Grant Management | Case study
High Fives Foundation
Background
The High Fives Foundation and Submit
Lake Tahoe based, the High Fives Foundation provides grants for rehabilitation support to outdoor action sports athletes with life-altering injuries. It also promotes awareness of injury prevention.
They achieve the majority of this through their Empowerment Fund. Athletes who have suffered an SCI, TBI or other life-altering injuries can receive funding for goals related to their recovery within the outdoor sports community.
Over a year they were starting to receive between 150-200 applications for this fund typically. As High Fives’ Foundation Manager, Trey Humphrey notes the Empowerment Fund has precise criteria, “so we must fairly judge candidates on how closely they meet our mission, and we have to determine which of the nine areas that we provide funding for that match up with their application.”
With the increase in application volume, Trey recognised the need for a better system to manage their grant applications; “We had a Google Form embedded onto our website, which fed into this massive spreadsheet. It became too much to handle, especially as we started to grow.”
“A grant application management game changer! Submit allowed us to streamline our grant process while allowing for better control and input from key Board members.”
The path to a better system
Trey spent close to two months testing different platforms. However, these other grant management providers did not fit within their budget. High Fives was close to considering a custom solution until Trey came across Submit.
“When we first started looking at platforms, I needed input from our Executive Director who gave me a list of five things he wanted. Initially, I thought to hit all five things, exactly how he saw it in his head would make us go broke. Then I came across Submit, and it hit all five of those things immediately, and when I saw the price structure, I was 100% behind moving forward.”
Also, Submit didn’t hide anything from pricing to features. All High Fives needed to move forward was clearly outlined in two demos with Trey remarking, “it was all so transparent which was refreshing.”
Growing pains
It didn’t take long for Trey to see the improvements Submit made to the High Fives Foundation’s workflow. In particular, the auto-tagging and auto-scoring features.
“Now, when an application comes in, we can look at what their score is, and we can see the tags, so that’ll tell us whether they are a new applicant or returning applicant. It’ll let us know which of the nine areas of funding they’re seeking. We’re saving a lot of time because we don’t have to read everything,” said Trey.
Trey had high praise for our Customer Success team,
“Sarah [Submit’s Head of Customer Success] was great. I know we’re in an entirely different timezone, but every time I start a chat in the app, I would get a response within 24 hours and usually a quick fix too.”
However, not everything went according to plan. Early on there were formatting issues when Trey tried to download form summaries. In response, our team delivered a quick workaround while they set about resolving the problem.
Trey recommends to others considering Submit not to be afraid to ask questions. He noted how the Submit are “obviously pretty knowledgeable on how to do everything and Sarah did a great job of explaining it in the demos. But, honestly, it would have made some of the growing pains a lot easier if I had asked more questions at the start.”
Key Features Used
Engaged candidates
Not only have Trey and the High Fives Team found Submit easy to use but their candidates also appreciate the new platform, “it’s smoother, it’s easier, they can all do it on their mobile phones, and they love it.”
So much so that they are considering using the platform for people apply to their adaptive camps. Especially as they now have over 250 athletes it can be difficult to get them engaged. “Obviously making it easy for them to apply with Submit is the way to go.”
“When we first started looking at platforms, I needed input from our Executive Director who gave me a list of five things he wanted. Initially, I thought to hit all five things, exactly how he saw it in his head would make us go broke. Then I came across Submit, and it hit all five of those things immediately, and when I saw the price structure, I was 100% behind moving forward.”
Read more customer success stories
Discover how different organisations leverage our system.
Grant management | DLR County Council
Multiple stakeholders and workflows
Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council’s Community Grant programme is administered across multiple departments. They partnered with Submit.com to standardise workflows.
Grant management | Cork City LEO
How to replace a legacy system
The Cork City Local Enterprise Office embraced significant organisational change when they eliminated their labour-intensive paper-based process in favour of Submit.com.
Get started today
If you think it’s time to streamline your awards submission process or you’re interested in more ways to modernise your current workflow and review process, talk to one of our senior solutions specialists today.
