which users of the applicant are allowed to accept the agreement. When an agreement is accepted we collect some information about the accepting user, include it in the agreement and then lock it down so it cannot be changed. We currently do not provide any integration with online signature systems like DocuSign.

Grant agreements are part of the application and are viewable by the applicant and grantmaker.

Grant reports can easily be collected from funded nonprofits or individuals.

Grant Reports

Some grantmakers, after disbursing funds, like to collect information from the applicant about the progress of the program or activity that the grantmaker funded. These progress or status reports usually take the form of a grant report. If needed, you can build and manage multiple grant reports.

If needed, using our forms, you can build, require and manage up to 8 interim and/or final grant reports and attach them to applications as either optional or required with a required by date. The applicant can then fill out these reports and as they are submitted by the applicant they are attached to the application.

Grant reports are part of the application and are viewable by the applicant or grantmaker.

Amounts requested, approved and paid for grants or scholarships can be easily maintained and tracked.

Grant Payments

We provide a very simple mechanism, for tracking the amount requested, amount approved and amount paid for any application.

The payment information can be exported out of our system via a spreadsheet, which can be used by most bookkeeping or accounting systems. We currently do not provide any general online payment mechanism but we offer a simple integration with Bill.com to generate an invoice Bill.com can use to perform an online payment.

Our system meets industry standards for the privacy and security of information.

Security and Privacy

Our privacy is important to us and we act as though you feel the same way. We collect just enough information from you to run our system and we don't ever sell your information to anybody.

We generally adhere to industry best practices, the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation and the California Consumer Privacy Act.

We make our money from the subscription fee. The only other companies that may have access to some of your information is our small group of service providers that include our server provider, document server provider, payment processor, and email provider, and they are also not allowed to sell your information. All of your data is located in the United States. We adhere to the strict data privacy regulations of the European Union and California, which afford you a number of privacy rights, which we wholeheartedly agree with and support.

We and our service providers have a number of mechanisms in place to protect us from bad and malicious actors. This includes secure communication between our users and servers, password protected accounts, and minimal storage of your payment information. Our service providers have a much more sophisticated set of measures to protect their assets and your information.