What Foundations Should Know Before Leaving Spreadsheets

Dean Murphy Growth Marketing Specialist, Submit.com

A foundation’s grants spreadsheet rarely stays a simple list. One round in, it gains an eligibility column. By the third, it holds scores pasted in from reviewers’ emails, a payment schedule, a colour that means “waiting on bank details” and, somewhere in a comment, the reason a trustee asked for one application to be held back.

None of that is a failure. It’s a small team doing the job with the tool it had. The difficulty comes with the move to software, because each of those habits has to become a setting, and a setting needs someone to decide what it should be.

This guide covers the step before any supplier conversation. If you’re still weighing whether to switch at all, our comparison of grant management software and Excel deals with that. Here, the job is to pin down your own grantmaking workflow so the system you choose fits it, not the other way round.

Start with the round you’ve just finished

The most reliable way to find your real process is to trace one you’ve already run. Take your last completed round and pull out two applications: one you funded and one you declined.

For each, note every point where a person did something. Who opened it first? Who checked the charity number? Where did each reviewer’s score arrive, and who copied it into the sheet? Who told the applicant the outcome, and did they use a template or write it fresh?

You’ll find steps no one would draw on a process map. A second eligibility check by the finance lead, added after something slipped through a few years ago. One reviewer who always takes the arts applications. A grants officer who knows which returning applicants need a reminder before the deadline. That knowledge is the part most at risk when someone leaves, and it’s exactly what software needs you to write down.

Keep the notes. They become the brief for every decision below.

How many stages does an application really pass through?

Count the points at which the applicant gives you something new. That number, not the number of statuses in your spreadsheet, is how many stages you have.

Plenty of foundations already run two stages without naming them: a short enquiry or expression of interest, then an invitation to apply in full. Some add a budget clarification before award, or a visit. Each step either asks the applicant for information, which makes it a stage, or happens inside your team, which makes it a review step or a status.

The difference matters to applicants. A short first stage lets a small charity learn it isn’t a fit before it spends a week on a full proposal. Philanthropy Ireland, writing up a session with the authors of Modern Grantmaking, noted that application processes tend to build up complexity over time and encouraged funders to keep checking that each question and reporting requirement is still needed and proportionate. Settling your stages is the natural point to run that check.

In Submit.com, each stage can be a phase of the same application. First-stage answers stay on the record when an applicant is invited forward, and post-award progress reports can be added as later phases instead of separate forms. The multiphase submissions and other platform features are set up without code, so the grants team can adjust them between rounds.

Which eligibility rules should the system apply on its own?

Split your eligibility criteria into two lists:

1. Rules with no discretion: Registered charity status, where the organisation works, the maximum you’ll award, the closing date. A system can apply these the moment an applicant answers, and decline an ineligible application with a clear explanation instead of leaving it in a reviewer’s queue.
2. Judgement calls: Fit with your current priorities, whether a newly formed group has enough of a track record, and whether a project just outside your area still serves your community. These stay with people.

The mistake to avoid is automating a rule that was never really a rule. If your trustees have funded outside the stated area several times in recent years, “we only fund within the county” is a preference, and an automatic rejection would quietly change your policy. Agree which it is before anyone builds the form.

Automation helps with sorting as well as screening. When the High Fives Foundation moved from a Google Form and a growing spreadsheet to Submit.com, auto-tagging showed straight away whether each applicant was new or returning and which of its nine funding areas they were applying under, so the team no longer had to read every application in full just to route it.

Who scores, and what do they see?

Spreadsheets make scoring look finished when it isn’t. Reviewers email numbers back, someone pastes them into columns, and the total looks precise. What the sheet can’t show is whether each reviewer read the criteria the same way, or whether anyone scoring an application had a connection to the organisation behind it.

Before configuring the review, agree four things: the criteria and how they’re weighted; whether one reviewer, a staff panel or external assessors score each application; whether reviewers see applicant names; and what someone does when they know the organisation applying.

That last point is a governance question before it’s a software one. The Charity Commission’s guidance on decision-making for charity trustees (CC27) expects trustees to manage conflicts of interest and to keep an accurate record of their decisions and how they reached them. In Ireland, the Charities Regulator’s Charities Governance Code asks boards to keep conflicts of interest on every meeting agenda and to record decisions accurately.

Once the rule is agreed, the platform can carry it out. Submit.com gives reviewers weighted score bars so everyone works to the same criteria, sets folder-level permissions for each external reviewer so people only open the applications they should, and offers optional blind review for funds where names should stay hidden. The security and compliance controls behind this are documented for anyone who needs to sign them off.

What counts as the decision record?

When an auditor, a trustee or a disappointed applicant asks why a grant went one way, what will you show them?

For most foundations the honest answer is a mix: reviewer scores and comments, a staff recommendation, and the board minute that approved the list. In a spreadsheet those sit in three places, joined only by someone’s memory. Decide which parts will live in the grant system and which stay in board papers, and make sure every decision can be traced from one to the other.

Record the reasons for declines as carefully as the reasons for awards. They’re the basis for useful feedback, and they’re what you’ll need if a decision is questioned.

Submit.com keeps reviewer notes and discussion on the application record, logs each advance, waitlist or decline for audit, and exports decisions with their supporting evidence for board packs.

What will applicants hear, and when?

Being open with applicants is mostly a matter of timing. List every message an applicant receives now, from acknowledgement to outcome, and when it goes out. Then list what you’d like them to receive.

The usual gaps are no confirmation that an application arrived complete, silence during review, and decline emails that go out weeks after the board met because someone had to write thirty of them by hand. Agree your templates before launch, especially the wording of declines and whether you offer feedback.

The effect on staff can be bigger than expected. Before Developing Healthy Communities in Northern Ireland replaced its legacy grants system with Submit.com, its team was spending whole days on the phone helping applicants complete basic forms. Staged forms, automated reminders and bulk updates made the process clearer for applicants and much calmer for the team.

What has to happen after the award?

For many foundations, the spreadsheet works hardest after the board has decided. Payment schedules, bank details to confirm, claims against receipts, progress reports chased by email.

Decide whether grants are paid in one sum or in instalments, what evidence releases each payment, what grantees report and how often, and which of those measures your board will actually read. It’s tempting to ask for everything. Asking only for what you’ll use is fairer on grantees and gives you cleaner grant tracking data.

Submit.com processes claims with supporting invoices, tracks disbursements and drawdowns against payment schedules, and collects progress and final reports on the same grant record. Reporting can then be filtered by geography, theme or any tag you set, which is how Developing Healthy Communities answered short-notice requests for geographic and deprivation breakdowns. The grant management software for foundations page covers the post-award tools in more detail.

What should come across from the spreadsheet?

Less than you might think. Active grants with payments or reports outstanding need to move. So does history you genuinely use, such as which organisations you’ve funded before, if that affects eligibility or scoring. Everything else can be archived where it is.

Personal data is the harder call. The UK GDPR’s storage limitation principle means you can’t keep personal data for longer than you need it, and the ICO points out that the law sets no fixed periods, so the decision and its justification sit with you. In Ireland, the Data Protection Commission says controllers should set time limits for erasure or for periodic review. A migration is the obvious moment to apply yours, so settle how long you keep unsuccessful applications before anything is imported.

Submit.com supports configurable retention and deletion policies, so the rule you agree is applied by the system instead of relying on someone to remember it.

The decisions at a glance

Take your notes to the demo

The notes you’ve built are the most useful thing you can bring to a supplier. Ask them to run the application you declined last round through their system, with your stages, your eligibility rules and your decline email. How quickly and cleanly they can do it will tell you more than any feature tour.

Frequently asked questions

What is grant management software?

Grant management software is a system funders use to run a grant programme from application to final report. It collects applications through online forms, screens eligibility, supports reviewer scoring, records decisions, and tracks payments and grantee reporting in one place, replacing spreadsheets, email chains and shared folders.

Should a foundation redesign its grant process before moving off spreadsheets?

Not redesign, but it should write the process down. Tracing a recent round shows the real stages, rules and hand-offs, and it is the right moment to drop questions or reporting you no longer need. Larger changes are easier to make once the new system has run a full round.

Can grant management software handle a two-stage application?

Yes. In Submit.com, an expression of interest and a full application can be phases of the same application, so first-stage answers stay on the record and shortlisted applicants only provide what is new.

Can reviewers score applications without seeing applicant names?

Yes, where a fund calls for it. Submit.com offers optional blind review, and folder-level permissions control which applications each external reviewer can open.

How do we stop ineligible applications reaching reviewers?

Separate your absolute eligibility rules from the judgement calls. Absolute rules, such as where an organisation works or the maximum grant size, can be applied automatically as applicants answer, with a clear message to anyone who is ineligible. Judgement calls stay with reviewers.